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I had never asked my dad about fleeing Iraq. Talking to an ex-diplomat's granddaughter made me look at my own heritage

Sandy Rashty hears her father's escape, via Tehran, for the first time

November 27, 2019 18:48
The ransacked Israeli embassy in Tehran, 1979
5 min read

I have never properly asked my dad about his memories from Iraq. It’s a strange thing to have avoided, given I'm a journalist, but getting the answers would make what he went through too real.

And yet I was forced to confront the issue after Efrat Sopher, the granddaughter of Israel’s former ambassador to Iran, recalled her ancestor Meir Ezri’s role in helping Iraqi Jews flee persecution in the country.

I asked my father what he remembered of leaving the family home in Baghdad with his siblings and my widowed grandmother Julie Rashty, a journey that took them through the mountains of Kurdistan to Iran’s capital, Tehran.

Now living in London, he recalled it clearly: “We left on the day of my birthday, the day I turned 15 on July 23, 1971. Mama Julie spoke to me the night before we left and said: ‘Tomorrow, we are escaping, but you must not tell anyone’.