The English traslation of Tant Sarina
AUNT SARINA
Roz Kohen
Illustration: Roz Kohen
Translated by David Siman
Aunt Sarina, my mother’s elder aunt, lived in Kuchuk Hendek street in the Kula district of Istanbul. Right across the entrance to this street there was a flea market. At this market one could purchase old furniture, antiques and all kinds of interesting objects. Buyers and sellers would walk in and out carrying mattreses, bed posts, lamps and much more. The Turkish saying, if eighty people walked in, ninety walked out well described the activity at the flea market
Aunt Sarina was short and skinny. Her face and her gray hair tied in a bun always gave her a sad appearance. She was always dressed in black as expected from elderly jewish widows, at the time. My father would insist that this custom was borrowed from the Greeks and that it was not a Jewish custom.
Aunt Sarina lived there with her daughter Rashel at the entrance floor of this old and neglected building. The two had a small room with a bed as a sofa, a small table and a closet. The room opened to the dark corridor and a single window faced the street. Aunt Sarina spent most of her time sitting by the window and watching the passers by.
A small portable gasoline heater would warm up the room during the cold winter months. The table was always covered with a neatly embroidered cover and a candy bowl stood in the middle. Photographs of Aunt Sarina’s loved ones decorated the walls of this modest room. These were portraits of his late husband and her elder daughter that lived in Israel with her family.
Rashel, her younger daughter was never married. In contrast to her mother she was a a tall woman with a smile on her face. Rashel was modest. She worked at a stocking factory. We used to call her with her last name: Rashel Rofe to differentiate her from the other Rashels in the family.
When my mother and I came to the Kula district to shop, we used to visit the Aunt. My mother knocked on the window and Aunt Sarina would open the door. Once inside, the two started talking loudly with emotion. They gave each other news about the family. While they were taken by the emotional conversation I would watch the activity at the flea market and fall asleep on the tall bed.
At the time the communication with Israel was through letters. It was said that in Israel the widows did not dress in black, they dressed like everybody else and seemed happier. It was in Aunt Sarina’s small room that I heard about Bat Yam, a neighborhood in Tel-Aviv for the first time. From that day on, Bat Yam became the center of interest for the family and a glimpse of hope. Bat Yam here, and Bat Yam there. To me Bat Yam seemed like a happy place by the sea. In Bat Yam, according to Aunt tant Sarina, her elder daughter had a happy family life. The photographs and post cards from Israel retold the same: a heaven in the holy land with palm trees, where only Jews lived with no worries.
Years went by, my mother and I visiting Aunt Sarina and receiving good news from Israel: “In Israel immigrants receive homes… in Israel there are no unpleasant customs…in Israel young women find husbands …in Israel baruh haShem the women have jobs and the elderly live in i bet zikenim (nursing homes) payed by the government and their medications are covered too. Sons and daughter transform to Tsabarim and serve the israeli Army. Every one attend The Ulpan ( Hebrew classes) for free and learn the Hebrew language. Baruh haShem, thanks to G-D the elderly have pensions and there isn’t even a need for gassoline heaters. The warmth of the sun and the sea ressusitate even the dead!”
When summer came we all went on vacation but Aunt Sarina remained in the old Kula district and we would not visit her for a couple of months. Later as I got older and started going to school I stopped going to visit Aunt Sarina with my mother. It was my mother who continued to bring us the news about the family as well as the wonders and miracles of the Jewihs Holy land as transmitted by Auth Sarina.
One day, suddenly Aunt Sarina sold the little she had in the Flea Market across the street. She gathered a few necessites and immgrated to Israel with her younger daughter Rashel who by now was in her forties. Soon after we heard that Rashel married a Turkish Jew and was very happy. We saw the photographs of the newly wed in a bright apartment in Bat Yam. Apparently Aunt Sarina had become a modern grandmother that took walks with her grand children the Tsabarim by the sea shores of Batyam. In her letters she continued to write to us and we tried to understand the Hebrew words she was using in her letters: “Because I have the rights of an ola hadasha... I am subscribed to al ulpan, baruh haShem and I go to kupat holim to see a rofe that prescribes me a blessed trufa…"
The transformed life of our Aunt Sarina continued to be the happy and hopeful topic of conversation. Thinking that we had a mother land with such liberties where we could live as we wished, we decided to get rid of mourning clothes and old customs that became obsolete. As time went by and slowly the Jewish voices of the Kula district of Istanbul started dissapearing, leaving us behind with the memories of our past.
