Table of Contents
Chapter One: Violet Rosen
Chapter Two: Farida Sasson
Chapter Three: Noa Rosen
Chapter Four: At Aunt Farida’s
Chapter Five: Farida
Chapter Six: Violet
Chapter Seven: Farida and Ruthie
Chapter Eight: The Bar Mitzvah
Chapter Nine: Noa
Chapter Ten: Violet
Chapter Eleven: Noa
Chapter Twelve: Violet
Chapter Thirteen: Farida
Chapter Fourteen: Violet
Chapter Fifteen: Noa
Chapter Sixteen: Violet
Chapter Seventeen: Noa
Chapter Eighteen: Farida
Chapter Nineteen: Violet
Chapter Twenty: Noa
Chapter Twenty-One: Violet
Chapter Twenty-Two: Farida
Chapter Twenty-Three: Violet
Chapter Twenty-Four: Noa
Chapter Twenty-Five: Violet
Chapter Twenty-Six: Farida
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Violet
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Noa
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Farida
Chapter Thirty: Violet
Chapter Thirty-One: Noa
Chapter Thirty-Two: Violet
Chapter Thirty-Three: Noa
Chapter Thirty-Four: Violet, Winter of 1951
Chapter Thirty-Five: Farida
Chapter Thirty-Six: Noa
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Violet
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Violet
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Noa
Chapter Forty: Farida
Chapter Forty-One: Violet
Chapter Forty-Two: Noa
Chapter Forty-Three: Dan
Chapter Forty-Four: Noa
Copyright © 2011 Revital Shiri-Horowitz
ISBN-13: 978-0-6154607-9-6
Translation: Shira Atik
Editing: Abe Brennan
Photography and cover design: Vered Mizrahi
Dedicated with love to the women in my family, and to women all over the world whose voices are silenced.
Chapter One: Violet Rosen
Monday, October 15, 1986
Baghdad 1940
“Violet! Violet Twaina!” Aba’s voice thundered. “Come here this instant!”
“My father’s calling me,” I said to my best friend, Naima. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.” I ran up the narrow stairway that led to my family's house. When I looked into Aba’s eyes, I knew I was in serious trouble. My heart froze.
“Violet Twaina!” My father stood fuming, rocking on his heels, hands buried deep inside his pockets. “Mrs. Chanukah called from school. She said you talked back to Mrs. Zbeida today.” The terrifying glare accompanying his words seemed a sure sign harsh punishment awaited me.
“What are you talking about? I didn't do anything,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back, desperate to wheedle out of the situation.
“Don't tell me stories, Violet,” my father said. “I know you're lying, and I know you talked back! Mrs. Chanukah doesn't call parents out of the blue and waste their precious time. She said Mrs. Zbeida asked you to stop talking, and you told her you hadn't been talking, that maybe it was time for her to get her hearing checked once and for all, because this wasn't the first time she’d blamed you for something you hadn't done.”
“That's not true. That's not how it happened! She's always accusing me of things I didn’t do. I hate that teacher,” I said. “She picks on me for no reason. She’s very rude to me. She told me to shut up, but I wasn’t even talking. And,” I continued, unable to stop myself, “I said it very politely. All I said is that she must have misheard, because it wasn't me. If you want, you can ask Naima,” I said, dragging my poor friend into my scheme.
“Go tell Naima to come upstairs right away.” My father’s voice was angry; I could tell he didn’t believe me. I went down and called Naima, trying to think of how I could buy her cooperation.
“Naima,” I said. “My father wants to ask you something, and you really have to help me. If you do what I tell you, I'll give you Fahima as a present.” Fahima was my most beautiful doll. She had long flowing hair I loved to comb and several outfits my mother had sewn especially for her.
“Fahima?” Naima asked. “If I do what you say, you’ll really give me Fahima?”
“Yes, I swear, I'll give her to you.” I raised my hands to my heart and looked right into her eyes. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. “That vicious teacher Mrs. Zbeida, she’s always getting me into trouble. You have to tell my father I didn't say a thing in school today. Tell him everything I told him is true.”
“Wai li,” said Naima, grinning. “The way you spoke to her! The whole class was rolling on the floor.”
“Ya’allah,” I said. “I promise I'll give you Fahima, alright? What’s the big deal?”
“Okay, fine, I’ll do it,” she said. “But what if your father finds out we’re lying?”
She had reason to be worried, but my style was to jump into icy water first, then think about it later. “I don’t know. Let’s not think about it. Come on, he’s waiting for us.”
We went upstairs. Aba sat in the living room, in a big red armchair covered in an embroidered fabric flecked with real gold. When we walked into the room, he turned a menacing gaze on us. Normally my father would have asked after Naima’s family, but he got straight to the point.
“I understand something happened in school today,” he said.
Naima stared at the floor. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, Mr. Twaina. A lot of things happened in school today. Which one do you mean?”
“I understand that Mrs. Zbeida got angry at Violet during class. Can you tell me what happened?”
Naima tried to fulfill her part of the deal. In a voice not much louder than a whisper, she said, “Mrs. Zbeida didn’t get angry at Violet at all.”
I hadn’t thought of this. My father had outsmarted me; instead of offering my story for her verification, he had allowed Naima to make up her own version.
“That’s not what Mrs. Chanukah told me!” he hissed.
“Mr. Twaina,” Naima said, “Violet is such a good student, so quiet and serious. Nobody could ever complain about her. She sits so nicely in class. She pays attention, she doesn’t talk, and she always does her homework. It doesn’t seem possible she did anything wrong. Mrs. Chanukah must have gotten her mixed up with this other girl who’s always bothering her and called you instead of the other parents.”
Even I could tell she had gone too far. And Aba—who knew me very well, who knew I could never be the angelic little girl Naima described—couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Realizing Naima would be of no help, he called for his driver and sent her home. I knew exactly what would happen next. This is it, I thought. I’m doomed. A week under “house arrest.” No going out to see people, nobody coming to see me. As for the beating, I wasn’t afraid. Whenever my father hit me, I imagined my nephew Eddie, my sister Farida, and I jumping into the river, and all I was feeling was the touch of water on my skin.
My father didn’t yell. He glared at me and said, “I know you, and I know that you talked back to your teacher. Not only did you lie to me, but you made Naima lie to me as well. You are a bad girl. You have no respect for anyone, and you don’t care about anything. The only one you care about is yourself. Well, I’ll show you exactly what you are. Go to my closet and bring me my thickest belt. Go on. I’ll wait for you right here. If you try to trick me by bringing a different belt, I’ll beat you with both of them.”
I went to my parents’ room. Nothing could help me now. The other children of the family saw me crying, but they didn’t say a word;
they were already used to these scenes. I was the only girl in my family consistently beaten, and everyone knew why. I was the rebellious child. I dodged responsibilities, and I pushed limits. I wasn’t afraid of anything, and I did whatever I wanted. I lied constantly, with no remorse. I ran away to the river with Eddie, I talked back to the teachers, I skipped classes, and I stole money from mother’s drawer for candy. In other words, I knew how to live, and I didn’t let any person, or any consequence, dampen my adventurous spirit.
My father beat me that day—he beat me whenever I did anything stupid—but his anger drove him beyond a normal thrashing, and my mother was forced to intercede. She pleaded with him to stop, and finally he did. My back hurt, my bottom hurt, and I couldn’t move. And of course he told me that until Eddie’s Bar Mitzvah, which was ten days away, I could only leave the house for school, and I had to come straight home. I couldn’t play outside, and I couldn’t see my friends. Aba’s driver would take me to school in the morning and bring me home in the afternoon. None of this broke my spirit, though, because I knew a little patience was all I needed; then I could go back to doing as I pleased. I never gave Fahima to Naima. I told her she hadn’t lived up to her end of the bargain and that she’d gotten me into even more trouble. Back then, that was how I behaved.
Chapter Two: Farida Sasson
Farida felt uneasy about doing her usual Sunday errands. She had both a daily routine and a weekly routine, and she tried to stick to them; she knew if she fell behind, the pressure would be too much for her. Sunday was supposed to be haircut day. After spending all day Friday cooking, by the next morning she usually looked haggard, and her fine hair was imbued with kitchen smells. On that particular Sunday morning, however, she was reluctant to leave the house for her weekly salon visit. The heat was oppressive, and newscasters talked of terrorist attacks. In order to reach her appointment, she would have to wait for the 15 Bus which came only once an hour take the bus to the center of town, and then walk to Shimon’s Salon, situated next door to Chaim the Moroccan’s butcher, right below the new Chinese restaurant. Because of all the talk about bombs, Farida didn’t want to take the bus, and so after much deliberation she decided to stay home and cook okra patties for her grandchildren, who were visiting the following day.
She rinsed the okra, removed the stalks, sliced an onion and sautéed it. While she worked, her thoughts drifted to Baghdad, the city of her birth. Farida remembered the large houses with the enormous courtyards, designed to accommodate prodigious families like hers. Each wing of her house was inhabited by a different family: Aba, Ima, Violet, and Farida herself, the youngest daughter, lived in one wing; her sister Farcha, along with her husband Sammy and their three children, lived in another; her brother Anwar lived in a third wing with his wife Yasmin and their three daughters; in yet another wing, her sister Habiba lived with her husband Yaakov and their five impish kids. Farida loved her nieces and nephews as if they were her own siblings, perhaps because they were closer to her age than her own brothers and sisters. She and Violet were the youngest of the brood. Georgia, their mother, had given birth to Habiba, Farcha, and Anwar at a very young age. She then had two more children, both of whom died in infancy. After many years, the two girls were born less than two years apart, brightening Georgia’s heart and bringing her solace. By the time Farida and Violet were born, they were aunts to Edward, Habiba and Yaakov’s oldest son. The rest of the nieces and nephews came later. Eddie as he was called by everyone, was born one year before Violet, and a year and a half after Violet was born, Farida came into the world.
Farida remembered how she, Eddie, and Violet used to sneak out of school. They would look for a horse-drawn carriage, jump on its back, and hitch rides through the streets of Baghdad. If the driver caught sight of the kids, he beat them with his horsewhip and cursed them for not paying the fare. Later, when they were a little older, they raced to nearby Chidekel River, took off their clothes, and swam in its cool waters, free from trouble and pain, splashing each other and laughing endlessly.
During summer, when Baghdad’s rivers dried up, tiny islands surfaced—jazira, they were called—and the children searched them for water creatures. They’d pick up animals and insects and examine them. Then they’d dress, pack up, and return home, pretending to come straight from school. Because they went to the Jewish school, the teachers knew all the parents, and if the instructors ever suspected anything, they dropped in for unannounced visits. The kids knew that when a teacher came to the house, their punishment would be severe. They paid the price for their adventures willingly, taking comfort in knowing they would return, again and again, to these moments of pure delight.
“Ach,” Farida sighed. “It’s a shame, walla, it is such a shame.” She was talking to herself in the empty kitchen. “It’s a shame we couldn’t have had that kind of life together.” Farida and Eddie had shared a special closeness during childhood, which later blossomed into a full-fledged love. Farida’s heart clenched at the thought that she and Eddie couldn’t get married, couldn’t bring children into the world. “He was so handsome . . .” She sighed again. “And his eyes, don’t get me started, those eyes . . .” She continued to ruminate, first aloud, then silently, remembering different episodes from her life, scenes that made her feel his absence, and his loss, more acutely than ever.
She sliced the okra, and the vegetable’s color made her think of his green eyes, the intelligence she saw there. Tears slid down her cheeks. She wiped them with the edge of her sleeve to keep them from dripping onto the okra and put down the knife. For a long time she stood, stooped over the cutting board, until the wave of emotions had passed; then she straightened, took another stalk from the platter on the counter, scraped its rough edges, and returned it to the platter. After preparing the vegetables, she dipped her hands in water and began composing the filling for the kubot—the semolina pockets. She took ground chicken mixed with parsley and spices, placed it on the dough, and rolled the mixture into small balls, which she dropped into a steaming pot of water.
Farida thought of mid-1940s Iraq. She remembered how Yasmin, Anwar’s wife, had finally given him a son after three daughters, how they celebrated his birth with a chalri—a traditional Arabian party with belly-dancing. The chalri took place on the seventh day after the child’s birth—the day before his brit. Farida’s parents invited relatives from all across Baghdad, Hilla, and Basra. All the important people in the Jewish community were invited. Farida’s mother, Georgia, was a pillar of Baghdad’s Jewry; she came from a family of well-known rabbis, and it was a great honor to attend one of her parties. The family overlooked nothing: the best musicians and singers were summoned to the chalri, along with a famous belly dancer who strutted before wild-eyed spectators. Some men stuck bills into her belt and bra, and everyone sang and danced and showered the new baby and his family with blessings.
After the birth of her son, Yasmin took to her bed and barely rose for forty days. At that stage, her duty was to take care of the new baby and to rest. The women from her extended family waited upon and fed her, tended to her and her baby’s needs. It was traditional for female relatives to care for the mother, house, other children (if there were any), and the husband, so that a mother could regain her strength and resume ministering to her family. The women did this with great joy and unlimited generosity.
That was a good year: it featured a charmed birth as well as Eddie’s Bar Mitzvah. He was the first grandson of the family and everyone’s darling. And despite the fact he was almost thirteen, and she was not yet ten, and notwithstanding that this was often when families separated related boys and girls because of the new, strange, amorphous tension between them, Farida remembered they couldn’t stand being apart, not even for a day. Whenever they saw each other, they secretly pledged their love for each other until the end of time.
On the day of Yasmin’s baby’s birth, Eddie, Violet, and Farida were given an important task: they were sent to tell all their acquaintances about the c
hild. Once word got out, the women—relatives, servants, Arab and Jewish neighbors alike—began to trill loudly, celebrating the happy event. Those who hadn’t yet heard the news now understood: something wonderful had occurred in the Twaina household.
At the conclusion of that festive day, the merry trio split up as usual and returned to sleep in their separate homes. It was a stifling Baghdadi night. In the height of summer, when it was too hot to sleep in their beds, people camped on roofs. Farida and Violet, along with their parents, slept atop one of the wings of the big house, while Eddie and his family reposed above another wing. After the excitement of the day, Eddie, Violet, and Farida had trouble falling asleep; they gazed at the lovely full moon shining in the distant sky, at innumerable stars. They were filled with a sense of great satisfaction and indescribable joy. A new son had been born into the family, and they were all part of this creation.
Chapter Three: Noa Rosen
Noa rushed from the apartment. She hadn’t heard the alarm go off. She’d awakened in a fog to discover it was 8:20. In less than an hour, her Introduction to Jewish Philosophy exam would start; it was an important test, and she’d been studying for days. She’d writhed most the night, sleepless, and when she finally did nod off, she’d had a bizarre dream. The course material morphed with her daily life. Angels moved between spheres, changed levels, revealed different faces, gathered around her. Michael and Gabriel, she thought. Her brother Guy appeared, but as a small boy with angel wings on his back. Her mother Violet was in it, too. She wrapped Noa in her arms, and Noa felt wonderfully safe. She told her mother she missed her very much and was so happy she’d finally come home. Her mother’s hair had grown back; she’d worn a wig the last time they’d seen each other. But when she reached for her mother’s head, the hair became the kabbalistic chart she’d memorized the previous night. The alarm screeched, and she woke, trembling.
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