Laura | Eyal David, Israel
I always have had a special bond with my 88 year old grandmother, Laura. It began when I was a baby, as she helped my mother raise my twin sister and I. It continues to this very day (30 years later): each time I visit, she prepares my favorite Libyan cuisine – Mafroum (meat-stuffed potatoes), Couscous and Chraime (spicy fish). She has loved me unconditionally since I was born and has never complained about anything although I knew that she did not have easy time after arriving in Israel from Tripoli, Libya in 1967. She lost her husband (my grandfather), a few years afterwards and had to work hard in several cleaning jobs in order to support her four children. Despite being close, we never talked about our family’s past history in Libya; I never asked. This changed when I began my academic studies at the department of Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I discussed my origins with my professor and she suggested that I write my seminar paper on the Jews of Libya. I could take advantage of the fact that my grandmother is still alive and provide a firsthand testimony of her life in Libya.
At first when I addressed my grandmother and indicated that I was interested in her life story in Libya, she was surprised. After all, I was her first of nineteen grandchildren to show an interest. We scheduled a date for an interview for the following week. I came to her house with a recorder and a camera and discovered my short grandmother dressed up wearing her best jewelry. She agreed to be interviewed only if I stay for lunch afterwards, an offer I could not refuse. I assumed it would take one hour, and before we had noticed 3.5 hours flew by. Her story fascinated me and I kept asking more and more questions, which my grandmother was more than happy to answer. She even brought out old photo albums filled with black and white photos from Libya, providing detailed explanations for each photo, as if they were taken yesterday. Her eyes were lit up as she spoke about life in Tripoli and I was transported from 21st century-Israel to the Libya of the 1950s and 1960s. For a couple of hours my grandmother became young again, sharing gossip and love stories from good old Tripoli. I felt lucky to have had this precious opportunity to spend quality time with her and was swept away by her stories and the way she told them, mixing Hebrew with words and phrases in Italian as well as a few in Arabic which are the two spoken languages in Libya.
In the picture attached you can see my grandmother Laura with my uncle Jules-Hai (in the car toy) and his aunt Eliza Debasch surrounded by their relatives who were murdered, 3 generations: Emilia Habib, the grandmother, Fortuna Raccah, the mother (Efraim, her husband is missing in the pic) and Isacco and Rachele (Lina) – the children. May their souls rest in peace.
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