(Written from my mother’s perspective)
When I think of my father, I do not have fond childhood memories. In fact, I prefer to not think of him at all. However, since I think our pasts lay the foundation of our future, I will speak of him now so that my children will not make the same mistakes. My father, and his father, came to America in 1912. They were both born in Damascus, Syria. My grandfather left his wife and daughters on the ramps where the ship departed. He waved good-bye to them; smiling and proudly promising to send money for their passage to America. They embarked on this long voyage because they wanted to find the happiness that life in America would give them. That is, they wanted to make money. The lure of what the two of them could make for themselves soon overshadowed the memories of the women left behind and ultimately forgotten. Needless to say, I never met my grandmother and aunts. My father married a Syrian born American girl, my mother, in 1914. I can still see her. Wavy black hair, dark brown eyes that danced with mischief, and a smile that drew you into her circle. People loved to be around her. She was beautiful and energetic; and he, in his newly found American ways, found this free-spirited American-Syrian girl irresistible. He quickly swept her off her feet and they married. My father became an American citizen when I was eight years old. He chose for himself the name Charles Kelly. He thought it very American sounding. When I think of it now, I can hardly keep from laughing; it is really very Irish sounding. My father cherished his sons, three older than I, and two younger. We three girls were, of course after thoughts. My mother became a nuisance to my father when she did not adhere to his beliefs that women should only be seen and not heard. Her father had raised her differently. He had not wanted his daughter to have the same life as the women in the country that he had left. She was truly a child of her American culture. When I was in my early teens my father began to have affairs, talking opening about the differences between their blonde looks and her darker ones. I inherited my mother’s looks. Most people who meet me consider me beautiful. I don’t see myself that way. I look at my long, straight black hair, olive skin, black eyes and wonder why my hair is not curly, like hers. I suppose one always wants to be like the masterpiece, even if only a mere copy of it. I will always wonder if maybe my father would not have liked his daughters better if we had blonde hair and blue eyes.For all of the change that he had come to America to find, he found it very difficult to give up the ways of the “old country”. In 1944, when I was sixteen years old, I had my sophomore picture taken without his permission. He felt that a woman who had photos made of her was a prostitute, or more bluntly, a whore. But my mother wanted it done, and she secretly sent me to the studio to have the picture taken. If she had only known the magnitude of that one secret act she would never have done it. You see, I came home from school weeks later to find my father in a fit of rage. He grabbed me, pulling me by my hair to the kitchen; he proceeded to cut my hair off to my eyebrow level. I was horrified, not knowing what I had done to receive this punishment. That is, until I saw the photograph of myself lying on the kitchen counter. The owner of the studio, not knowing the calamity in which he would throw my small world, had sent my photo to a new magazine that was starting up; Seventeen Magazine. A representative had come to my parent’s home to get permission to put my picture on the cover of one their magazines. He was swiftly kicked out of the house. I will never forgive my father for what he did that day. My mother took my sisters and I and moved into a small apartment. He refused to give her money, so she worked, for the first time in her life, in a small grocery store. My sisters and I took jobs at a shoe company to help out. Although out of his house, my father was not out of our lives. He sent my oldest sister, then eighteen, back to Syria to marry a sixty year old man. My mother frantically found one of my father’s sisters in Syria. She helped my sister find her way to the American Embassy; she was soon back home with us. Our father was furious and began to try to find a Syrian boy for me to marry. I vowed that her fate would not be my own. I refused every young man he brought and introduced to me. He could keep his old ways of contract marriage. I was an American. I would choose for myself. I had exactly six marriage proposals from blonde, red, and brunette American boys to decide from! What to do. But I would not marry one of them, either. They were nice boys, but they didn’t make my heart flop all over. I wanted the heart flop. When I was nineteen my younger sister had a blind date with a young soldier who had just returned from the war. When the doorbell rang, I opened it I truly believe the room began to spin. My heart flopped, then flipped. My sister was so lucky! I told her if she didn’t want him, I did. She laughed, swinging her sweater over her shoulders she winked at me saying, “Too bad.” Later, on their date, he asked her if she would be offended if he asked her sister out on a date. She smiled and said, “No, I think that would be an excellent idea.” I figured since he was Irish my father would have to like him. But that didn’t happen. I was given strict orders not to see him again. Well, love would say differently. One month later we eloped; my father disowned me. How strangely ironic to be disowned for marrying an Irish boy when he himself had chosen an Irish name to be called by. My mother died fourteen years later in her tiny apartment. However, she had enjoyed her grandchildren before she left this life; unlike my father. My father owned two prosperous restaurants and he made for himself the money he so desperately had come to find. However, he did not trust banks. Instead, he hid the profits from his businesses in old tires that he had in his garage. No one knew the money was hidden there, so when he died, my brothers called a sanitation company to come and haul them to the trash dump. You should have seen the look on my father’s attorney’s face, not to mention my brothers, when they realized what they had done. Since we were women, my sisters and I did not share in any of the inheritance. It makes me laugh still to think of it. My father had given up everything in his quest to find happiness. He gave up his identity. His sisters. And his mother. He left with even less that what he had given up, most notably, my mother. Although I speak some Arabic, I will not teach my children. I would Rather they learn the culture of their father, the most gentle, fun loving creature I have ever met. I will teach them this culture with the same intensity that my father had used to forget me for twenty-nine years. My children will be happy children.
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