Since we were children we grew up on the stories of Khalil Casey, my mother Rivka's neighbor and her family from the Okhbar Ali neighborhood of Baghdad, who saved them from the Farhud riots. Khalil was an officer in the Iraqi army and as such, he knew ahead of time about the planned pogroms in Baghdad Jews on the eve of 1941. Many of him, who served in the Iraqi army and police, participated in the massacre, rape and looting of Jews and their property. Others, in my mother's words - "closed their eyes" and gave the crowds the brunt of their anger during the eight years since Nazi propaganda against Iraqi Jews began.

Just hours before the pogrom broke out, Khalil hurriedly reached my mother's family, telling them about what was about to happen, and informed them: "Tonight you were complaining to my parents." During the night, as the rioters entered the neighborhood and broke into the Jewish homes, my mother's family stayed in a shelter prepared by the Iraqi army officer at his parents' home.

In the midst of the pogrom, my grandmother was worried about the peace of her sisters and stepdaughter, who was already a mother of children and living in her own home. Even then, Khalil sensed help, gave her his Muslim mother's clothes, and took her to the dangerous streets to guard her as she passed between her family's homes.

This past year we found and framed the picture of Ezekiel, my mother's beloved brother. That same Khalil also tried to save, after discovering that Ezekiel was arrested on suspicion of activity in the Zionist underground. It was already in the late 1940s, shortly before Iraq sent its troops to join the Arab armies and fight against the newly established Jewish state.

Khalil exploited his ties and released Ezekiel from detention, but his long hours of torture under Baghdad's scorching sun overwhelmed him and the heat stroke he got entangled in meningitis, from which he died and was only 24 years old. As my mother hugs his picture, she remembers Khalil and asks herself what happened to him. Was he killed in one of the terrorist and coups that continued to occupy Iraq, or did he die as a good fit for him in a kiss of death and a good return.