Daughters of Iraq by Revital Shiri-Horowitz Page B

grandmother terribly. She hadn’t thought about her grandmother in years. To Farida’s dismay, the feeling disappeared as quickly as it had come. She went back to her story.
    “You have to understand, Ruthie,” she explained solemnly. “Our lives in Iraq were nothing like our lives today. Here, we get into a car and drive for five minutes. There, if you didn’t live very close to people, you hardly ever saw them. You’d see them at weddings, maybe, and brits ,sometimes on holidays. Once a year, more or less. That’s how it was. My father’s family lived in a different city: Basra. Like I said, it was far away. That’s why I was so excited about my grandmother’s visit.”
    “We are lucky to live in Israel. Very lucky,” said Ruthie with a solemn look. Farida broke out into a broad smile. Ruthie, waiting in suspense, asked, “Then what happened? Did they get there?”
    “Of course they did,” Farida said. “And when they got there, we all went downstairs to greet them. The kids got out of bed and ran, and the reunion with Grandmother, it was so emotional, you wouldn’t believe how much hugging and kissing . . . My grandmother gave me a bear hug, just like I give you when you come over. Like this.” She pressed Ruthie to her chest in a hug so tight it almost suffocated the child.
    “I get the idea!” Ruthie said, laughing. “Stop, you’re practically choking me.”
    Farida laughed, too. She loved telling Ruthie these stories about her family. She was so happy; it was hard to tell which of them enjoyed the stories more. When their laughter died down, Farida continued.
    “Eddie got so many Bar Mitzvah presents. Grandmother made him three suits: one for being called to the Torah, one for the special ceremony of tying the Tefillin to the head and to the arm,and one for the party, which I’ll tell you about in a minute. My grandmother didn’t forget anyone; she brought all kinds of goodies. You know what we got?”
    “What? Did she bring you candy? I love candy,” Ruthie said dreamily. “Did you get a lot of candy?”
    “No,” said Farida. “We didn’t get any candy at all. When I was a kid, ‘candy’ meant dried fruit: figs, dates, raisins, and tamarind, which is kind of sour. Even those were a rare treat. Oh, I remember now. My grandmother also brought mlabas. Do you know what those are?” Farida couldn’t wait for an answer; once again, she was a small child, savoring many tastes. “It’s a sweet, sticky kind of delicacy, filled with almonds. Sometimes I buy Iraqi treats at Ezra’s shop downtown. But they’re not the same.”
    “Oh,” she went on, “how we waited for something sweet . . . On very rare occasions, we got foreign chocolate, if we had a guest from England or something. But for my grandmother, Allah yirchama (may God bless her memory) , nothing was too good for us. That day, we even got chocolate, which to this day I can still taste.”
    “Yum,” Ruthie said, licking her lips. “Me, too.”
    “The next morning, after everyone got ready, we gathered in the parlor. Eddie had put together a whole performance for all the important guests. What can I tell you?” Farida tapped her thigh, and her face was radiant. “Eddie was a master. The plays he would put on! Sometimes he even made movies with us. He organized the whole thing himself. He’d write the story—the screenplay, it’s called; he’d cut pictures out of newspapers and glue them to paper, one after the other. You know, we didn’t have television back then, and Eddie was the only one allowed to go to the movies.”
    “Why?” Ruthie asked.
    “That’s how it was when I was a kid,” she said, waving her hand. “Eddie was a boy, but Violet and I were girls, so we weren’t allowed to attend movies. The other boys in the family were too young. But hold on a minute—where was I?”
    “At the play, Grandmother,” Ruthie said. “Did you forget already?”
    “Oh, yes, that’s right.” Farida returned to her