Diglosas

سمير نقاش، نزوله وخيط الشيطان، منشورات الجمل، 2012

Iraqi Jews developed their own idiom of Arabic among themselves (as did Christians), and they used the majority dialect with varying levels of proficiency in their daily interactions outside those communities. The presence of one Muslim in a Jewish group was likely to dictate the use of the majority dialect. In Tenants and Cobwebs, Naqqash blurred this linguistic distinction in order to show intimacy and closeness between Jews and Muslims to the extent that a few Muslim and Jewish characters converse in each other's dialect. Aware of the frustration that some Iraqis as well as nonIraqi readers may feel because of the extensive use of the local dialects, Naqqash provided glosses on almost every page of the novel. 

---Sadok Masliyah, "Selections from Samir Naqqash, Tenants and Cobwebs (Nzulah u-Khait el-Shitan)", Edebiyat, 2003, 13:1, p. 49-67, 49.

Naqqash attempts to overcome the disadvantage of the reader who is not conversant in the Iraqi Jewish dialect by providing glosses to his texts. His glosses are found at the foot of nearly every page, translating words, phrases, and entire speeches into fusha. He offers occasional phonetic or grammatical explanations in these notes. The format is daunting to the casual reader, and even difficult to those more committed.

The gloss does not necessarily make the text accessible to the Iraqi, much less the non-Iraqi. Naqqash's fellow Iraqi-born writers have expressed their own difficulties in reading his work. Darwish has admitted never having succeeded, despite his efforts. Yizhak Bar-Moshe declares his colleague's work to be "unreadable" and "not enjoyable," due to the effort it demands. In an interview he described reading Naqqash's writing as a Sisyphian task, every book a dictionary.

---Nancy E. Berg, Exile from Exile: Israeli Writers from Iraq, SUNY Press, 1996, p. 57.

Acerca de Samir Naqqash (سمير نقاش,‎ 1938-2004), véase, por cierto, el artículo de José F. Durán Velasco, "Samīr Naqqāš y su novela Šlomo el Kurdo, yo y el tiempo", Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Iranología (SEI), 1, 2010, p. 61-86 (aunque ésta es, precisamente, una de sus obras en árabe normativo).