Iraqi writer Malīḥa Isḥayyiq (Sehayek) was born in Baghdad 1925 and educated in state schools. She worked as a nurse in the Mīr Ilyās Jewish hospital and joined the Iraqi Communist Party. Between 1951 and 1954 she published various items on literary themes in the journal al-Dunyā (The World) in Damascus; among her publications were open letters to prominent writers at the time, such as the Egyptian poet and scholar Zakī Mubārak (1892–1952) and the Iraqi poet ʿAbd al-Qādir Rashīd al-Nāṣirī (1920–1965). She also wrote one letter to the great …