Sweet Dates in Basra – Jessica Jiji

Shafiq is a Jewish boy whose brotherhood with his Muslim neighbour Omar proves that religion is no barrier to friendship. Kathmiya Mahmoud is a young Marsh Arab maiden of the age when her family should be arranging her marriage, but instead, they send her to work as a servant in the city of Basra.

In this lost Iraq of the 1940s, a time of rich traditions and converging worlds, Kathmiya meets Shafiq. But in a world where loss of honour is punishable by death, the closeness that grows between Kathmiya and Shafiq becomes dangerous as a doomed love takes root. When British warplanes begin bombing Iraq and the country’s long-simmering tensions explode, the power of an unbreakable boyhood bond and a transcendent love must overcome the deepening fractures of a collapsing society.