Memories of Eden is the memoir of Violette Shamash, born in a land of myths and wonders from the Tower of Babel to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Garden of Eden.

Violette paints a vivid portrait of the once-thriving Jewish community of Baghdad in the early 20th century. She describes a vanished world — a tapestry of traditions, stories and voices that history nearly erased.

Violette

Through her eyes we see barbers shaving customers in the street, cows being milked on doorsteps, water from the Tigris being delivered in goatskins, country girls carrying towers of yoghurt on their heads, life on the riverbank and the bustling markets, the impossibly narrow alleyways… and we can almost hear the cries of the street vendors selling kebabs, lemonade and bread. A bygone era.

“Extraordinary, unique and invaluable. An astonishing record” is how author and broadcaster William Shawcross describes the book. “Violette writes beautifully and her work is superbly readable.”

But all was not well in this Eden. After a benign British colonisation under a League of Nations mandate that was to last until 1932, disaster struck in 1941. A brutal massacre took place over two days of rioting and sounded the death-knell for the oldest community in the Diaspora.

Since first publication in English, Memories of Eden has been translated into Hebrew and Arabic and is now available in a newly updated Kindle edition with colour illustrations and rare family photographs.  

What was it like in Violette's early days?

Eden?  It's hard to imagine a world with no running water or electricity, scorching heat and the constant fear of cholera.  A warren of alleys no wider than a cart, where cows are being milked on doorsteps, street barbers are giving shaves, pulling teeth and lancing boils. Barefoot water-sellers are bent double under their heavy goatskins, and every drop of water has to be hauled up from the River Tigris.

Old Baghdad in 1912.  To us it sounds like hell. Yet Violette, born into an affluent family, adored its positive side: sleeping under the stars, hearing the call of the nightingale, smelling scents of gardenias and spices, riding to school on donkey-back. For her it was a kind of Eden.