Naim Kattan grew up in a multicultural Baghdad as did Marina Benjamin’s grandmother. A violent pogrom shook their world in 1941 and eventually 130, 000 Jews were airlifted out of Iraq and scattered across the globe in the early fifties. The two authors discussed colonial Baghdad, the political forces that shape the country today and the fate of its Jewish diaspora.

Following a screening of Sephardi Voices, in which seven Jewish men and women from Iraq, Egypt, Iran and Morocco tell their stories of coexistence and persecution, emigration and new beginnings, Linda Dangoor evoked the flavours of Babylon she has captured in her cookbook and what they meant to her.