Airplane to New York

She sits by the window on the thirteenth floor of the apartment on 96^th Street and Central Park West gazing out.  She turns to me and says, “I have been watching people go up and down these stairs for months.  What is this hole for?”

I walk to the window to see what she is seeing.  It is the access to the subway station. There is a hole in the ground and people climb the stairs down into it and others climb up.

“There are trains that run underground that go all over the city, and people go downstairs to take them.  And when they want to get off here, they climb the stairs out of the station.”

She nods.  “In Baghdad there were no trains underground.”

My great-grandmother and I have arrived in New York within a year of each other, and we are both finding our way.  I can go out and explore, but my great-grandmother, of unknown age but old, stays at home, too frail to go out unless necessary. Her world has narrowed to the windows overlooking Central Park and 96^th Street.  She goes from her bedroom to the living room in my uncle’s apartment, sitting by the windows, looking outside or reading her Hebrew prayers. 

I don’t really know her.  My father, her grandson, and my mother think her wise and speak of her respectfully.  She doesn’t talk much, but she looks like she is observing everything.  When my father introduced me to her, she looked at me for a long time, but didn’t say anything.  We hugged, as was expected, and moved apart. We have said little to each other until she asked me about the subway.  I was sixteen and she seemed very old and reserved.  She dressed in a shapeless long gown and covered her hair in a turban-like cloth.

“What was Baghdad like?” I ask.

She shrugs. ”It was Baghdad.”  She waits then adds, “I never lived anywhere else.  It was Baghdad.”

“What did you think when you came to New York?”

“When they put me on the airplane, I thought they were sending me to my death.  How could a large thing like that stay up in the air?  I couldn’t believe that it wouldn’t fall down and we would all die.”

“But you didn’t think your family would put you in danger?”

“We were already in danger.  We were no longer welcome in Baghdad.  They were desperate to leave and my permit came before theirs.  So they put me on the plane.”

It struck me then that she had gone from the 19^th century, or in some respects even the middle ages, to the middle of the 20^th century in one airplane ride.  From Baghdad, isolated and stuck in the past to the busiest and most modern of cities.  

She was of a generation of sacrificial daughters, likely to be bartered for wealth and position. She was barely pubescent when she was given in marriage to a husband she didn’t know. Unfortunately for her, the husband died, leaving her with an infant daughter and no means.  She had been rescued by the generosity of an uncle who tended to her and her daughter, until the latter was marriageable and could leave the uncle’s house. My grandmother left with my great-grandmother, to have a family of her own.  Like my great-grandmother, my grandmother married as a girl.  She once told me that one day she was jumping rope with her friends and the next day she was married to a man she didn’t know. She thought she was about twelve years old, about the same age as my great-grandmother when she had married, but dates of birth weren’t documented, so this was an approximation.

     

The uncle’s generosity did not extend to educating my grandmother; my great-grandmother could read Hebrew, but my grandmother could not read at all. My great-grandmother had not seen much of the world, and even being transplanted into a small apartment, among her family members, must have required a major reimagination of her future. Despite her seeming frailty, she lived for more than a decade after I first met her, within a narrow horizon of New York apartments and houses, my grandmother always with her.

The family from Baghdad had landed in New York at my uncle’s apartment: my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my aunt, and her five children. Until my aunt’s family found their own place, the whole family squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment.  My Uncle Eddie had not seen this family in decades and was meeting some of us for the first time.  Suddenly he was the guardian of a new clan.  He handled the change with infinite grace, but it was clearly a supreme adjustment for him.  He went from being a care-free bachelor to caring for two old women and curbing his activities to suit their needs.

Uncle Eddie had come to the United States with one of his brothers some time before World War II, had served in the Pacific, and was rewarded with US citizenship. Eddie embraced his new American life wholeheartedly and thrived in New York.  He had a bicycle shop, before biking became popular, and made a tolerable living from it. He collected antiques, primarily bronze busts of Beethoven, whom he adored.  Once when my father was going to Vienna on business, Eddie asked him to put flowers on Beethoven’s grave.  Eddie blasted records of Beethoven’s symphonies, conducting a phantom orchestra. If the New York Philharmonic was performing Beethoven, Eddie would be there.  The television often blared the opinions of some politician, and Uncle Eddie would argue with him as though he could be heard. He embraced life exuberantly and took caring for his family in stride.

The Baghdadi family had finally made their escape under a short-lived governmental opening that allowed Jews to leave Iraq. At about the same time, I had arrived in New York to attend college in Long Island, where I spent most of my time.  Eddie went from having no family to having a considerable mass of people around him, dependent on him for learning to navigate New York and life in America.  He found himself shopping and cooking and guiding us through our new lives.

Having few other connections in New York the first year or so of college, I often spent weekends and holidays in the City with this family that was new to me.  I had lived in Iran with my parents and siblings and had not met the US or Iraqi members of my family before.  

Uncle Eddie went to work in the morning, after preparing breakfast for his mother and grandmother, until my grandmother learned her way around the kitchen and took over this task.  While he was gone, my grandmother and great-grandmother busied themselves with small chores around the apartment. My grandmother would wash the breakfast dishes and perhaps wash a few items of clothing by hand.  They both spent a fair amount of time looking out of the windows.  When I was there, my grandmother would sometimes send me to the grocery store to shop for what she needed to make a meal, but more often, Uncle Eddie came home with the necessary groceries, usually chicken or steak that he broiled, American food and not what the old women were accustomed to.  It must have been tedious for the two of them not knowing anyone and not speaking English, to while away their days in New York.  

Like my father, Eddie adored his grandmother and was bereft when she died.  Their worlds did not intersect much though.  She was quiet and her wisdom came from her Hebrew prayers and observation of her family.  He was boisterous, quoting Voltaire and roaring opinions.  He loved the US and had no yearning for the past.  She knew only the past. 

I have often tried to imagine what my great-grandmother’s life would have been like.  In a short span of time, she went from being a girl in her father’s house to being a girl bride, to mothering a daughter. Living as a dependent in her uncle’s home, she could not have had much freedom or influence on anything except perhaps the rearing of her daughter.  I have no idea if she had any kind of social life or friends while her daughter was growing up; she never spoke to me of her past. I got the sense that she had led a lonely, stoic life until my grandmother had children and grandchildren.  Then, somehow, she had become the stalwart of the family, helping my grandmother raise her seven surviving children and somehow knowing how to bestow such love on them that they were forever her ardent devotees.

Soon after the arrival of the family from Baghdad, my aunt and her family found an apartment in Queens, and Eddie, my great-grandmother and grandmother also rented an apartment in the same building.  Eddie graciously sacrificed his city apartment for a relatively suburban one and largely gave up on the New York Philharmonic.  The view from the windows at this apartment was of the railroad tracks, above ground this time.  All conversation stopped when trains thundered past.  After this apartment, the whole family moved into a large house in queens, and there were no more trains.