‘My Iraqi motherland rejected me because I was Jewish. It’s left a scar’

“The fact that my motherland rejected me because I was Jewish has left a scar,” says food writer Linda Dangoor. “I just couldn't fathom why.”

Uprooted from her birthplace of Baghdad in Iraq aged ten, after a military coup overturned the monarchy, Dangoor and her family lived for two years in Beirut before emigrating to London. When the Iraqi government threatened to withdraw their citizenship and seize their property if they were not to return, she became exiled with her family.

The Dangoors enjoying new Lebanese flavours after their exodus from Baghdad[Missing Credit]

After two years in Beirut, they moved to London to be near other family members who had settled there. Dangoor attended school here, and then, at her mother’s suggestion, studied art at the Central School, before working as a designer in the capital. A romance took her to Paris in 1979 where she stayed until returning to London in 1994.

It is this journey which has led Dangoor to write a memoir blended with a cookbook From the Tigris to the Thames, encompassing the recipes of her motherland, London, Paris and from Ibiza, where her parents took her for a holiday.

While some people were happy to leave Iraq, that was not the case for Dangoor. And ever since, she has written down her feelings of being “rootless”, trying so hard in each country to be part of it. “But it just didn't work,” she sighs.

“My preoccupation with leaving home and trying to find a place I could call home has been with me for so many years,” she says. “Even going to France and feeling French and feeling part of that country and culture, I still felt rootless. It's been rumbling away in my mind.”

When they first came to England in the Swinging 60s, they loved everything new: the TV adverts, the food, the sweets – even the rain, which initially had felt novel. But their enthusiasm started to wane. “After a while, it really did feel that I was in exile.”

She would have been a writer, because she so loved the Arabic language, but living in the UK they were encouraged by their parents to speak English and let their mother tongue go. Gradually it faded from their daily lives.

“That was my first loss,” she says. “When you lose your home and your language, that’s quite a lot of loss.” But they kept their roots alive through their daily cooking.

Food keeps Dangoor's memories alive[Missing Credit]

“When you cook, it's like an act of resistance, because you're cooking dishes that remind you of home. Yet it's subconscious. Cooking is the only last thing that lasts, because you cook every day. It is an act of preserving, and because you do it every day, it continues, and it also evolves.” Today, she bakes the many dishes that were traditionally deep-fried, in a bid to be healthier.

Living in different countries she thinks “enriched” her repertoire. And so, From the Tigris… interweaves recipes from her four dwelling places with personal stories and musings on the meaning of home and belonging. Initially she wasn't going to write a cookbook, having already written Flavours of Babylon – a collection of her family's Iraqi and Jewish dishes. She was going to write a memoir.

“I was going to write about the feeling of being without a homeland,” she says. “We call it a motherland for good reason, because a country is a bit like a mother that supposedly looks after its citizens, a bit like a parent with children, and if that country rejects you, then you're sort of orphaned.”

 The first half of the book includes recipes from countries that hug the Mediterranean basin, where the Arab conquests and the Jewish diaspora left their culinary mark, including sweet and sour lamb and quince stew, and chicken in a pomegranate and walnut sauce. In the second part, she shares the dishes she cooks for her family and friends. In the UK section we find a range of recipes including fish fried in batter.

She remembers her father, who had attended LSE in the 1930s, taking the family on frequent outings to the famous Sea Shell fish and chip restaurant of Lisson Grove. “We loved it so much, especially the chips,” she says, beaming.

The book also features ingredients which to this day conjure up memories of her beloved motherland, such as rosewater, which she uses only in desserts and which reminds her of her grandmother, who used to perfume herself with it. “It's like home. It’s a very familiar flavour that makes me feel rooted.” Dried lime is another ingredient featured in the book that comes from her past.

Za'atar topped manakeesh were a Lebanese treat Photo: Linda Dangoor[Missing Credit]

“It is so different from lime itself, and if you cook it with stews it gives a very subtle sour taste,” she says.

Olive oil also holds memories of discovering it during her family’s two-year stay in Lebanon, where her “tastebuds exploded”. “That memory was just wonderful. The food was wonderful.”

Other notable ingredients include mint, and pomegranate molasses, as she uses plenty of sweet and sour flavours in her cooking, originating from the Persian cuisine of old, which Iraqi Jews have continued.

[Missing Credit]

Also intriguing is a dip using carrot tops, which she puts down to her creative streak.

“[Cooking] is a bit like painting,” she says. “I think, ‘you've got all these colours, let’s see if that works.’ It’s about having no fear, and playfulness.”

The book includes fascinating detail of her Jewish upbringing in Baghdad, where during festivals they all had to wear white, which she recalls as a beautiful sight. With the rise of antisemitism, Dangoor has become still more interested in Judaism and philosophy.

“I think I’m owning being Jewish even more,” she says. “When I do food demonstrations, I’d say, ‘I'm an Iraqi and I'm also Jewish’ – I would use it as a vehicle to talk about our presence there and, in a way, although it wasn't the reason for writing Flavours of Babylon, when I finished it, it marked the fact that we there.”

She hopes those reading her new book will consider what it means to be an immigrant, and to remember the Jews from Iraq.

“Losing your home is an awful thing,” she says. “Jews were expelled from their countries of birth, just because they are Jewish. I'd like that to be understood by some people.”

But she also was able to learn from the process of writing it; it helped her to clarify her feelings on her own identity and journey.

“It made me understand we are all multi-layered,” she says. “You are born in a place, but you're not completely from there. You are also the environment around you. Am I Iraqi? That doesn't sound right, because I've lost the literary language. Am I English? No. Writing this book made me realise you cannot pin me down.”

From the Tigris to the Thames: Flavours of a Journey (Green Bean Books) is out now