Mohamed A. H. Ahmed

Date: July 27th-28th, 2024

Location: Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Ireland Submission

Deadline: January 31st 2024.

The research team of the ERC funded research project Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah (APCG), based at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, Trinity College Dublin, invites scholars and researchers to participate in our upcoming international conference exploring the multifaceted dimensions of the Anthropology of Texts. This conference is part of the ongoing APCG project based in TCD in close collaboration with Cambridge University Library. A crucial strand of the project is to conduct an anthropological study of the Jewish people of medieval and Ottoman Egypt through manuscripts of Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic poetry and secondary literature. The focus is on the role that poetry played in cultural life as an expression of Egyptian-Jewish experience in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period.

The Anthropology of Texts conference others a dynamic platform for scholars from diverse fields to come together and explore in depth the notion of textuality. This conference aims to unravel the rich tapestry of history, culture, writing systems, and practices that characterized the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. By scrutinizing the contexts in which these texts emerged and the networks through which they travelled, we seek to decipher their role in shaping societies and in being shaped by those societies.

Some of the engaging questions we seek to explore are: How do texts, whether scripted, spoken, or material artifacts shape their contemporary societies? What insights do they provide into the value systems, ideologies, and everyday lives of various groups? Can texts become conduits for understanding the interplay between local dynamics and global communities at the time? By tracing cultural intersections and geographic links embedded in these texts, can we reveal unexplored connections between seemingly disparate places and people? Additionally, what can the practices of textual production and inscription reveal about the societies they originated from?

We invite submissions on a wide array of topics that align with the conference theme including, but not limited to:
Text Production and Circulation: Exploring the dynamics of text creation, transmission, and dissemination in various forms—written, oral, and material artifacts.

Text Functions and Social Implications: Investigating the roles of texts in societal contexts, their functions, and the social implications they carried.
Reception of Texts: Analyzing how texts were received, interpreted, and integrated into diverse cultural landscapes.

Socio-historical Relations and Encounters: Uncovering narratives of interaction, conflict, and cooperation reflected in textual materials.
Global Connections: Tracing the threads of interconnectedness that spanned regions and cultures through textual channels.
Scribal and Material Practices: Exploring the craftsmanship of text creation including scribal techniques and material choices.
Rituals, Customs, and Traditions: Examining the role of texts in perpetuating rituals, customs, and traditions within societies.
Value Systems and Everyday Life: Decoding the values, beliefs, and quotidian experiences embedded in textual records.
People’s Interaction with their Environment: Unveiling how texts mirror human interaction with the physical and cultural environment.

Studies on the Genizah Fragments: Exploring the nuanced tapestry of Jewish-Egyptian community through folk and colloquial poems, or other fragments. Uncovering the nuanced expressions of masculinity, femininity, gender dynamics, as well as personal sexuality and public morality through the writings of the Jewish-Egyptian community.

We invite submissions for individual papers and panels. Paper proposals should comprise a 250-300-word abstract along with a brief biographical note detailing research interests and relevant publications. Panel proposals should designate a session chair and include a session abstract, title, and concise abstracts for each participant’s paper, along with their respective biographies.

A bursary will be provided towards travel and accommodation costs and the selected papers will be published in an open-access volume.
Please submit all proposals to Mohamed Ahmed (ahmedm4@tcd.ie) and Sally Abed (abeds@tcd.ie) by January 31st 2024.

Arabic literary history of the Seljuq, Fāṭimid, and Ayyūbid periods has been heavily shaped by a series of self-conscious continuations (dhayls) to al-Thaʿālibī’s (d. 429/1038) hugely influential Yatīmat al-dahr, particularly the Dumyat al-qaṣr of al-Bākharzī (d. 476/1075) and the Kharīdat al-qaṣr of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (d. 597/1201), a close advisor to Saladin. To a large extent these authors came from a similar milieu of Persian courts and elite urban educational institutions; al-Bākharzī and al-Thaʿālibī were, famously, acquaintances. A fourth text is often adduced, the Zīnat al-dahr of Abū l-Maʿālī al-Ḥaẓīrī (d. 568/1172), whose social profile, that of a Baghdadi book purveyor, was rather different from the other anthologists. ʿImād al-Dīn, during his time in Baghdad, made al-Ḥaẓīrī’s acquaintance during his time in Baghdad in the 550s/1157–1165 and used Zīnat al-dahr as a source for the Kharīda (completed in 573/1178). As Zīnat al-dahr has recently finally been published, al-Ḥaẓīrī and ʿImād al-Dīn’s methods of anthologizing can now be easily compared. My talk will discuss their divergent selection procedures, social networks, and aesthetic concerns.

The research term of ERC funded research project: “Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah (APCG)”, at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, is pleased to invite you to participate in their international conference “Sociohistorical and Cultural Relations in Premodern Mediterranean Societies through Literature and Folklore between the 11th and 17th Centuries”,15th and 16th June 2023.

Abstract of Paper and Panel Proposals:
We welcome proposals for papers and panels. Paper proposals should consist of an approximately 250-300 word abstract and a brief biographical note, including research interests and the most relevant publications. Panel proposals should nominate a chair for the session and include a session abstract, title and a brief abstract for each participant's paper, along with a brief bio.

All proposals should be submitted to Ahmed M. A. Sheir (sheira@tcd.ie) and Muhammad Imran khan (khanmi@tcd.ie), by 31st September 2022.

Costs and Publication:
A bursary will be provided towards travel and accommodation costs and the selected papers will be published in an open-access volume.

We look forward to welcoming you to the event!

The Cairo Genizah is a treasure trove of medieval and early-modern manuscripts stored away in Egypt’s Ben Ezra Synagogue over nearly a thousand years. All manner of written texts, from lost works of Jewish literary legend to the mundane ephemera of everyday life have been found there. Until recently, however, there has been comparatively little focus on the Arabic literary manuscripts of the Genizah, particularly its poetry. These fragments of literary history are fascinating insights into the multicultural Cairo cosmopolis, demonstrating a rich cultural exchange through the literature, as well as their Hebrew-Arabic transcriptions. But the study of these texts poses challenges in understanding Jewish life and Jewish-Arabic relations in Islamic lands. On the one hand, it seems self-evident that Arabic poetry had a tremendous influence on the culture of the Jews of the Genizah world, as so many Arabic poems are found in the Genizah. But on the other hand, some manuscripts contain just small excerpts from much larger or epic Arabic poetical works. To what extent can we say this is an instance of artistic exchange? Or perhaps it is the case that such excerpts become adages, common currency of Cairene culture? How do we investigate the nuances of pre-modern manuscripts in such a cosmopolitan atmosphere, whilst maintaining authentic translation and linguistic analysis? How might the study of such texts – their creation, their copying, their circulation, and their reuse – shed light on the Arabic and Jewish communities, their communal interrelations and shared experience of cultural life?

This one-day workshop seeks to bring together scholars of various disciplines, including, but not limited to, manuscript sciences, history, anthropology, literary criticism, philosophy, and sociology for an exciting workshop on emerging approaches and challenges to the investigation of history, sociology, and anthropology though pre-modern literature and its manuscripts.

Mohamed is the Principal Investigator for the European Research Council-funded project ‘Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah’, which will allow him to lead academic teamwork to expand his work on Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah comprehensively. The project aims to make the entirety of Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic poetry in the Cairo Genizah accessible to both academic scholars and the public in a comprehensive database and critical editions. The project hopes to reveal, through the study of poetry, hitherto hidden aspects of social and cultural history of the Jews in the Middle East with regard to literacy, education and intercommunal relations. The goal is to explore hierarchies, interpersonal relationships and the social function of poetry in medieval and early modern Egypt through the study of Genizah poetry.

Este estudio ofrece una edición, traducción y análisis lingüístico de carta judeo-árabe de la colección Prize Papers. La carta presenta documentos judeoárabes argelinos previamente inexplorados de la colección Prize Papers y que constituyen una oportunidad única para estudiar la historia, la lengua y la cultura del comercio judío en el Mediterráneo y en el norte de África a fines del siglo XVIII.This paper presents an edition, translation and linguistic analysis of a Judaeo-Arabic letter from the Prize Papers Collection. The letter introduces previously unexplored Algerian Judaeo-Arabic documents from the Prize Papers Collection, which constitute a unique chance to study the history, language and culture of Jewish trading across the Mediterranean and North Africa during the late 18th century

In the late 1950s, as part of a general mass immigration from Arab countries, many Iraqi Jews left or had to leave Iraq for Israel. In their encounter with a new society where Hebrew is the national language, most Iraqi Jewish authors found it impossible to continue writing in Arabic and had to face the literary challenge of switching to another tongue in order to be read. Clashes between origins and new cultures are likely to occur when geographical contexts change. In this regard, and unlike the typical emigration context when people move from east to west, moving from east to east exemplifies the experience of two Jewish authors, Shimon Ballas (b. Baghdad, 1930) and Eli Amir (b. Baghdad, 1937) alike. It is this complex situation that provides the backdrop to this study. Shimon Ballas and Eli Amir employ Arabic place names associated with Baghdad and/or Iraq in different ways in their Hebrew texts. This paper investigates the style of using Arabic place names in four Hebrew novels...

ABSTRACT Before immigrating to Israel, first-generation Iraqi Jews were deeply attached to their identity as Mizrahi Jews. Their mother tongue was Arabic and they had grown up in an oriental environment. Therefore, it was not easy for them to adopt the Euro-Israeli identity that the dominant Ashkenazi-European stratum in Israel compelled them to accept. Despite strong Westernizing tendencies in Israeli society, the first generation of Iraqi Jewish immigrants maintained strong links to the Iraqi customs and traditions they had acquired in Iraq, particularly with regard to the musical folklore and oriental cuisine. On the other hand, second-generation Iraqi Jews were more familiar with Israeli society than their parents; they grew up in Israel and learned Hebrew in Israeli schools along with Ashkenazi Jews and other ethnic groups. This paper establishes connections between the historical realities of Iraqi Jewish immigrants and the literary representation of their world in the trilogy Tel-Aviv Mizrah (Tel Aviv East) written in 2003 by the Iraqi Jewish author Shimon Ballas, through a comparison of Ballas's literary vision with the historical realities of Iraqi Jewish identity in Israel over the course of two generations.

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Most Iraqi Jewish authors found it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel and so faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. As bilinguals, Iraqi Jewish novelists have employed Arabic in some of their Hebrew literary works, including strategies of code-switching. Conversational code-switching is traditionally divided into three types: intersentential code-switching, intrasentential code-switching, and tag-switching. Although code-switching in literary texts has its distinct features, research on written code-switching generally follows the typology applied to conversational code-switching. This article focuses on the typology of code-switching in literary texts. It investigates Arabic codes used in three Hebrew novels written by Iraqi Jewish novelists. The article suggests three main types of literary code-switching in view of the mutual relationship between author, text, and rea...

The Cairo Genizah is a fundamental source for the study of Jewish History and culture in Medieval and pre-modern times. Moreover, the importance of the Cairo Genizah to Arabic studies should not be underestimated. This article investigates a previously unpublished fragment that features a selection of Egyptian Arabic proverbs written in Hebrew script, i.e. Judaeo-Arabic, which have been kept for centuries in the Cairo Genizah and that, to date, have not been found in other sources of Egyptian proverbs.

This study sheds light on the Arabic introduction of Maimonides (1135-1204) to his commentary on the Mishnā, one of the most sacred texts in Judaism after the Torah. Maimonides wrote a detailed interpretation to the Mishnā in Arabic with Hebrew script, known as Judaeo-Arabic. The study discusses the most significant linguistic features of the Arabic used by Maimonides in his introduction to his commentary on the Mishnā, based on orthographic, phonetic, syntactic and lexical analysis.

The Prize Papers Collection held at the National Archives in Kew contains more than 280 letters and documents in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew script) taken from the British cartel ship Venus in 1800. Most of the letters and documents belonged to Shlomo Bū Shaʿra, an Algerian Jewish merchant who travelled between Algeria and Europe on business during the late 18th century. This article introduces the Judeo-Arabic documents from the Prize Papers Collection. It applies a linguistic analysis to a sample of 15 letters and documents, and transcribes and translates three documents written in Arabic and Judeo-Arabic scripts.

This paper presents an edition, translation and linguistic analysis of a Judaeo-Arabic letter from the Prize Papers Collection. The letter introduces previously unexplored Algerian Judaeo-Arabic documents from the Prize Papers Collection, which constitute a unique chance to study the history, language and culture of Jewish trading across the Mediterranean and North Africa during the late 18th century.

The Cairo Genizah has shown its importance as a fruitful source for the study of both liturgical and secular Hebrew poetry. Yet, although the Cairo Genizah also contains hundreds of poetry fragments written in the Arabic language, its Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic poetry has hitherto received inadequate attention in research literature. This article explores some of the Genizah's Arabic poems written in both Hebrew and Arabic script, which are held at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collections of Cambridge University Library. The article concludes with a discussion about the importance of the Cairo Genizah to the study of Arabic literature and poetry, and Islamic studies in general, as well as a source for the study of the dissemination of knowledge within medieval Muslim and Jewish elites.

The translation of bilingual literary texts may challenge a translator when s/he needs to transfer some embedded, foreign codes from a language other than the dominant language of the source text (ST) into the target text (TT). This study analyses the way in which code-switching (CS) is transferred into a TT, looking at the translation strategies for CS in a non-European ST into European and non-European target texts. The source language text is Hebrew with Arabic incorporated into the Hebrew text in different ways, most often using CS. The target texts in the study are in Arabic, English, German and Italian languages. The main aim of this study is to show how code-switching in literary paradigms can be translated into a target text language, and to what extent the original structure of instances of CS is maintained, changed or even deleted in the target texts. The study compares four versions of target texts in Arabic, English, Italian and German, followed by an overview of how the same CS instances are transferred across different languages and cultures. Some problems and issues related to the transfer of instances of CS into the target texts are discussed in view of the typology of the CS strategy. The study concludes with an argument that a better understanding of literary CS terminology regarding both linguistic and creative features is necessary for a better translation of bilingual literary texts.

The Prize Paper Collections in the National Archives in Kew Gardens contain more than fifty-five Arabic letters and another two dozen accounts and other documents, which were seized in 1759 by British privateers as part of the loot on a Tuscan ship, set out from Livorno towards Alexandria. Virtually untouched since that time, they present a most exciting source of documentary Ottoman Arabic. The letters were written by Christian merchants trading in the Mediterranean and by Christian clergy in Rome to their co-religionists in Egypt and Turkey. This article presents an introduction to the Arabic Prize Papers, a short linguistic analysis of a preliminary corpus of eleven letters, the edition and translation of three sample letters. Particular attention is paid to the linguistic divergence between those letters written by merchants and those composed by church dignitaries, as well as to the sociolinguistic variation found in specific writers.

The main aim of this study is to introduce a model of TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) annotation of Hebrew elements in Judeo-Arabic texts, i.e., code switching (CS), borrowing, and Hebrew quotations. This article will provide an introduction to using XML (Extensible Markup Language) to investigate sociolinguistic aspects in medieval Judeo-Arabic texts. Accordingly, it will suggest to what extent using XML is useful for investigating linguistic and sociolinguistic features in the Judeo-Arabic paradigm. To provide an example for how XML annotation could be applied to Judeo-Arabic texts, a corpus of 300 pages selected from three Judeo-Arabic books has been manually annotated using the TEI P5. The annotation covers all instances of CS, borrowing, and Hebrew quotations in that corpus.

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Most Iraqi Jewish authors found it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel and so faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. As bilinguals, Iraqi Jewish novelists have employed Arabic in some of their Hebrew literary works, including strategies of code-switching. Conversational code-switching is traditionally divided into three types: intersentential code-switching, intrasentential code-switching, and tag-switching. Although code-switching in literary texts has its distinct features, research on written code-switching generally follows the typology applied to conversational code-switching. This article focuses on the typology of code-switching in literary texts. It investigates Arabic codes used in three Hebrew novels written by Iraqi Jewish novelists. The article suggests three main types of literary code-switching in view of the mutual relationship between author, text, and reader: Hard-Access, Easy-Access, and Ambiguous Access code-switching.

As bilingual authors, Iraqi Jewish novelists use Arabic in some of their Hebrew novels, the result of which has been some linguistic phenomena related to languages in contact. This paper discusses the deviations and inter- ferences between Arabic and Hebrew in Iraqi Jewish fiction, asserting that both interference and deviation from the Modern Hebrew norm occur at times under the influence of Arabic. The paper concludes with the question of whether these deviations from the Modern He- brew norm foreground literary texts by Iraqi Jewish authors.

In the late 1950s, as part of a general mass immigration from Arab countries, many Iraqi Jews left or had to leave Iraq for Israel. In their encounter with a new society where Hebrew is the national language, most Iraqi Jewish authors found it impossible to continue writing in Arabic and had to face the literary challenge of switching to another tongue in order to be read.

Clashes between origins and new cultures are likely to occur when geographical contexts change. In this regard, and unlike the typical emigration context when people move from east to west, moving from east to east exemplifies the experience of two Jewish authors, Shimon Ballas (b. Baghdad, 1930) and Eli Amir (b. Baghdad, 1937) alike. It is this complex situation that provides the backdrop to this study.

Shimon Ballas and Eli Amir employ Arabic place names associated with Baghdad and/or Iraq in different ways in their Hebrew texts. This paper investigates the style of using Arabic place names in four Hebrew novels written by the two authors. The study argues that the place names brought by immigrant authors from their country of origin are not just names, but rather serve as codes and tools to transfer history, culture and traditions through a very minimal use of the mother tongue within literary texts, creating a sort of ‘bilingual’ final product.

تقوم رواية «الخروج في خمسة أيام» على استدراج ما هو غير مألوف إلى النص، ويتجلى هذا المقصد الحكائي بانفتاح المشهد السردي على حدث فجائي لا ينتمي إلى عالم المصادفات ولا إلى الواقع «أنتم تسيرون خارج القضبان.. العربة خرجتْ عن القضبان وأنتم تسيرون في الاتجاه الخاطئ!»... هكذا بدأ بائع الجرائد «الشخصية المحورية في النص» يصيح بأعلى صوته عندما رأى عربة قطار تخرج عن القضبان.. تخرج لتسير في الطرقات ثم تحلّق فوق الميدان الكبير على ارتفاع شاهق في السماء.

ومن هذا الاستهلال الحكائي تنفتح الرواية على العالم الداخلي لركاب العربة الخمسة؛ الطبيب والسيدة الأربعينية والمجرم والمضيفة والشاب فارع القامة، ولكل راكب حكايته التي دفعته في ذلك اليوم إلى أن يستقل القطار هرباً من واقعٍ يعيشه، يقابل هؤلاء في النص شخصيات سكان الميدان الكبير من ذوي الياقات الزرقاء.

يقول الراوي: «كم هو غريب أمر الموت؟ لماذا يظنّ كثير من الناس أن رحلة ما بعد الموت تبدأ برؤية ضوء أبيض كثيف يغشى البصر؟ لماذا لا تكون بداية الرحلة، رحلة ما بعد الموت، داخل عربة قطار تمرّدت على قضبان الحياة؟

عشرون عامًا يبحث عن الدفء.. يتبع طائر اللَقْلَق في رحلته الموسمية إلى الجنوب.. يحمل الكاميرا وسؤالًا في قلبه.. يقول: " لماذا لا تعاملني الشمس هنا بمساواة كما تعامل الطيرَ المهاجر؟ لقد اتّبعتُه إلى الجنوب.. عبرتُ البحر.. طوّفتُ بعرض النيل في أسوان.. أغمضتُ عيني لأنعم بالسكينة.. وما زالت الشمس لا تعاملني مثل طائر مهاجر بسيط!".

تحكي الرواية عن رحلة المصوّر الفوتوغرافي ألماني الأصل أحمد نوراني كراوْزِن إلى الجنوب المصري في تسعينات القرن الماضي.. وكيف غيّرت رحلاته الجنوبية من نظرته للحياة.. وتقارن الرواية على طول الخط بينه وبين طائر اللقلق في رحلاته الدائمة إلى الجنوب بحثًا عن الدفئة. وتصوّر الرواية حالة تشظي الذات بين عالمين مختلفين "شمال/ جنوب" وتحولها إلى هوية إشكالية.

زمن الرواية عشرة أيام مدّة معرض الصور الذي نظّمه بطلُ الرواية بساقية الصاوي في أبريل عام 2008.
رُصّت الصورُ في أربع صالات رئيسيّة في المعرض، وكذلك قُسّمتْ فصولُ الرواية.. يسردُ البطلُ حكايات تحتويها الصور عن رحلته إلى الجنوب.. ويرجع بالذاكرة إلى عشرين عامًا زمن الرحلة.. إلى القاهرة.. أسوان.. الوادي الجديد.. إسطنبول.. المجر.. بريطانيا.. فرنسا.. ألمانيا.. الدنمارك.. إيطاليا.. وغيرها من الأماكن التي سجّلها الراوي بقلبه قبل عدسته.. وهكذا تتشابك الصور والأحداث والشخصيات الفرعية لتخلق ألبوم صورٍ روائيًا أو رواية تصويرية مكتملة

Explores the phenomenon of writing literature in the non-mother tongue

    Presents a new stylistic framework for analysing exophonic texts
    Introduces a linguistic and stylistic study of exophonic writings beyond the European context to include Semitic languages
    Explores how and why Arabic was incorporated in modern Hebrew texts
    Examines the use of Arabic in nine Hebrew novels from the 1960s to the present
    Analyses the works of authors Sami Michael, Shimon Ballas and Eli Amir

In the late 1950s, Iraqi Jews were either forced or chose to leave Iraq for Israel. Finding it impossible to continue writing in Arabic in Israel, many Iraqi Jewish novelists faced the literary challenge of switching to Hebrew. Focusing on the literary works of the writers Shimon Ballas, Sami Michael and Eli Amir, this book examines their use of their native Iraqi Arabic in their Hebrew works. It examines the influence of Arabic language and culture and explores questions of language, place and belonging from the perspective of sociolinguistics and multilingualism.

In addition Ahmed applies stylistics as a framework to investigate the range of linguistic phenomena that can be found in these exophonic texts, such as code-switching, borrowing, language and translation strategies. This new stylistic framework for analysing exophonic texts offers a future model for the study of other languages.

The social and political implications of this dilemma, as it finds expression in creative writing, are also manifold. In an age of mass migration and population displacement, the conflicted loyalties explored in this book through the prism of Arabic and Hebrew are relevant in a range of linguistic contexts.

رواية ليكورنا

خطابات لم تصل إلى المرسل إليهم منذ مائتين وخمسين عامًا. حكايتان متشابهتان يفصل بينهما قرنان ونصف من الزمان؛ قصّة الراهب أنطوان خير، الذي ترك حياة الرهبنة؛ تتداخل مع قصّة سامي، الصوفي الذي ترك طريقة جدّه المُثلى. كان المنفى من نصيبهما. البحثُ عن الذات، المرأةُ، لقاءُ الغريب، تعلّمُ لغة جديدة؛ جميعُها قواسم مشتركة جمعتْ بين القصّتين. يحكي أنطوان خير قصّته مع المنفى مذ هَرَبَ من لبنان على سفينة للبضائع عام 1744م وحتّى وقت كتابة مذكراته في كانون الثاني عام 1759م في لِيكُورْنَا بإيطاليا. في أرشيف جامعة نيويورك، وتحديدًا في يناير 2010م، يعثر سامي على مذكّرات أنطوان خير بالصدفة. تتنقّل فصول الرواية بين قصّة سامي وقصّة أنطوان خير. تتشابه الحكايتان وتتماثل التساؤلات بخصوص المنفى والاغتراب والبحث عن الذات رغم تباعد الأزمنة واختلاف الأماكن.

من أجواء الرواية:
"لا أعلم كيف أخذتني الأمواج وحملتني وطرحتني خارجها إلى يابسة لم تطأها قدماي من قبل. التصقتْ رمالُ الشاطئ بوجنتي الملامسة للأرض. كنت أقرب إلى البرزخ من الاستفاقة، وإلى الغيبوبة من الصحوة. أهلوس بأسماء غريبة، وأصرخ بصوت غير مسموع. تلوح أمام ناظري المشوّش بفعل الشمس المحرقة صورةُ جرذٍ كبير يقترب منّي، يريد أن يساعدني. يأمرني أن أتشبّث بشاربه الذي بدا لي كمرساة كبيرة تتدلّى من السفينة التي كانت تطاردني بالأمس، وأنا في حيرة من أمري ولا أدري، هل أتعلّق بشاربه؟ أم أتفلّتُ منه؟
في أحضان رمال الغياب لا ينبغي أن يثق المرء بأي كائن، حتّى وإنْ كان جرذًا صغيرًا يَهْدِي إلى الطعام، ويصدر صريرًا فينبّه به غافلًا على ظهر سفينة في وَحْشَة البحر."

عن الكتاب:
يتناول هذا الكتاب ثلاثيّة روائيّة للكاتب "شمعون بلاص"، وهو روائي يهودي عراقي، هاجر إلى إسرائيل عام 1951م، ومرّ بتجربة الاستيعاب في مخيمات المهاجرين الجدد. كتب "بلاص" في ثلاثية "تل أبيب شرق-2003م" عن مجموعة من اليهود العراقيين، الذين هاجروا إلى إسرائيل عام 1951م، ثم خاضوا تجربة الاستيعاب القاسية في مخيّمٍ للمهاجرين الجدد، وانتقلوا بعد ذلك للعيش في حي "هَــتِــكـْـــفــا" (الأمل)، ثم أخيراً استقرّ بعضهم في مدينة "تل أبيب". تناقش أحداث الثلاثية الكثير من القضايا الاجتماعية والاقتصادية لكلٍّ من الآباء والأبناء من اليهود العراقيّين، فضلاً عن إشكاليّة الهويّة الشرقيّة بينهما، وتمتدّ أحداثها على مدار أربعة وأربعين عاماً.
يسهم هذا الكتاب في معرفة طبيعة العلاقة بين الطوائف اليهوديّة المختلفة داخل إسرائيل بشكل عام، ويلقى الضوء على أهم الاختلافات بين الجيلين الأول والثاني من اليهود العراقيين بشكل خاص. كما تنبع أهمية الكتاب من الحاجة لمعرفة المزيد عن موقف الجيل الثاني من اليهود العراقيين ـــ وعموم اليهود الشرقيين ـــ من الهويّة الشرقيّة، ومن المجتمع الإسرائيلي. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، تتناول الدراسة مدى إمكانيّة تحقيق التوافق الاجتماعي بين الطوائف المختلفة في إسرائيل، من خلال تجربة اليهود الشرقيّين عامّة، والعراقيّين خاصة. ويقارن الكتاب، بشكل رئيسي، بين الواقع التاريخي المعيش لحياة جيلين من اليهود العراقيين بعد الهجرة إلى إسرائيل من ناحية، وبين رؤية الكاتب شمعون بلاص الأدبية لهم في عمله الأدبي "تل أبيب شرق" من ناحية أخرى.