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Those who made a living this way were treated as social outcasts, but my grandmother wasn’t concerned with honor and status; she worried about how to feed her children. She didn’t want to be a burden on her family, which was poor to begin with.
    During my grandmother’s era, most widows ended up penniless. Even those left with property were soon destitute, since they had no income aside from what their husbands left them. But Grandmother wasn’t like other women. Circumstances, you could say, made her a feminist. In addition to the financial hardships, tragedy seemed to pursue her. Grandmother lost her eldest son when an oil lamp set his robe on fire. My father, her second son, started accompanying her at a young age, traveling with her, helping carry her goods. When he grew up, he opened a small store and sold their wares.
    My mother, a strong, proud woman, never forgave my father’s mother for her low social status. She herself came from a rabbinic family on one side and a wealthy family on the other. Although my father was learned, there was a sense that my mother felt he wasn’t really worthy of her. And as for this old, simple woman who would be her mother-in-law . . . well, that was too much for her to bear. My mother didn’t see any good in her. She tended to look more at the envelope than at the letter inside. For my part, I loved my kind grandmother, and now, with the wisdom of years, I can say that she was worthy of admiration.
    My father spoke seven languages al burian ,fluently. While working with my grandmother, he decided to study business administration. He was quite talented, and the government hired him for a high-ranking position. In 1930s and 40s Iraq, civil service was an honorable profession, second only to doctors and bank officers. My father, a very quick thinker, stayed in his coveted position for many years, until the birth of the State of Israel. Many Jews lost their jobs after the formation of the Jewish state, not just him. In any case, my father won my mother’s heart, partly because of his intelligence, and partly because he knew how to play the ud —the fat-bellied guitar so popular in those days .
    My mother selected her own husband, which was not the custom back then. Traditionally, the girl’s parents chose a groom for their daughter. My mother, the eldest daughter of the most learned and revered man in the village, liked to say she had grown up “like a son.” Her father—my grandfather—admired his daughter’s cleverness and worshiped the ground on which she walked. He asked her advice and considered her opinions when making decisions. In the end, my mother never forgave herself for marrying someone from such a lowly family. When they lived in Baghdad, she still showed him some respect, but that all changed when they moved to Israel and she—who was used to a life of luxury—was forced to live in a tent and, later, a crowded apartment.
    From everything you’ve just read, you can probably understand why I saw Grandmother so infrequently. I admired and loved her. She had life experience. She told spellbinding stories about her travels, about the different women she met and thieves she eluded. She was warm and open-hearted, and, best of all, she made me the most magnificent dresses, with muslin trim, in the latest London fashions. I longed for her visits. My father’s sister Madeline, on the other hand, I didn’t like at all. Aunt Madeline was conceited, and she considered children bothersome. I think I disliked her primarily because of one infamous story, the stain on our family’s name: she had insulted my mother by rejecting her dowry.
    Young people today, at the end of the second millennium, have a hard time grasping the magnitude of the insult, but in Iraqi families, the custom was for the bride to give her in-laws a dowry her parents had saved from the day she was born. My mother’s parents worked especially hard, since she was their first daughter after several