Shalom Darwish

Writer, poet, and lawyer Shalom Darwish was born in Ali al-Gharba, al-Amarra, Iraq. He was a member of Iraqi parliament in the 1940s but resigned to protest electoral corruption. Accused of being a Zionist, Darwish fled in 1950 to Iran and from there to Israel, where he continued to practice law. He wrote on local Arab legal issues, and he also wrote short stories, poetry, plays, and literary and political commentary, switching to Hebrew in the 1980s to expand his readership. Darwish’s Jewish and Muslim critics recognized him as one of the most important early Iraqi writers.