Chopping Onions on My Heart

Samantha’s mother tongue is dying out. An urgent need to find out more becomes an expansive investigation into how to keep hold of her culture -- and when to let it go

The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction.

The realisation that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s ‘living in the days of the aubergines’ or ‘chopping onions on my heart’ opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories of displacement without passing on the trauma? Will her son ever love mango pickle?

In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl and the unexpected joys of fusion food. Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noah’s Ark to the calm of the British Museum, from the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages to the banks of the River Tigris. As Samantha considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves.

This is a life-affirming memoir about resilience and repair, and the healing power of dancing to our ancestors’ music, cooking up their recipes and sharing their stories.