The Aunties’ Regular Gatherings
The aunties really did not have too many relatives in Iran. They had come from Iraq. The nucleus of the family still lived there. Mama, Papa and me, as a toddler, were first to arrive. Then her sister, my Auntie Marcelle and her family came next. A few years later my great Aunt Rosa and her family arrived. They stayed long enough to marry off Auntie Semha and become grandparents. They moved on to Israel. Auntie Semha and my mother were inseparable, just like my sister Gilda and Ketty are, despite an ocean separating them. They call each other every day, sometimes several times a day. They have done so for so very many years. I can hear my father my admonishing my sister mildly, ‘’Have you heard of letters? Why this waste?’’ But times have changed. It’s no longer wasteful, for now we have the internet.
But this story is not about our generation. It’s about the aunties’ generation. There were just a few of them and they cherished their familial closeness. The only person who was not family was Mme. Rey. She was an elderly lady. She and her husband had only one son and he lived very far away. He lived in Washington DC, far, far away, across the oceans. In those days it was a long journey and traveling back and forth was not taken lightly, so they rarely got to see their son. ‘’He works for the World Bank,’’ Mme. Rey would say proudly. As a little girl, I did not know what the World Bank was, but it sounded rather important. Mme. Rey served as the pseudo mother to our mothers. Their mothers were not around, neither was her son. She needed to mother, they yearned for some mothering. My mother was in her middle twenties, Auntie Semha was younger still. Auntie Marcelle was the oldest of all of them. It was quite perfect to all of them.
Each Wednesday afternoon these ladies met. They did not live too far from each other. In good weather they walked at the most a half an hour to each other’s homes, otherwise they could take a taxi if it got dark or it was inclement weather. They felt close to each other. They were the only female family they had in the country. They served cakes and bâton salée that they made. They would fry eggplants and boil new potatoes. They would make pastries stuffed with almonds, dates, and cheese. In winter they prepared turnips slowly cooked with dates until they turned to the color of caramel and were so very delicious! Just the memory of the aroma of that dish makes me drool to this day. In summers they would be accompanied by their children. I remember how we would walk with our mothers. The girls would be in their pastel starched dresses. The boys would be in their little shorts with trouser straps crossed in the back and buttoned in front. They wore white poplin blouses with rounded collars edged with delicate lace. Boys and girls both wore shoes with straps and white ankle socks. Our mothers looked like proud mother hens walking their brood to whichever home they visited that day. Once we got to wherever we were going, we, the children would play with all our other cousins while our mothers and Mme. Rey chatted away. They drank thimblefuls of tea, nibbled on nuts and dried fruit. In summer ice-cold glasses of homemade sherbets were offered. The ladies would take out their rather elaborate fans and fan themselves. Some of their fans were works of art. They varied. Some were hand-painted silk ones. Others were elaborate lace ones. They seemed to have a collection of them, a part of their wardrobe. In each house there would be an assortment of fans with long handles of intricately woven straw supplied to anyone who felt the heat. An electric fan would oscillate to cool the air, but the hand-held ones were de rigueur. They were as necessary as the fine lawn intricately embroidered and lace-edged handkerchiefs that they used.
When it came time to eat, if we were offered food we were taught to say, ‘’No thank you,’’ two times before accepting to partake of the food the third time it was offered to us. Many years later, while I was in boarding school in England, I did what I was taught. Imagine my dismay when the dish was not offered to me a second time, never mind a third, when I would have politely accepted. My eyes went round in astonishment! ‘’How rude!’’ I thought. Very soon I realized that their ways are not ours. I learned to accept or refuse politely what was offered the very first time.
But I digress. During the summer, sometimes the uncles would come to these teas after work. We would sit in the garden in the cool air of the evening. Since it was summer holidays and we children had no school, we were allowed to stay up late. Then the whole atmosphere of…
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