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In Iraq, like elsewhere in the region, cinemagoing became a popular form of leisure in the 1920s and 1930s. The emergence of permanent indoor and outdoor cinemas during this period gave rise to new consumption practices, ways of inhabiting the city, opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs, and the creation of a leisure and entertainment economy that was both modern, international, and Iraqi. In the early 1930s, three Jewish brothers, Ezra, Meʾir, and Hayyawi Sawdaʾi, began transforming their family's wealth from one based in regional trading to a modern cinema business. During the period of British colonial rule, Iraq was forcefully integrated into a global, Western dominated market economy and the brothers tried their hands at several import and local businesses before eventually finding their niche in entertainment. They rented movie theaters, built cinemas, established themselves as prime importers of foreign movies, and left a deep imprint on the Iraqi film industry.

Review of: Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia, Zainab Saleh (2020)
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 280 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-50361-411-6, p/bk, $25.00

AbstractThis article uses a queer lens to examine two short stories by the Iraqi communist, teacher, and prose writer Dhu al-Nun Ayyub (1908–88), "The Eagles' Anthem" and "How I Found a Guy," published in his collection Sadiqi (1938). Scholars have avoided analysis of the homoerotic and heterotopic aspects of Ayyub's writings, even if they mention his depictions of physical attraction between men. Rather than read these fictional texts as sociological studies of sexual sensibilities, the article assumes that they tapped into and reflected psychological and social dynamics in interwar Baghdad. The Ayyub stories, which render homoerotic masculine sexualities as commonplace and a positive aspect of city spaces, are thus distinguished from most Iraqi writings during this period. The stories stage homoeroticism and love between men as democratic critique and affirmation of heterogeneity and vitality in a nationalist, militarist, and heteronormalizing setting that increasingly associated homosexuality with moral dissolution and backwardness.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Palestine in the world -- Part 1 Travelling Revolutionaries -- 1 'Fight for everybody, everywhere'? Paul Robeson, Palestine and selective solidarity (Gabriel Polley) -- 2 American activists' solidarity trips and interactions with Palestinians (Michael R. Fischbach) -- 3 An archive of revolution retained in a filmmaker's memory: Masao Adachi and the Palestinian revolution (Dima Saqfalhait -- Part 2 Connected Mobilizations -- 4 The other solidarity: Matzpen, the Mizrahi question and Palestine (Orit Bashkin) -- 5 One struggle, many fronts: The National Union of Kuwaiti Students and Palestine (Kanwal Hameed) -- 6 Palestine as rallying cry: The movement for migrant rights and the Question of Palestine in postcolonial France (Olivia C. -- Part 3 Transnational Cultural Production -- 7 Presence and visibility in Cuban anticolonial solidarity: Palestine in OSPAAAL's photography and poster art (Fernando Cam -- 8 Palestinian voices in the Tricontinental: Revolutionary journalism and the literary history of Palestine solidarity (Ann -- 9 Black Panther Party: 'Intercommunalism' and global Palestine (Elizabeth Bishop) -- Index.

Abstract
This article traces the emergence of juvenile delinquency as a legal and medical category in Hashemite Iraq (1921–58). We argue that as children and youth became increasingly visible through actions and inactions that highlighted the weaknesses of political and social structures, state institutions adopted international frameworks and vernaculars concerning the participation of youth in labor. Medicine played a key role in defining the "juvenile" and determining young people's physical abilities and, by extension, their productive potential. Focusing on children and youth who were for the most part unaffiliated with organized political groups, the article demonstrates that Iraq's correctional facilities, including reformatories, were integral to the Hashemite state's attempt at crafting and regulating citizens. Juvenile delinquency was also a uniquely gendered and classed category. Gender in particular became a distinguishing marker that in effect deprived young women and girls of the juvenile status that allowed mostly lower-class young men and boys to access reformatories rather than adult prisons. While defiant young men and boys who were considered as potentially redeemable gained access to judicial and social institutions that aimed to rehabilitate the juvenile delinquent, the crimes of young women and girls were often sexualized and assessed according to interpretations of maturity determined by the onset of puberty rather than legal age.