This is a piece I wrote for - and broadcast on - BBC radio's 'From Our Own Correspondent': you can see all my FOOC  pieces here. AW

TOYAH'S GRAVE - April 2017

In the days of the British and Ottoman empires, Baghdadi Jews were one of the great trading
communities across Asia. In the southern Indian port city of Chennai, Madras as it once was, Andrew
Whitehead came across a last remnant of the Jewish presence there – and stumbled on a tragic love
story:

I was told the place would be difficult to find – tucked away on a busy market street not far from
Marina beach, with stalls obscuring the entrance. But I spotted the star of David standing proud; the
gates had recently been painted sky blue; and over the entrance, the words ‘Beit Ha Haim’, Hebrew
for ‘the house of life’ – in other words, a Jewish cemetery.

The gates were padlocked. One of the market women gestured to me to wait – she got out her
phone – another woman found me a plastic chair and assured me ‘someone coming’. Half-an-hour
later, Kumari appeared – a bustling, well set woman in a pink sari. She had a bunch of keys, and
within a couple of minutes I was ushered into a tiny graveyard, little bigger than a badminton court.
It was a touch forlorn looking, but clearly well-kept. And in case I hadn’t cottoned on who was
responsible for the upkeep, Kumari wielded her broom energetically to clear leaves from the
gravestones.

The synagogue in what was Madras was demolished decades ago. The city now has no Jewish
community – though some say there are still a few individuals. The cemetery is just about all that’s
left. And that’s moved, perhaps twice, down the years – only a handful of the older graves have
survived. The most substantial – that of Abraham Salomons, a coral merchant, who died in 1745.
There’s a handful of twentieth century graves. One caught my eye – a woman who died in 1943 in
her early twenties, Victoria M. Sofaer. What was the story behind that early death? Well, there’s a
family history website of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora. Victoria – I discovered - was known as
Toyah, and born in Baghdad. But curiously, the family clearly didn’t know about the grave – or
exactly when or where Toyah died.

Through that website, I made contact with Toyah’s niece – and indirectly with Toyah’s half-brother,
Abraham, now 94 and living in a nursing home in Toronto. He’s two years younger than her and her
the closest to her in the family. They were surprised to learn of Toyah’s grave, in turn they
unsettled me with the troubling story of Toyah’s life and death – barely known within the family, and
never rehearsed beyond its bounds.

Toyah’s father, Menashi, was the proprietor of the British General Supply Store in Baghdad in the
nineteen-twenties and thirties. They imported Swiss cheese, French brandy, American cigarettes,
Belgian chocolate – and had a grand shop on Rashid Street, Baghdad’s main street back then.
In 1940 or thereabouts, Toyah fell in love with an Armenian man from the family that ran the ladies’
wear shop on the other side of the street. Her family found out. They were determined to put a stop
to the romance. They tried to find a Jewish groom – she turned them all down. So they shipped
Toyah out – to India.

Abraham, Toyah’s half-brother, was then living in Bombay to avoid service in the Iraqi army. Late in
1942, his parents turned up there with Toyah in tow. ‘She was in complete shock, silent – she never
said a word to me’, he recalls. ‘It saddened me greatly.’

After a while Toyah and her parents moved on – he wasn’t told where. Then he heard that Toyah
had died. And their parents returned to Baghdad. They didn’t talk about what happened. It was only
later that Abraham found out from his grandmother about Toyah’s transgressive romance. ‘I believe
my sister died from a broken heart’, he says.

I asked if there were any likenesses of Toyah. I was sent a family portrait photo – of three boys …
Toyah would have been seven at the time … why wasn’t she included? She had been! When she
died, her parents retouched the photo to remove her image. Done – says Toyah’s niece – so that
there was no reminder of the scandal and the tragedy.

Another photo has emerged – it may, just may, include Toyah. A serious looking young girl with
tousled hair. No one’s quite sure if it’s her – and more than seventy years after her death, I guess
we’ll never know.

Toyah’s brother is comforted to know she has a proper grave, and to be able to talk within the family
about the fate his sister suffered. It’s offered him some closure and given his sister public
acknowledgement of the wrong done to her. His daughter dropped me a line. ‘Bringing back
memories of Toyah’, she said, ‘is incredibly moving for us.’
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It is for me too.

[POSTSCRIPT: the interest aroused by this piece resulted in a confirmed likeness of Toyah being located - you can find it here]
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