A Moment in Time
My cousin Rudy passed away last Friday. I don’t know why his passing affected me so, but it did. Perhaps because he lost his wife Allison, the love of his life, two and a half years ago, and I lost my Peter, my soulmate, my reason for being, four years ago. We both suffered so after they died.
My sister Nora and I met our cousin Rudy for the first time in London. Rudy was studying aeronautics in Luton, England. He had arrived from Baghdad. He was perhaps four or five years older than me. Nora and I arrived from Tehran. I was quite young when my parents and I escaped on a British army plane, with just one little suitcase, from Baghdad to Tehran. There is a photograph of all my cousins and I sitting in a row, on a short flight of steps facing the garden. That’s all that I remember from those years in Baghdad, that picture. My sisters and brother were all born in Tehran. I did not know him and had not seen him since that time; I only had the photograph as a memory.
It was the autumn of 1957 that we met, and because we were cousins, we felt an instant closeness, a sense of family. Since we were younger, Rudy took it upon himself to act as a big brother. He took us under his wings and made it a point to take the train from Luton each time we all had a school break.
Coming from Tehran where the sun shone practically all the time and people sang and laughed out loud in the streets, our boarding school in Malvern, Worcestershire, was rather a sharp contrast to home. Nora and I shared a dorm that first term. I remember pulling back the curtains the morning after we arrived. It was a dismal, grey, miserable view that we looked out to. We faced a churchyard filled with graves and gravestones. In Tehran we had never been near a graveyard! The dead and their graves were far away from the living. What’s more, women and children did not go to funerals. Looking out of that window that day, we felt as if we were in one of Charles Dickens’ stories, like some poor orphans huddled against a tombstone. We shook with fright. It did not help that I found a slithering worm in the cabbage that was served with the meat that day at lunch. We were very pampered girls at home. Over here no one truly cared how we felt. To say that we missed home is an understatement. We walked about down in the mouth. We were miserable.
Christmas holidays came and we went to London. Rudy came down from Luton as well. He looked at us and noticed we were not the chirpy little girls we had been a couple of months ago.
“What is the matter?” he asked, with great concern.
It was as if floodgates had opened. We teared up as we told him about the worms in the cabbage practically every week and how we were told there was no excuse for not eating our food. If we did not finish our meal, we had to sit there until we ate all the food on our plates, worms and all. We told him how some of the girls were bullies and made us walk through the graveyard at dusk as we quaked in our shoes as they made very ghostlike sounds that made our flesh creep. We told him how we had to go to church every Sunday and kneel at the pews and pray to Jesus. The food was not good. It did not taste like food at home. And the last thing we said was that our parents gave us caviar instead of cod liver oil. Over here we got neither! At this, an amused smile curled about Rudy’s lips. It was funny to him and it was funny to us in later years as well. Children did not get to eat caviar normally. Most adults do not either! It took us a while to realize how spoilt we were. Rudy tried to comfort us. He treated us to something, I forget what.
After the Christmas holidays, Rudy returned to his studies in Luton and we to Malvern. We were getting more used to school and made friends. Things were more tolerable. Easter holidays we were back in London. We were staying at a Mrs. Harris off Kensington High Street. Mrs. Harris had a whole slew of Middle Eastern girls staying with her for the holidays. She was a warm-hearted, plump, motherly figure who allowed us all to pile onto her bed and cuddle with her and her cat as we watched TV. She also allowed us the use of the huge living room. It had a baby grand piano and a gramophone. We would sing and dance and have a jolly good time. She never complained, however loud we became. Rudy would occasionally join us. He would sit on the feather-filled floral sofa and watch us. He was perhaps twenty years old then. It was beneath his dignity to join these rambunctious, frolicking teenage girls. He would sit and watch. Sometimes we went to an Indian restaurant. In those days they were as common as Chinese restaurants are now.
One day he came carrying a little package. He handed it to us. We looked at him in askance. “What is this, Rudy?” we asked.
“Open it,” he said.
We tore the package open. There was a round wooden box. We opened that as well. Inside there was a round tin box with caviar in it! It wasn’t Beluga caviar, but it could have been for all that we were concerned. We flung our arms around his neck and covered him with kisses. He wore a pleased yet embarrassed smile upon his face.
A lifetime has passed since then. I kept the box and painted it with oil colors. It sits on top of my bookshelf in my sewing room. It has beads and beading needles in it. I never use them, for they remind me of days gone by. I cherish its sentimental memories. I don’t need to use it; I have others.
Once in a while, when the family meets, I fondly recount the story of Rudy’s sweet and thoughtful gesture those, oh so many years ago. He would sigh, smile and say, “Enough, Stella, enough.”
So I am recounting this tale one more time, for you Tanya and Adam and for the children. Rudy is too busy traveling, hurrying to be with your mum. He just smiles and continues to his destination, to the love of his life. Rest In Peace Rudy and Allison. Be strong Tanya and Adam. They are together again.