When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family's Forgotten History

by Massoud Hayoun

Overview

The stunning debut of a brilliant nonfiction writer whose vivid account of his grandparents’ lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles reclaims his family’s Jewish Arab identity

Winner of the 2020 Arab American Book Award for nonfiction and one of NPR’s best books of 2019, When We Were Arabs is a gorgeous family memoir and “a powerful exploration of Arab Jewish identity” (The New Arab) that brings the world of Jewish Arab writer and artist Massoud Hayoun’s parents and grandparents alive, vividly shattering our contemporary understanding of what makes an Arab and what makes a Jew.

There was a time when being an “Arab” didn’t mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, and Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism. That was before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and left unemployed on the margins of society.

In this moving book, Oscar’s son, Massoud, raised in Los Angeles, finds his own voice by telling his family’s story. Named one of the most inspiring Arab writers of 2020, Hayoun seeks to reclaim a worldly, nuanced Arab identity as part of the larger project to recall a time before ethnic identity was mangled for political ends. “An intriguing read for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of complex identities and mixed cultural heritage” (Jewish News), When We Were Arabs is also a journey deep into a lost age of sophisticated innocence in the Arab world, an age that is now nearly lost.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620979525
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	04/22/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

Massoud Hayoun is a journalist based in Los Angeles, most recently freelancing for Al Jazeera English and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown online while writing a weekly column on foreign affairs for Pacific Standard. He previously worked as a reporter for Al Jazeera America, The Atlantic, Agence France-Presse, and the South China Morning Post and has been published widely. He speaks and works in five languages and won a 2015 EPPY Award. He lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Origins 17

2 The Nation 53

3 La Rupture / The Rupture 95

4 Exile 155

5 Darkness 191

6 Memory 225

Acknowledgments 259

Notes 263

Editorial Reviews

Praise for When We Were Arabs:
"With a clear point of view, Hayoun weaves in his family history with the politics that shaped their lives. When We Were Arabs is a nostalgic celebration of a rich, diverse heritage."
—Martha Anne Toll, NPR Books

"When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family's Forgotten History by Massoud Hayoun is a memoir and an intimate narrative of two Jewish Arab families woven together by time and circumstance as they emigrate from Morocco and Tunisia to Egypt‚ Palestine‚ France‚ and the United States‚ looking for a place to call home."
—Los Angeles Review of Books

"An intriguing read for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of complex identities and mixed cultural heritage."
—Jewish News

"This decolonial memoir is a powerful tribute to heritage; it gives an intimate insight into what it means to be a Jewish Arab, an identity which is today wrongfully deemed an oxymoron."
—Middle East Eye

"Hayoun's masterful use of memoir not only gives us a fascinating look at the fate of the Arab world's Jewish community, but also provides a powerful and impassioned argument for the reemergence of an emancipatory Arab nationalism."
—Middle East Research and Information Project

"When We Were Arabs, Hayoun's successful project of subversion through remembrance, is a compelling and highly recommended read."
—Inside Arabia

"Massoud Hayoun's intimate memoir weaves family history with politics in a powerful exploration of Arab Jewish identity."
—The New Arab

“A beautiful act of resistance, of defiance against erasure, of dreams of ancestors and their desire to build, create, and enact a place for themselves and their descendants in the world. It is truly a thing of beauty and reverence.”
—Mira Assaf Kafantaris, The Millions

"In this passionate blend of family history, memoir, and rumination on identity, journalist Hayoun utilizes family lore, journals, and photographs to tell his grandparents' story and recreate a lost multicultural era in the Arab world. . . . Deeply personal, moving reminiscences from his ancestors will make even those with no knowledge of the subject nostalgic for a bygone age. . . . Readers will relish this revealing glimpse of that now-obscured world."
—Publishers Weekly

"Hayoun's debut memoir offers a new perspective on world affairs and will be appreciated by readers interested in family histories told through personal narratives."
—Library Journal

"Hayoun pieces together a remarkable tale of survival and success, and it is a story worth remembering. A moving and intriguing family history."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A masterpiece that reads with the same themes of complexity and romance, pain and longing, that are indigenous to the land of his grandparents, and the entwined Arab and Jewish identity that flourishes on every page of this book."
—Khaled Beydoun, law professor and author of American Islamophobia

"When We Were Arabs wonderfully braids cultural history, memoir, poetics, and politics into a completely unexpected but necessary artistic intervention destined to obliterate our brittle understandings of what is Jewish, Arab, and radically loving. The book is as good as it is important."
—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"When We Were Arabs is not only a deeply researched account of one family's North African history, but one of the best books available on the postcolonial foundations of contemporary Arab American identity. It is nothing short of a triumph."
—Moustafa Bayoumi, author of This Muslim American Life and How Does It Feel to Be a Problem

"A beautifully written, compelling argument for compassion, solidarity, and love, in a time where they are so woefully scarce."
—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

"A stunning piece of storytelling, a necessary work of history, and in its portraiture of a lost world, its corniches populated with the great singers and film stars of old, it is a work of poetry."
—Safia Elhillo, author of The January Children

"A rare, multifaceted book that dares tell the story of the Arab Jew as it was without propaganda or prejudice and which chronicles how the nuance that had been there in Jewish Arab political identities disappeared under the onslaught of Zionism."
—Raja Shehadeh, author of Palestinian Walks and Where the Line Is Drawn

From the Publisher

2019-02-13

Remembering one Jewish Arab family's past.

Los Angeles-based journalist Hayoun attempts to reclaim his family history and identity through this retelling of his grandparents' saga. The author, who was mainly raised by his maternal grandparents, Daida and Oscar, identifies as both an Arab and a Jew, two descriptors he believes that many may feel are incompatible. He begins by arguing that, in fact, there is a long-standing tradition of Jewish Arabs, who lived and worked alongside their Muslim neighbors peacefully until colonialism disrupted Arab society and fractured it into various people groups. In addition to being a family story, the book is also an anti-colonial screed. Hayoun blames colonialism—he includes Zionism—for many of the ills that have beset the Arab people, and he sees the fight against colonialism as far from over. "Memory," he writes, "can subvert colonial authority, it can frighten the colonizers because it allows us to reconfigure this miserable world we live in now, depose the white supremacist…and approach the European sector with open eyes, ready to disassemble empire." The author's disdain for the European world is palpable, and his allegiance is clearly with the Arab world. He describes his family's condition as "our exile in Los Angeles," and he notes that his religion is secondary to his ethnic identity: "I am Arab first and last. Judaism is an adjective that modifies my Arabness." The core of the author's work, however, consists of his grandparents' stories of growing up in Tunisia and Egypt, surviving Nazi bombing and occupation, dealing with anti-Semitism during the founding of modern Israel, leaving North Africa, meeting in France, and finding their way, in the end, to America. Both grandparents left behind written autobiographical accounts, and from these, and other conversations, Hayoun pieces together a remarkable tale of survival and success, and it is a story worth remembering.

A moving and intriguing family history only slightly marred by the author's anger.

Kirkus Reviews