Daughters of Iraq by Revital Shiri-Horowitz Page A

blessing on your head—what a smart girl you are,” said Farida in amazement. “You’re right; your mother does miss you all the time. But that’s how it was when I was a girl. In Iraq it was all about social status. The more servants you had, the more respected you were. My mother almost never hugged and kissed us; she was too preoccupied with her own affairs. But you know what? Even though she wasn’t with us, it felt like her eyes followed us everywhere. She always knew exactly what we were up to, and if, God forbid, someone was sick, she always took care of that child herself. But raising children? I just don’t think it interested her. Okay, enough of that, Ruthie. That’s the way things were. Do you still want to live in Iraq?”
    “No,” Ruthie said. “Absolutely not. But go on about the party. What was it like?”
    “Wait a minute—what’s the rush? Before I talk about the party itself, I want to tell you some other important things. You know that the winters in Iraq are so cold that water freezes in the faucets?”
    “No, you never told me that before.”
    “The winters were brutal. Iraq is a desert, but it was so cold come wintertime that water froze in the pipes, and everything came to a halt.”
    “Why?” Ruthie asked. “Didn’t you like to chew on ice when you were a kid?”
    “Of course I did. I still like it to this day. But you’re a smart girl—tell me, how can you get water from a faucet if it’s frozen inside the pipes? You can’t, right? And if you can’t get it from the tap, you have to get it from outside, which is very hard work. So the week before the party we prayed the water wouldn’t freeze, because if it did, we wouldn’t be able to cook anything. And really, we were very lucky it didn’t freeze. And another thing. The night before the party, we were so excited. We were waiting for our grandmother, my father’s mother, and for Aunt Madeline, my father’s sister. They were coming on the train from Basra, another city a long way from Baghdad. The ride took hours, and then, to get to our house, they had to travel by carriage.”
    “Carriages with horses, like the ones we went on in Netanya?” said Ruthie.
    “Yes, a lot like the ones in Netanya. That’s how people traveled from one place to another; they used them all the time, like we use cars today. Every evening, at exactly the same time, the train arrived at the station, which was near our house. We heard the whistle when it pulled into the station, And then the sound of whips as the horses pulled the carriages.”
    “Wow!”
    “You know, our house was always open to guests. All the carriage drivers knew that if a Jew came from far away and didn’t have a place to sleep, he’d be able to stay with us. My mother, while a terrible snob toward people in our community, welcomed strangers graciously. You know what a snob is, right?”
    “I think so, Grandmother,” Ruthie said. “A snob is someone with her nose in the air—that’s what my friend Noga says. Like this.” Ruthie lifted her nose and laughed.
    “That looks like a pig’s nose!” Farida laughed, too. She gave her granddaughter a wet kiss on the cheek. “Should we go on?”
    “Of course, Grandmother. This is a great story.”
    “Okay. So,” Farida said, “there were nights when we heard the horsewhips coming closer. That’s when we knew someone was coming to stay with us. But that evening, we knew who was coming: not just any old guests, but Grandmother and Aunt Madeline. So we sat there and waited, and every time we thought we heard the horsewhips, we jumped from our seats. I remember I missed my grandmother fiercely. I hadn’t seen her for half a year—a long, long time.”
    Farida looked at the sweet, small face staring at her, enraptured. For a moment, she felt like she herself was a child talking to her sister Violet. She vividly remembered that night, the night before Eddie’s Bar Mitzvah. She was almost eleven, and she missed her