Assyrians in Yonkers: Reminiscences of a Community 9781463214388

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ASSYRIANS IN YONKERS

Assyrians in Yonkers Reminiscences of a Community

JOHN PIERRE AMEER

2008

First Gorgias Press Edition, 2008 Copyright © 2008 by Gorgias Press LLC All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey ISBN 978-1-59333-745-2

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180 Centennial Ave., Suite A, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA www.gorgiaspress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ameer, John Pierre. Assyrians in Yonkers : reminiscences of a community / John Pierre Ameer. -- 1st Gorgias Press ed. p. cm. 1. Ameer, John Pierre--Childhood and youth. 2. Assyrians--New York (State)--Yonkers--Biography. 3. Syriac Christians--New York (State)--Yonkers--Biography. 4. Nestorians--New York (State)--Yonkers--Biography. 5. Assyrians--New York (State)--Yonkers--Social life and customs--20th century. 6. Yonkers (N.Y.)--Biography. 7. Community life--New York (State)--Yonkers--History--20th century. 8. Yonkers (N.Y.)--Social life and customs--20th century. 9. Yonkers (N.Y.)--Religious life and customs. 10. Yonkers (N.Y.)-Ethnic relations--History--20th century. I. Title. F129.Y5A45 2008 974.7’277--dc22 2007049796 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standards. Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated with unbounded love and respect to my friends, Darius Baba Jr., Norman David, and Daniel Baba. Akhunwati u khoruwati, my brothers and my friends

This book was published with the generous support of Zinda magazine.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents....................................................................................................v Preface.....................................................................................................................vii Acknowledgments ................................................................................................xxi Prologue ....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Saturdays .............................................................................................15 Chapter 2: Flight....................................................................................................71 Chapter 3: Church ...............................................................................................111 Chapter 4: Chai ....................................................................................................159 Chapter 5: The Block..........................................................................................201 Chapter 6: Trips ...................................................................................................235 Epilogue ................................................................................................................249

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PREFACE For community is grounded in personal relations. In these the individual becomes most completely himself as his life enters organically into the lives of others. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952).1

A few years ago, on a Friday afternoon—one of those beautiful May afternoons in Massachusetts with temperatures in the lower 70s and trees and bushes finally blooming—I was riding on MBTA’s 77 bus, as I did almost every weekday. I had boarded as usual at the route’s point of origin, Harvard Square. Number 77 runs entirely on Massachusetts Avenue, northwest past the Harvard Law School, through North Cambridge, then into the town of Arlington where I had been living for ten years. On this particular ride, I found myself thinking of the Assyrians and, in particular, of the Assyrian community in Yonkers. Why did my mind visit those memories on that particular trip? It was roused by the conversations of some fellow commuters. Riding on the 77, and on the other bus routes that travel through Cambridge, commuters are compelled to become eavesdroppers into the lives of area residents. It’s not that riders choose to receive this personal information; it isn’t a matter of choice. News items that should really remain private are, in the precious precincts of Cambridge, imposed on one’s hearing irrespective of preference. This violation of boundaries strikes me as particularly strange at this time in the history of our society when keeping one’s personal space is held with the same tenacity as the Star Trek Federation kept to its “prime directive.” Yet, paradoxically, the ability to keep one’s distance in public places is dwindling with great rapidity. One can be sitting on a bus, eating at a restau-

1

Reinhold Niebuhr (1952) The Irony of American History

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rant, or trying to relax on a park bench, and find oneself invited into detailed descriptions of sexual victories and defeats, bankruptcies and successes, and the intimacies that one assumed are reserved to the precincts of the home. Yet, often enough to be considered normal, these conversations, publicly and without the expected self-consciousness, are spoken into cell phones and exchanged live as well. Boston’s MBTA recently installed equipment inside the subway tubes that prevents cell phone transmission from being interrupted even when the riders are underground. Callers thereby are spared having to wait the few minutes that will again bring them above ground to make their essentially unimportant phone calls. These developments are remarkable to my generation. We grew up looking forward to those times when we were neither at home nor at the office so that people couldn’t reach us by phone. I still enjoy this freedom. For us, time away from the phone is the real private space. Sometimes people chew on the perennial Boston subjects—the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins, and Patriots. People in the area live and die with the success of these professional teams. Anyone who follows the roller coaster experience of those sports addicts who consider themselves perpetual victims will find ample research material on the buses and subways of Metro Boston. This is athletic victimology at its most virulent. Of course, those of us from elsewhere understand that Boston sports fans have enormous incentives for this feeling of victimhood. Listening in on these conversations provides continuous amusement. More often than not, strangers will interject themselves into these recapitulations of sporting “tragedies”—the bonds among the afflicted, I guess. Too often, however, the conversations range into less public areas and are too personal for strangers’ ears. On this particular Friday trip, I was seated in front of two earnest young female graduate students engaged in just this kind of personal conversation. You have to spend time in Cambridge before you can fully understand the descriptor “earnest.” Much of what constitutes daily routine for most Americans is, for earnest Cantabridgians, a matter of deep existential concern. For example, stand behind one of these agonized and agonizing sojourners, one of these Cantabridgian searchers for truth and deep meaning, at the checkout stand of any local supermarket. You will note that what you consider ordinary and even trivial can actually be of ultimate concern. Grocery baggers usually ask, “Paper or plastic?” For most of us, this question requires no more than a second’s contemplation before answering. Personally, I really don’t care what kind of bag is used. If it is

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plastic, I’ll use it to line a garbage pail. If it is paper, I’ll fill it with newspapers for recycling. For earnest Cantabridgians, however, this question ranks along with foreign policy, welfare reform, school choice, and the global economy. The choice has enormous implications for environment, the country’s future, the quality of life of our children, and so on. As a consequence, one often waits in line, trying mightily to keep patience in check—bemusedly or angrily depending on one’s time commitment—while the Cantabridgian works out which is the lesser evil. “If I choose plastic, which is nonbiodegradable, I shall contribute to increased waste. If I opt for paper, I am part of a system of overuse that continues to diminish our forests.” It was within that milieu of earnestness that these two young females on the bus, in splendid and regal disregard for the rest of us, were discussing where and how they lived. One asked the other where her apartment was located. The respondent reported that she lived in Arlington with five other persons in “an intentional community.” In the parts of the country less earnest than Cambridge, that is, in the all of the rest of the country except for the Bay Area, the respondent would have replied, “I live in an apartment near here with five roommates.” Such a pedestrian reply is unseemly in Cambridge—much too mundane and far too inconsequential. On reflection, however, I realized that more than Cambridge’s usual affectation was implied in her reference to “community.” This young graduate student’s need to refer to her living arrangement in the manner that she did reflected a yearning common throughout American society today for membership in smaller communal arrangements. This hunger derives in large part from an understandable desire in most Americans for protection from the personal weariness and loneliness that are by-products of the increasingly anonymous character of our modern society. Citizens palpably desire to be part of a recognizable, manageable, and supportive community structure. The term “community” appears with increasing frequency in conversations and in social and political commentaries: the community of scholars, the banking community, an ethnic community, the classroom community, a sense of community, and, recently, even a global community. To encourage school districts to downsize their large secondary schools, the US Department of Education has a division that dispenses information and money to “small learning communities.” The omnipresence of both the word and the concept, together with the sense of loss implicit in discussions about community, derives from a longing for a defined group to which one may belong. It is a reflection of

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the powerful need to find support and acceptance so that an individual may modify the terrible loneliness that haunts people in the crowded spaces of this modern industrialized and urbanized world. Community provides the means whereby a person is able to describe his or her identity within a context of other people, avoiding the struggle of having to do it alone. The lone individual, finding it difficult to construct a satisfying sense of self, turns in frustration to collective membership in order to achieve self-definition. He or she can realize identity through the company of similarly situated persons as compared to the very difficult task of achieving it in isolation. Though it is regular response to today’s world, there is nothing particularly new about this longing. People have always sought and found comfort and security through belonging. They have gained this through common space, common language, common history, common culture, common religion, common ancestry, even common enemies, and, most often, through a combination of these elements. In our current American context, this sense of security is more difficult to attain. Many centrifugal factors operate in modern American society to frustrate the establishment and maintenance of small, identifiable communities. We live with constant mobility, with cultural and ethnic diversities, and with population densities of great scale, at levels unprecedented in history. These centrifugal pressures naturally detract from our ability to realize genuine community and make extraordinarily difficult the capacity to sustain a sense of sharing. Thus our young bus rider and her roommates, along with many others in our society, had created an “intentional community” as a replacement for communities that had developed organically and sustained themselves naturally but that are becoming increasingly rare. This is not to say that there is not a common American culture that transcends our differences. It is remarkable, and a measure of the energy and talent within this country, that a common American culture has not only managed to coexist, but to thrive among this multi-ethnic and culturally pluralistic centrifuge. This is a testament to the power of the common American experience. Nevertheless, the need for more tangible, smaller communities in which one may feel security and comfort persists. While enormously satisfying to most of the population, certainly to members of the dominant groups within the country, the common national culture is insufficient by itself to satisfy the pervasive need for the immediacy of communal arrangements. In the intimate contexts of local situations, social arrangements on a smaller scale are better able to address people’s personal needs so that individuals may feel socially empowered. Moreover, people can be assured of a

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manageable degree of predictability without which all other strategies for maintaining community will fall short. Experience has taught people that the quality of their lives is significantly better when they have identifiable lines of relationships at the local level. These contacts, which require constancy as well as easy recognition, are expected to provide security, support, friendship, and, predictability. Furthermore, the agencies of work, play, worship, socializing, and schooling, all taking place within the immediate community, are able to provide the opportunities necessary for maintaining on-going relationships of support. The matrix where these several relationships intersect is the small, manageable community. Attempts throughout the country to artificially and intentionally create small communities wherever they do not exist naturally are proof of this need. The evidence of this from our young, bus-riding graduate student is indicative. As I eavesdropped on that conversation, I unsurprisingly found myself reflecting with a great deal of pleasure and gratitude that my friends and I had the privilege of growing up in just such a safe and supportive community. The section of Yonkers, New York, in which I grew up had all the desired characteristics of a small community, and then some. We actually lived within two such communities; the smaller one—the Assyrian community—resided within the larger one that is the southwestern part of Yonkers. We were thus enabled within these two entities to sustain our sense of security and to reinforce our feelings of belonging—our identities. The Assyrian people, Christian refugees from Iran and Turkey, the ones who had survived the slaughter that characterized the First World War in the Middle East, found refuge and respite in this country. Not permitted to return to their homes, most had settled in the United States in various cities, one of which was Yonkers. In these communities, in close proximity to their churches and ethnic clubs, aided by the easy social intercourse with each other, the Assyrians were able to maintain ties of identity and networks of support. I continue to be grateful for having had those benefits and always look back on the South Yonkers and the Assyrian communities with a great deal of affection and not a little longing. I do not pretend that I can do full justice to recreating that time and place and those wonderful people who lived there, but I shall attempt in this memoir to describe the essential characteristics of those twin communities. For those of us left from that era, the narrative will, hopefully, support memories of good times and beautiful friends and relatives. For younger readers, the story, perhaps, may provide encouragement for those who are working hard to invent and sustain small communities. Mostly, I hope that my reminiscences will enable the generations of my

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children and their children to understand the pull of nostalgia on myself and my contemporaries of that place and time. I trust that the narrative will provide to them, as well as to readers not within this particular ethnic and historical tradition, some idea of the culture, customs, and hopes of the Assyrian people. As is inevitable and necessary with all such personal reflections, the content and the interpretations are notably impressionistic and therefore subjective. That parochialism, inevitable as it must be, may actually support the intent of this memoir by illustrating how powerful and lasting an impact community can have. In order to provide some focus on these ruminations into the past, and for convenience and manageability, I have selected one year, 1946, as the canvas on which to daub the several strokes that will portray this community.2 It should provide some location and grounding to this material, as well as portraying a time when both the city and the Assyrian communities were at their peak of vitality. It was also one of those fascinating and definitive years in the history of our nation and of the world, notable for many events and developments that continue to have repercussions to the present. Civil war was raging in China; the Senate established the Atomic Energy Commission; Juan Peron was elected president in Argentina; Britain and France evacuated Lebanon; an atom bomb test took place on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific; Yugoslavians shot down two US planes; twelve Nazis were sentenced to death in Nuremberg; wage and price controls were abolished. Each of the twelve months included fascinating events: In January the FD-Phantom, the first fighter plan powered entirely by jet engines, was unveiled and President Truman established the CIA; in February, a 1,000ton planetoid hit near Kharkova in Russia, and Colonel Jimmy Stewart refused invitations to run for public office—Mr. Smith was not going to Washington. On March 5, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill hypnotized the world by introducing the phrase, “Iron Curtain.”3 On March 25, the United Nations Security Council convened its first meeting in the Hunter College gymnasium in New York City. April saw Jackie Robinson with the Montreal Royals, the Dumont Laboratories open

2 The information on the year 1946 comes from Champlain Publishing (1999) Time Passages: 1946 Commemorative Yearbook. Canada: Stewart House Publishing. 3 Reported in The New York Times, March 5, 1946.

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the first permanent television network, and twenty-eight Japanese leaders, including Hideki Tojo, indicted for war crimes. There were two previews in May of future events, the first an eerie precursor of a much more devastating tragedy: the first, a C-45 airplane crashed into the Manhattan Company building on May 20, and the second, Switzerland agreed to give up over $58 million worth of looted gold shipped there by Germany during World War II. June saw the opening meeting of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, and the War Department released its official listing of killed or missing army personnel during the War—308,978 in total. On July 1, the military dropped the Bikini atom bomb, and, four days later, French designer Louis Reard displayed his newly-designed, two-piece bathing suit that he called a “Bikini.” One marginalized group from American society moved forward in April and another was pushed backward. Breaking a 160year-old unwritten rule barring female clerks from the Senate floor, Senate President Kenneth McKellar (D-Tennessee) permitted clerk Frances Dustin to enter the chamber for a meeting with her boss, Senator Owen Brewster (R-Maine). The very next day, in Senator McKellar’s home state, censors in Knoxville cut scenes with singer Lena Horne from the film Ziegfield Follies. During August, the country experienced the worst polio outbreak since 1916. 1946’s death toll from the disease reached 154 by mid-month. Britain announced that it would no longer allow unscheduled arrivals of Jews into Palestine, and Calcutta’s Muslim-Hindu riots that left 3,000 people dead finally petered out as the city returned to at least a modicum of normalcy. During September, approximately three-quarters of a million veterans attended college under the GI Bill. On October 1, twelve of the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg were sentenced to death while others received prison sentences—life for former Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess—and a few were acquitted. Hermann Goering, on October 16, probably with the willing assistance of an American army officer, avoided the hangman by committing suicide. President Truman ended most of the wartime wage and price controls, and the Republicans swept both houses of Congress in the midterm elections. In November, the Exchange National Bank of Chicago opened ten drive-up teller windows that allowed customers to bank without leaving their cars. In the middle of December, Hanoi was declared to be under martial law by the French, who were intent on preserving their pre-War empire. France’s colonial military forces began their eight-year conflict with the Vietnamese under Ho Chi Minh over the issue of independence. The population of the United States at the end of the year was 141,389,000.

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What an incredibly exciting year in culture and entertainment: a Broadway season that still takes one’s breath away, a full and rich menu of radio shows, and a fledgling medium for the home that was just starting to find its way. Winner Take All, Sam Spade, Meet the Press and the Bing Crosby Show debuted on radio as that medium had not yet lost its preeminence to the tube.4 In the category of “things to come,” albeit with modest offerings at first, television networks announced their lineups of new shows: The Small Fry Club, At Home with Tex, You Are an Artist, and See What You Know premiered on the new medium. It was a banner year for Hollywood: The Best Years of Our Lives, The Big Sleep, The Postman Always Rings Twice, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Razor’s Edge, The Yearling, Henry V, The Killers, The Jolson Story, Notorious, My Darling Clementine, The Road to Utopia, and The Blue Dahlia. The Iceman Cometh, Joan of Lorraine, Another Part of the Forest, Born Yesterday, and No Exit opened on Broadway, along with musicals Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Mister, Lute Song, Beggar’s Holiday, and a revival of Showboat. Leonard Bernstein became director of symphony programs at New York City Center, and Charles Munch conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Patrice Munsel and Richard Tucker sang Lucia di Lammermoor in Chicago, and Rise Stevens and Eleanor Steber sang Carmen in San Francisco. Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, and Martha Graham were directing and choreographing dance companies. Jackson Pollock, Jack Levine, Mark Rothko, Dong Kingman, Paul Cadmus, George Grosz, and Willem de Kooning exhibited their paintings. Robert Penn Warren received a Pulitzer Prize for All the King’s Men. Best-selling books included Betty MacDonald’s The Egg and I, Elliott Roosevelt’s As He Saw It, Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, John Hersey’s Hiroshima, Mary Jane Ward’s The Snake Pit, John P. Marquand’s B. F.’s Daughter, Frank Yerby’s The Foxes of Harrow, Howard Fast’s The American, Thomas Heggen’s Mister Roberts, Albert Camus’ The Stranger, Carson McCuller’s The Member of the Wedding, and Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding. Until our contemporary cultural players can match this lineup, they need to desist from the

4 For a discussion on the radio programs of this and other years, and on the development of radio programming, cf. Susan J. Douglas (1999) Listening In: Radios and the American Imagination: From Amos ‘n Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern. New York City: Random House.

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condescension and sarcasm that much too often characterizes current reflections on the cultural output of the late 1940s and the early 1950s. Eniac, a giant automated electronic computer, was developed at Harvard to perform 1,000 times faster than humans. The Mayo Clinic reported that streptomycin would check the advance of tuberculosis. RCA marketed an unbreakable disc of vinylite. Professional and college sports, after naturally slowing down during the War, were again thriving. In the next year, the color of professional sports would, at last, begin to resemble the colorfulness of America. Jackie Robinson starred for Brooklyn’s Montreal farm club and was a year away from debuting with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Cleveland Indians’ Bob Feller struck out a record 348 batters, while the Cleveland ball club, in an inevitable merger of sports and entertainment, was purchased by Bob Hope and his partners. Pitcher Warren Spahn and catcher Yogi Berra came to the major leagues. The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Dodgers in the first pennant playoff. Ted Williams went four for four with two home runs in the All-Star game. The All-American Conference started competition with the National Football League. Glenn Davis and Felix “Doc” Blanchard were “Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside” for Army. Johnny Lujack quarterbacked Notre Dame. The NBA was formed with teams in eleven cities. Joe Louis knocked out Billy Conn in the Yankee Stadium. Ben Hogan won five tournaments, earning $42,566. Assault won racing’s Triple Crown. John D. Rockefeller donated $8.5 million for the construction of a United Nations headquarters in New York City. The birth rate for the year jumped twenty percent over 1945. RCA’s 10-inch television sets sold for $374, a considerable expenditure in those days. (Average weekly salaries in the United States in 1946 were less than $100. When the first minimum wage law was enacted in 1947, it mandated 40 cents per hour.) The Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Les Brown and Benny Carter big bands dissolved, and the Eddie Condon Jazz Band, in a reprise of the disrespect shown in 1939 to artist Marian Anderson, was denied use of the DAR’s Constitution Hall because of “the type of audience” that it would attract. Bugsy Siegel opened the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. United Airlines announced that it had ordered jet planes for commercial purposes. Estee Lauder, sunshine biscuits, instant potatoes, electric blankets, autobank service, mobile telephone service, Tide detergent, the Fulbright Awards, Timex watches, Family Circle, Scientific American, and ektachrome color film, all arrived for the first time. Black Americans voted for the first time in the Mississippi Democratic primary.

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In Yonkers, most of the servicemen and servicewomen were back from the War, gasoline was becoming easily available again, and, in September 1946, I started the fourth grade at Public School 19 on Groshon Avenue. Our Assyrian community, like most of Yonkers, was thriving even as we were all celebrating the end of the “duration.” I invite the reader back to this interesting year and to the communities of South Yonkers and of its Assyrians. We shall look at some stores, schools, churches, parks, and streets; at some wooden houses, mostly threedeckers; a few larger brick and stone apartment buildings; and a couple of hospitals. And we shall encounter the people, the most important element of the community—a multiethnic, multicultural, multiracial, multi-religious group of hard-working Americans who, with few exceptions, had a deep and abiding love of their country, their city, their communities, and their families. I have tried, in the conception and execution of this memoir, to avoid that cloying nostalgia that assumes that everything was better in “those good old days.” The television series, The Twilight Zone, a remarkable collection of social commentary, addressed this danger in three excellent and challenging episodes. In “A Stop at Willoughby” (1960) James Daly is a harried and frustrated New York City ad man who dreams of the idyllic nineteenth century community of Willoughby. The town is fictitious, but Daly, on several of his commuting runs, daydreams that he boards the train at twentieth century Grand Central Station and disembarks at a small Victorian town. Usually, he is awakened from this pleasant reverie by the conductor announcing his real stop. One time, however, he remains in his reverie, enjoying the town and its folk. In those twists for which the series is justly famous, we learn that Willoughby is the name of the funeral parlor where Daly is taken, having died in a fall from the commuter train as he tried to disembark at the imagined Willoughby. A second episode, “Walking Distance” (1959) finds Gig Young, as a similarly unhappy advertising executive, who finds himself at the town in which he grew up as it was when he was twelve years old. Incidentally, the advertising executive has served in many television episodes and feature films as a recurring metaphor for many Americans’ unhappiness with our fast-paced industrialized and urbanized world. In this episode, Young has been transported to his hometown, and he tries to stay in that earlier, happier, carefree period of his life. His father, who finally recognizes that this is his grown son, persuades him that one must move on in life regardless of the cares and worries that come with growing up, and Young does return to the correct time period.

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The last of this Twilight trio’s view of this issue is actually a comedy with Buster Keaton as a janitor in a small town of the 1890s who inadvertently activates an inventor’s time machine helmet to be transported to the 1950s. He encounters a scientist, Stanley Adams, who, like Daly and Young, is unhappy with life in the modern world. So he uses the time machine to return with Keaton to the supposedly quieter and calmer Victorian period. What Adams finds, however, is that he misses the amenities of the modern period and is thoroughly frustrated with the much slower pace. All three episodes emphasize the uselessness of looking backward with rose-colored glasses, through which we see not the real world of long ago but a cleaned-up and imaginary place of fancied innocence. There are some characteristics visible in this country today, especially in the urban areas, that I consider negative in comparison to what we had in 1946. As the reader will quickly discern, I believe that our society should have tried to retain some of the social arrangements that existed in 1946, including the valuable aspects of pace, neighborhood, and a greater sense of communal responsibility. A perverse feeling of self-satisfaction can come from nostalgic ruminations, but, ultimately, that distracts us from productively addressing current realities, so that we waste time denigrating the changes rather than committing to correcting what we consider unacceptable. So we engage in “remember when” exercises. I receive emails with these types of messages virtually once a day. For those who wish to engage in such journeys—which includes almost all of us some of the time—there is the avenue of old movies and recycled television and radio series. My purpose is not to bring up the past to show how things were better. It is the simpler one of recreating a time past for its own sake, but if readers derive some constructive suggestions as to arrangements that might be reconstituted in our society, so much the better. I hope that readers will gain some insight into the supportive milieu in which we lived, defined by clearly demarcated demographic and geographical boundaries. As the reader takes this journey with me, I hope it may provide some pleasure, some insight, and, perhaps, some encouragement. The prologue explains how I came to make this trip, actually and literarily, back to Yonkers. It also contains some reflections on comparisons of the area now with what it was then. That necessarily includes commentary and criticism of the social, economic, and aesthetic changes. Inevitably, these reflections lead to harsh evaluations about the living conditions in much of inner city America these days, with a few sermonic expostulations at the country for allowing this. Since I came close to being ordained as a

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minister, it was unavoidable that this tendency would emerge in this memoir. In the Chapter 1, I use the routine that my father and I undertook every Saturday morning—a shopping trip through our neighborhood—to describe the context of our community. Chapter 2 is a pause from the story of our community so that the reader may become acquainted with the circumstances that led to the Assyrians settling in Yonkers. Due to the restraints of time and space, and because it is not the primary purpose of this book to relate in detail the modern history of the Assyrians, just enough information is presented to allow the reader a workable understanding of the Assyrian identity. Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 deal with the two main communal activities of our people—church and socializing. In Chapter 5, I recall the various activities in which we engaged as youngsters in that time and place, and, finally, in Chapter 6 I present some of what we did in the environs of Yonkers. The epilogue will further clarify why I undertook this task. Before proceeding, however, it is necessary to provide a few notes on terminology and language. The ethnic group to which my family and I belong is known as “Assyrian.” We are the tiny remnant of the historical Church of the East, sometimes known as the Church of the Iranian Empire. This was an ecclesiastical enterprise that once stretched from Baghdad to Beijing. The adherents of this church have also been referred to throughout its history as Nestorians, a nickname derived from the church founders’ supposed allegiance to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople in the fifth century. A discussion of that connection and of the dense and arcane theological and political dimensions of that association and of that history is not necessary for the purposes of this memoir. Readers who wish to learn more of the dynamic history of this church, especially of its missionary activity throughout Asia, or of the theological controversies of those early centuries, can consult library catalogs and databases; there is a wealth of interesting and informative material on the subject.5 I sincerely

5 Useful readings are: Donald Attwater 1961) The Christian Churches of the East. Volume II: Churches not in Communion with Rome. Milwaukee WI: The Bruce Publishing Company; J.F.Bethune-Baker (1903) An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine to the Time of the Council of Chalcedon. London: Methuen and company; J.F.Coakley (1996) “The Church of the East Since 1914”. Bulletin of the John Rylands

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hope that one result from reading this minor work is that some will be moved to learn more about these Assyrian people. In Chapters 1 and 2, I try to present the reader with some information about recent historical events that resulted in the Assyrians becoming refugees fleeing their homes. Because of the aforementioned constraints of time and space, and because, as I have already noted, it is not the primary purpose of this book to relate in detail our history, I am including just enough information to allow the reader a workable understanding of our ethnic and religious identity. In Chapter 2 the reader will learn specifically about the circumstances and events that forced the Assyrians from their homelands and brought them to this country. The Assyrian people speak Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic language that, in turn, is one of languages within the large group of Semitic tongues. It is a notable example of the conflict in the historical and cultural studies of the Assyrians that there is not even a consensus about the name of our language. Some people prefer the designation “Neo-Aramaic,” others use “East Syrian,” and still others use “Neo-Syriac.” The language is often called, by the Assyrians themselves, as “Assyrian.” That is inaccurate. The language of the ancient Assyrians was Akkadian. “Syriac” is clearly the most accurate name; the Church of the East uses the classical version of Syriac as the liturgical language, while in everyday conversation and in recent literature and journals, Assyrians use the modern or vernacular version. Because it would not be useful for the majority of readers for me to have the names and expressions I include in the narrative to be printed in the Syriac alphabet, I have transliterated these terms into English. That, of course, does not stand the scrutiny of scholars. My aim is not to follow the strict norms of linguistic scholarship, but rather to provide the reader with access

University Library of Manchester. V.78/No.3. Autumn 1996, pages 179-198; East E.S. Drower (1956) Water into Wine: A Study of Ritual Idiom in the Middle East. London: John Murray; Samuel Hugh Moffet (1992) A History of Christianity in Asia. Volume I: Beginnings to 1500. San Francisco CA: HarperCollins; Steven Runciman (1955) The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches During the XIth and XIIth Centuries. Oxford: The Clarendon Press; Alexander Schmemann (1963) The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy. London: Harvill Press.

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to names and expressions as they were pronounced in the community in which I grew up.6 In many cases, there is variation even among Assyrians in pronunciation of some terms, especially geographical ones. The city in northwest Iran, for example, around which the Assyrian villages were congregated, is written and pronounced variably—Urmia, Oroomiah, or Urmi. I have chosen to use Urmia, the pronunciation I most often heard, but in the cases when I quote other writers, I replicate the spelling as the authors of the quotes originally wrote it. So join me in this trip down memory lane to learn about Assyrians, about Yonkers, about post–World War II life in one city, and, especially, about those aspects and characteristics of community that most of us— those who lived it and those who wish it—seem to miss. John Pierre Ameer December 2007

6 A useful introduction to this modern Syriac is Arthur John MacLean (1895). Grammar of the Dialects of Vernacular as Spoken by the Eastern Syrians of Kurdistan, Northwest Persia, and the Plain of Mosul. Cambridge: University Press.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is undoubtedly true of all books that encouragement and support are as critical to the completion of the work as are the capabilities of the writer. This is even truer in the writing of a memoir. Why, after all, should anyone be interested in one writer’s personal reminiscences? I found myself asking this question every time I sat in front of the computer screen. Clearly, as you are now holding the finished product, the support I have received from family and friends has been of inestimable value in completing this memoir, as well as in answering my questions regarding the significance of my early life and that of my community. This memoir, I believe, will contribute to our understanding of a very unusual time in our history—a period of remarkable national solidarity and optimism. I have been encouraged, throughout the writing of this book, by my three life-long friends, Darius and Daniel Baba and, until his untimely death in 1995, Norman David. At one point, early in my writing, I was very close to chucking the whole project, but, during a weekend we spent together in Connecticut, my three friends gave me a necessary and helpful shove. Darius has been alongside me in other ways as well, looking over the early chapters of the book and accompanying me to Yonkers to reorient myself with the locations referred to in the memoir. My colleague, Philip Perlmutter, has consistently urged me on and, at the very beginning of this process, made very important critical comments on the long essay that was the precursor to this book. My friend Chip Coakley, of Harvard University, whose own book on the Assyrians and the Church of England is a model of scholarship, has always supported my interest in and exploration of the Assyrian historical and contemporary experience and has consistently suggested productive research possibilities. I received important information from William Sargis about the Assyrian veterans’ organization in Yonkers, and, from him and William Kambar, I learned more about the service of Yonkers’ Assyrians in World War II and about our Presbyterian church in the transition years of 1935– 1937. Alexander Nweeia gave a critical reading to Chapters 1–3, and has been a necessary prod to me. Just before he died, my cousin Bob Ameer took time to share his experience in World War II and lent me documents relevant to that experience. Donald James lent me important photographs xxi

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of the men’s and women’s groups of Yonkers’ Assyrian-American Association. My classmate from Yonkers High School’s Class of ’54, Larry Ballas, has a prodigious memory of the city in our younger days. He has been generous in sharing his recollections with me and in correcting my information as to people and locations. I have had the great advantage to work in the Hiatt Center for Urban Education at Clark University. The atmosphere in this department, created and fostered by its faculty, and shepherded by the Chair, Tom DelPrete, is one that encourages productivity and forward movement. Clark University has materially supported the preparation of this book for publishing; I am grateful to Tom and to Associate Provost Nancy Budwig for arranging that support. George Kiraz and Steve Wiggins of Gorgias Press have encouraged me by undertaking the publication of this book as well as by providing professional encouragement for my second effort upon which I am working—a book on the American missionary work among the Assyrians. I am very grateful to Diana Ghazzawi for her comprehensive and insightful editing of the manuscript. Her understanding of the character and intent of this work has been most encouraging and gratifying. I am especially grateful to the Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society, especially Editor Nadia E. Joseph for including my second chapter in Volume 12 of their publication. As with everything I do in life, the support of my immediate family— Margarita Perez, Inge-Lise Ameer, Mark Slomiak, Eleanor Runken, and Gerhard Runken—has been exceptional and constant. Eric Paul Ameer provided critical research assistance and was a great travel companion to local sites prior to his most untimely death on April 26, 2005. His spirit, and his love for Assyrians and for his Assyrian heritage, permeates my thoughts and my writing. In this work, as in most of my professional efforts, I have received and continue to receive positive reinforcement from Margaret and Henry Yaure and Nancy and James Anderson. I have had four individuals in my thoughts throughout the writing of this memoir: my grandchildren, Mollie Agnes Slomiak and Max Eprim Slomiak, for whom I want this to be an appropriate introduction to the Assyrian community of Yonkers from which they are descended, and my parents, Eprim Shlemon Ameer and Agnes Yaure Ameer, for whom no amount of gratitude would be sufficient. Neither this book nor any other of my accomplishments over the last twenty years would have been achieved without the encouragement, support, assistance, and love of my wife, Margarita Perez.

PROLOGUE “Yonkers, a disheveled city next to New York City." Bob Simon, 60 Minutes, CBS, January 11, 2004

In 1989, after an absence of 17 years, I returned to Yonkers, the first of four trips since then, to the part of the city in which I had been born and raised. Our part of the city has always been referred to as “South Yonkers,” even though it comprises only the southwest quadrant. All but a few of the activities in which I took part from childhood through high school—social, religious, academic, recreational, familial—took place in this quarter of the city. I wanted to walk those streets at least one more time. But I had two other purposes as well for this particular visit. I had heard about dramatic changes in South Yonkers, and I wanted to see them for myself. In fact, those who had stayed in Yonkers or had recently visited it kept warning me to not go, because I would be disappointed by what I would see. Those comments were so determinedly pessimistic that I could tell that they came from more than the usual nostalgia about change and loss. And so, because my youth in Yonkers had been such a wonderful time, I felt I needed to verify or dismiss all this talk about the neighborhoods that I had so loved. Second, I wanted my wife, Margarita Perez, to become acquainted with the environs of my young years. She had grown up in Manhattan, where Yonkers was looked upon by native Manhattanites as part of the provinces. In the lyrics of one of the songs in Hello Dolly, there is the line referring to Yonkers as a “hick town.”7 So there was little incentive for New Yorkers to go from Manhattan to Yonkers, unless they needed to drive through on their way to some other place north or east of our city. That changed somewhat with the rebuilding and reopening of the Yonkers Raceway. The trotting races did attract millions of people, but they didn’t

7 20th Century-Fox, Renault (1969) Hello Dolly. Produced and written by Ernest Lehman, directed by Gene Kelly (Taken from Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker of Yonkers.)

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come to Yonkers; they came to the raceway. I doubt that many of them even realized that they were in the fifth largest city in New York State, much less that they were, in fact, in Westchester County. So I wanted Margarita to make this tour that she had not done while she was growing up just over the border. As to my first purpose, I was, as I have indicated, deeply curious. How different really was our neighborhood? Of course I expected to see significant change; indeed, change is a constant, and maybe the most significant, characteristic of American life. This has been especially true during the last forty or fifty years due mainly to dramatic changes in technology, demographics, cultural norms, and economic arrangements. Even so, I was not prepared for the stark differences between what was and what is. Nostalgia about one’s own place had interfered with my acknowledging the reality that Yonkers, like most urban centers in the country, had to have absorbed some of the urban pathologies and the neglect and decay that are eating away at too many American cities. Why should this rust belt city be any different from the rest? Margarita and I boarded a bus at Fordham Road—she had an apartment then in the Morris Park section of The Bronx. We rode it to the end of the line—City Line Park, on Broadway, where Yonkers touches the Borough of The Bronx—and we began our tour of my area from there. Our route took us north along Broadway, the main stem of South Yonkers. Broadway is part of state Route 9 that travels along the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, the state capitol. In Yonkers it is a wide boulevard, surprisingly so for a street that dates well back into the nineteenth century. It was the route for our holiday parades. It was the street where we could get a bus to the IRT Line terminus at 242nd Street that took passengers down through The Bronx and Manhattan, ending in Brooklyn. In those years, most of South Yonkers’ upscale stores and restaurants lined the avenue, as did our two first-run movie houses and two second run theaters—those cultural palaces of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. The first objective on our walk that day was Getty Square, the hub of South Yonkers, and, in fact, until the 1960s, the hub for the whole city. We made a few detours along the way, returning always to Broadway until we reached “The Square.” There we turned west and walked the few blocks down to “The River,”—the Hudson, of course—and then turned south onto Riverdale Avenue, the street that would lead us back to the border with The Bronx. It felt good to be back there again. There is a comforting sense of security and well-being that comes with visiting the places of one’s

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childhood if one’s early years were happy and fulfilling, as mine were. Though the profound changes to the area couldn’t entirely displace those good feelings, they did diminish them. The full impact of the changes that had occurred crowded my happier thoughts as we moved through my part of Yonkers. This evoked a palpable sadness. But that, too, is impossible to dissect. How much of the sadness comes from witnessing the changed landscape and how much from remembrances of times past and people gone? And, of course, to what extent is that unhappiness a result of being reminded once again of one’s age? It is impossible to sort out the extent to which each of these factors contributed to this melancholy. Yet, even while I was aware of the complex interplay of these stimuli, I could tell that much of the sadness originated not from the number of changes that had occurred between 1972 and 1989, but by their types. Even though I was ready to face the fact that my return would, in all likelihood, be an emotional roller coaster, that realization did not prepare me for the stark differences that the years had wrought on South Yonkers. Several apartment houses that I remembered as always being kept up and clean were now in various stages of misuse, disrepair, and decay. The contrast between then and now in these houses was so profound that it transcended the normal and understandable error of relying too much on memory, which can easily be distorted because of natural tendencies to want something to be what it never was. Anyone familiar with Broad Street in Philadelphia understands the kind of difference we observed. On that street, where once rows of tidy little houses had marched together toward downtown Philadelphia, linked arm in arm by common fences, there are now decayed remnants of that bourgeois cleanliness and tidiness. Most of those row houses are now in such a dilapidated state that it seems unbelievable that they have not all collapsed, though many have. They give the impression that an automobile had run helter-skelter through the procession. Though not as disfiguring and irretrievable, end-of-the century Yonkers nevertheless exhibited the same kind of regressive alteration. A particularly dramatic example of this new configuration was St. Andrew’s Church, on the corner of Morris and Livingston Streets, a once attractive Tudor structure of stone and redwood built in 1897. The building that we saw bore no resemblance to that beautiful structure. Now it was just a burned-out shell, a broken remnant of its once beautiful presence. It reminded us of those bombed-out buildings seen in stills and documentaries of 1945 Berlin. The church burned down on August 16, 1981, apparently, according to newspaper accounts, the result of arson. At the time of its destruction, the building was being used by a variety of

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community agencies: senior citizen hot lunch programs, a Head Start Pre-School Center, The Friendship Day Camp. The terrible impact such an event can have on hope was captured in comments by Margery Ames, president of CLUSTER, Inc., the community assistance group using the church: ‘It was awful,’ she said. ‘The church has several Tiffany stained glass windows that are gone. Just blown to bits.’ She said the church’s pipe organ was melted almost beyond recognition. ‘The most disturbing thing about it is that the center was a real sign of hope in the area,’ she said.8

St. Andrew’s Church had been the first location in Yonkers for our Church of the East congregation. I had passed by the church twice a day for three years, on my way to and from Hawthorne Junior High School. The last time I had actually been inside the church was in the 1950s to attend the wedding of an Assyrian couple. As I sadly and dispiritedly looked at what remained of St. Andrew’s, I was reminded again of those warnings from friends that I shouldn’t visit the area, that it was better for me to remember South Yonkers as it was, to remain content and secure in that memory. Yet, for those like myself, who are able to remember, there is an important reason for visiting South Yonkers. With memories of what had been, we may recommend possibilities and thus articulate what could be again. Looking at what is, and recalling what was, enables and, indeed, encourages us to assert without equivocation that a more livable, a more pleasant, a more encouraging urban environment is possible because it did once exist. The restoration of safe and attractive urban communities by the action of committed and purposive people is obviously possible since, after all, it was the human activity that brought about the breakdown. A purpose for an autobiographical reflection on past communities, therefore, is to encourage the belief in the possibility of community and to present examples of the factors—social, economic, political, and architectural—that sustained such communities. A question that urban writers and planners have been posing for quite a long time is how could American cities be allowed to undergo such

8

Quoted in The Herald Statesman, August 17, 1981.

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negative transformations in so short a time? What might political and business leaders have done to stench this bleeding in the civic society, and why didn’t they do that? Why does a country with an enormous cornucopia of resources allow parts of it to decay? Where is the evidence of the concern one would expect the whole to have for its parts? As we passed each familiar landmark, I had an overwhelming sense of empathy for the youngsters growing up in this Yonkers who did not have the child-friendly setting that we had. Why have we deprived this generation of what we had? Why did we steal their happiness with such a callous indifference to the quality of their context? How is it possible for political leaders, in good conscience, to issue proclamations from their seats in government about what a great world power we are, and about how we are the envy of the world, while, simultaneously, permitting some Americans to live in Third World conditions? Perhaps by traveling the lanes of memory, recovering descriptions of those disappeared communities, we can stimulate constructive responses to those questions. The Yonkers of 1946 infused us with a hope and a belief in the future that enveloped and encouraged us. A young person then could look from the secure and positive setting that was South Yonkers toward a productive and positive future. I know with a certainty reinforced by 40 years work in schools that most of the young people in today’s urban areas have aspirations similar to the ones we had, but what unbelievable reserves of inner strength it must take to harbor hope and ambition amid so much negative space. My peers and I were spared having to generate so demanding an exertion. I do not wish to present a dichotomy between what was then mainly good and what is now generally bad. That would be too simple and too simplistic a bifurcation. There were negative aspects to the city in our time, as there are positive aspects to the city in this time. What I do believe, however, is that by recreating the supportive characteristics of our communities and contrasting them with some of the detracting and debilitating circumstances of the present city, we as a national community might re-conceptualize our policies and attitudes toward modern American cities, especially as to the more vulnerable and wounded parts of them, with the clear purpose in mind of revitalization and reaffirmation. In addition, reflections on the vital community can reinforce and support the remarkable attempts at rebuilding and re-energizing that have characterized much of Yonkers’ rebuilding of the last decade. Each subsequent visit to Yonkers during the last sixteen years has left me with two distinct impressions. The first is that there are important

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efforts to revive the city and bring it from decay to revitalization, as difficult as those are to sustain. There is a great deal more to be done, and much of the continuing work is tied to national and regional economic health. Hopefully, the rebuilding of buildings and of people’s hope will be sustained. By doing so, the recreation of the vibrant community of 1946, then, might serve to reaffirm this work of restoration and make its target more easily understood. The replacement for the burned-out hulk of St. Andrew’s is an inspiring example of this development. A beautiful new elementary school has been constructed on the site of the church—the Eugenio Maria de Hostos Microsociety School. The school, with an obviously dedicated staff and principal, has created a vibrant and relevant school for the whole of the diverse community that sends its children there. The microsociety program, with its emphasis on providing students with direct, hands-on experiences of our democratic political system and capitalist economic system, complements a demanding academic schedule. The proof of this is an attendance rate above 95%, success in academics, and an engaged and happy student body. Second, although the ethnicities of the area have changed for the most part, there are, nevertheless, important similarities between the current occupants and those who lived there in my time. One important commonality is that of struggle. Both then and now, South Yonkers housed struggling immigrant communities, people striving to maintain economic, cultural, religious, and ethnic stability as they made their place within American society. The similarity, it must be noted, is in kind and not in degree, and so should not be overstated. If too much is made of the commonality, then the task of revitalization might be minimized and starved of necessary resources. The economic conditions, in particular, are critically different, and the context of southern New York State in 1946 was one of considerably more friendliness to new Americans My people, the Assyrians, and all the other residents of South Yonkers, once the Great Depression was over, had sound economic opportunities and excellent job choices and prospects, including ready access to a strong manufacturing sector. Now, however, most of those manufacturing plants are gone; and many from the middle class have fled South Yonkers for the eastern part of the city, or the northern parts of Westchester County, or east to New England and west to innumerable locations. In a dramatic illustration of this economic regression, Yonkers in the 1980s devolved into being a financial “basket case,” and went into receivership to the state. None of us in 1946 could have conceived of such a turnabout in the city’s prospects.

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One of the reigning clichés of American society is that each person should “pull oneself up by his boot straps.” That works well if you have access to boots and straps: jobs, schools, safe neighborhoods, decent housing. Our families had this access and they had the realistic hope that their hard work would pay off for them and, more importantly, for their children. Too many current residents neither have boots and straps in sufficient quantity, nor can they derive some comfort from the hope that they might soon obtain them. Let us not forget that these new people want jobs, hope, and security just as achingly as did their predecessors; they are the victims, not the perpetrators, of the negative changes in places like South Yonkers. One of the many important discoveries of sociologists like Harvard’s William Julius Wilson is that Americans living in blighted inner city areas harbor the “American Dream” to the same degree as their more comfortable fellow citizens.9 The issue is not one of differing aspirations— it has to do instead with different degrees of resources, support, safety, schooling, and positive role models. Our walking tour took us past my elementary and junior high schools, following the routes I had taken as a student, past the once-familiar stores and houses, play fields and parks. Some of those spots were still serving the same functions as they did in my time. Others were gone, bulldozed or burned out, while still others were boarded up. All of the side streets in South Yonkers used to be tree-lined. Now, all but a few of the remaining trees look haggard and spent. On many blocks, where the trees provided shaded walkways, their absence has created unshaded urban dreariness. In some places, an obviously half-hearted attempt at replacement was made. It was evident to us that these new plantings lacked sustained care; they were just planted and forgotten, and were struggling to survive amid the grime and neglect. The street names remain the same, of course: Caryl Avenue, Valentine Lane, Radford Street, Post Street, McLean Avenue, Elliot Street, Morris Street, Ludlow Street, Highland Avenue and the rest. Lawrence Street, at the summit of a little hill on which Broadway proceeds south just before dipping down toward City Line, had once been a place of neat apartment structures and pleasant neighbors. Our close family friends, the Babas, lived

William Julius Wilson (1987) The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 9

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at 1 Lawrence, an inviting and comfortable apartment building on the corner of Lawrence and Broadway. Now the street had become notorious as the headquarters of the “Lawrence Street Posse,” which was, as reported regularly since the 1980s, in the view of the police, the worst of Yonkers’ drug gangs.10 The persistence of these gangs is an appalling commentary on our unwillingness to commit time, money, and personnel to this urban blight. As late as November 15, 2002, the Journal News reported that a member of the Lawrence Street Posse was arrested by police on Valentine Lane for “third-degree criminal possession of a weapon.” We knew of only one gang in South Yonkers in my youth—the “Rivats”—if they could even be called a “gang.” They wanted to be considered a gang but it was hard to take them seriously enough to acknowledge this ambition. They were actually just a small group of disaffected males trying to emulate what they understood to be the prevailing forms of gang dress and behavior. The group’s name was short for river rats, derived from their ramshackle hut on the riverfront. To visualize these Rivats, just imagine about a dozen Fonzies, with the black leather jackets but without the pizzazz. They were so few and so irrelevant to the lives and interests of most of us that it is as easy in recollection as it was then to ridicule and marginalize these guys. Incidentally, as yet another example of the failure of the media to understand and accurately portray the social context of the 1940s and ’50s, let me emphasize the improbability, indeed almost impossibility, of a Fonzie and a Richie Cunningham associating socially with each other. Today the drug and alcohol abuse with which the Lawrence Street Posse is identified are, unarguably, symptoms of the victory of hopelessness over hope. One cannot and should not make light of the new gangs of disaffected young people. They are born and thrive at the intersection where the American dream meets the failure of the majority population to carry through on its obligation to allow, encourage, and assist marginalized groups to rise above their constricted circumstances. These kids need the same social and economic stability that we had in 1946 so that they may be properly prepared to face and to overcome difficult circumstances. Will this protection and hope upon which my generation thrived be provided to Yonkers’ current crop of young people?

10

Staff, The Journal News, November 15, 2002.

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Yet even as Margarita and I were struck and shaken by these scenes of neglect, we became simultaneously aware in each of our visits that there was more to this story. Evidence of renewal efforts were present throughout the area, all the more striking because of the obstacles that come with such decayed contexts. This reminded us of the hope that grows from within the people themselves and of the vitality and strength that is dramatic proof of people’s capacities to aspire to and strive for better lives and for secure and supportive communities even in adverse circumstances. It would all be easier, of course, if the majority of the American population fulfilled its obligations. But the stirrings and coming to fruition of renewal is present in the city. I have already mentioned the de Hostos School. In fact, the Yonkers public school system includes a number of outstanding institutions with programs that are innovative and highly successful. I shall have more to say about those institutions in Chapter 5. The building that had housed both our Assyrian Presbyterian Church and the Hungarian Presbyterian Church, on Jackson Street, now serves another active congregation—the Deeper Deeper Truth Miracle Deliverance Church. On South Broadway, in a former bank building that our congregation had converted into our second church location in 1960, a plaque on the outside wall that once identified our congregation has been replaced by one that announces the Igreja de Nossa Senhora de Fatima church, a Brazilian congregation. The former Dutch Reformed Church on Ludlow Street is now the Bethany AME Zion Church, and the former Central Methodist Church on Morris Street is the St. Thomas Mar Thoma Church, a congregation of immigrants from India. This is actually an interesting bit of cyclical history, since the Mar Thoma denomination was founded by missionaries from two churches of Syriac Christianity: the Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox Church. The Lutheran church near the corner of Valentine Avenue and Broadway is now the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church. South Presbyterian Church on Radford Street has three congregations: the traditional Presbyterian congregation, a Korean congregation (Hosanna Mission Church), and a Latino congregation (Primera Iglesia Bautista SBC). Just as our religious and social organizations had nurtured our immigrant communities, these newer churches are striving to achieve the same results for their people. The classiest restaurant in South Yonkers in 1946 was The French Chef on South Broadway. I had dined there only once, in 1962. I have learned that many of my contemporaries had never been there. In the first place, the restaurant was out of my parents’ price range and that of most of our friends. In the second place, going to restaurants was not a common

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activity for most South Yonkers families. My parents rarely went to a restaurant, even to an inexpensive one. There was only the occasional trip to a diner for a quick meal during a shopping trip. This was in part an economic decision, and in part because my mother was such an outstanding cook that going to a restaurant was unnecessary. Mostly it was because the formality of restaurant dining precluded the dinner meal being what it should be—a time not only for good food but also for extensive and animated conversation. For my parents and their friends, the restaurant drill was too constricting and unsatisfying, no matter what the quality of the food. The French Chef is gone but the building still housed a restaurant, the name of which illustrated the demographic changes of the city. In 1989 it had morphed into La Campaña, a Mexican restaurant. We wanted to go in and try the menu, but it was too early and the restaurant was not yet receiving patrons. That opportunity is now gone since, a few years ago, the restaurant was replaced by the Iglesia Pentecostal Nueva Jerusalem. But diagonally across from the late French Chef/La Campaña, at the corner of Herriot Street and Broadway, Louie’s, an excellent Italian restaurant, still serves patrons. The store names are different and reflect the new American urban demography: La Grande Grocery, Tlaxcala Thrift Shop, Mexican Auto Repairs, Caribbean Pirate West Indian Restaurant, Sanchez Grocery, Yemen Discount Store, Dinero Grocery, Mi Ranchito Restaurant, La Cabanita Mexican Restaurant, and an interesting interethnic experience—a Chinese Restaurant that announces, “Comida China y Latina.” I learned that the largest Latino group in the city was not, as I had expected, Puerto Rican or Dominican, but Mexican. That surprised me—my first reaction was to wonder why someone would emigrate from Mexico or the American southwest to Yonkers. Yet, while it is true that the cultural and geographic journey from Mexico to Yonkers is lengthy, it is no more so than the one from Poland, Sweden, or Iran, and the attraction remains the same—a better opportunity, real or supposed. The local parks that were brown, dilapidated, uninviting, and sparsely occupied in 1989 have been restored during the three subsequent visits I took since then. Lincoln Park at the intersection of McLean Avenue and South Broadway is clean but no longer particularly inviting—the grass has been replaced by concrete so that it is more of a plaza than a park. The oaks and elms that created a canopy over the benches and walkways are gone. Looking at the current condition, one cannot help suspecting that the city’s

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intent is to discourage people from congregating. The old Civil War cannon on which we climbed so many times is still there, except that now it sits not on grass as it used to but on concrete. Sunset Park down by the Hudson River has undergone an amazing transformation, looking as green and well kept as I remember it in 1946. It is now the A. A. O’Boyle Park. I have no idea who O’Boyle was, but his name now graces a wonderful urban park. Similarly, I have no recollection of an Abe Cohen, but he is honored at a small and attractive plaza just outside the Ludlow train station a short distance from Sunset/O’Boyle Park. The two names are indicative—in 1946 the Irish and the Jews lived in South Yonkers in significant numbers. We need to be careful with this analysis, however, and remain mindful that even with these laudable improvements, major problems continue to persist and even fester, as was evident from the impressions that we received on each subsequent visit. Many of the renewal projects seemed, too quickly, to revert to conditions of decay. It is clear that the efforts to improve the city rest on the most tenuous of resources so that the regression from improvement back to dilapidation happens too easily. It is as if there is a ping-pong effect: In one visit, a building or park looks deserted or decayed; in the next visit, a few years later, that same structure has evidently been propped up, cleaned, and painted; and then in the third visit, yet another two years later, the site is on its way back to despair. The necessities to sustain and extend improvements in Yonkers are obviously lacking. The result is that Yonkers, like most of America’s urban areas, contains a depressing dichotomy, altering between improvement and stagnation. Furthermore, obvious opportunities for supporting renewal and community redevelopment are ignored. Our elementary school, P. S. 19, on Groshon Avenue, is a magnificent structure—granite exterior, high windows, solid oak in the interior—with breathtaking views of the Hudson River from the huge second and third floor windows. The school property includes an adjoining field that we used for physical education, which should have been converted to a very appealing urban neighborhood park. This building sits in an area of South Yonkers that is in poor shape economically and structurally. The school building would be an ideal community center to provide medical, social, educational, recreational, and counseling support for the surrounding area. Instead, the building lies boarded up and unused, a sure indicator that it will increasingly deteriorate. The same is true of the old P. S. 13 building at the intersection of McClean Avenue and Rumsey Road. The decay in that building appears to have reached a point where rehabilitation is no longer possible. Why let such

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well-constructed and functional buildings stand idle and neglected? The truthful answer to that question says much about the failure of imagination and will among urban governments. Compelling evidence that so much more needs to be done to support the families of the city was put forward recently in a New York Times Magazine article. Health care problems of Yonkers’ low-income population were featured in this essay on urban despair. The article’s title alone was chilling: “Enough to Make You Sick?” Author Helen Epstein writes about diseases normally associated with old age that are now afflicting younger people in “America’s rundown urban neighborhoods.” She focuses in on South Yonkers’ housing projects: Beverly Blagmon lives in the School Street housing projects in southwest Yonkers, a once-vibrant manufacturing area just north of New York City now long mired in unemployment and poverty. Beverly has asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis, gout and an enlarged heart, and her blood has a dangerous tendency to clot spontaneously. She is 48, and she had her first heart attack in her late 20s.

Epstein continues: The neighborhoods…look like poor urban areas all across the country, with bricked-up abandoned buildings, vacant storefronts, broken sidewalks and empty lots with mangy grass overgrowing the ruins of old cars, machine parts and heaps of garbage. Young men in black nylon skullcaps lurk around the payphones on street corners. These neighborhoods are as segregated from the more affluent, white sections of metropolitan New York as any township in South Africa under apartheid. Living in such neighborhoods as southwest Yonkers, central and East Harlem, central Brooklyn and the South Bronx is assumed to predispose the poor to a number of social ills, including drug abuse, truancy and the persistent joblessness that draws young people into a long cycle of crime and incarceration. Now it turns out these neighborhoods could be destroying people’s health as well.11

As we continued during our initial visit, on to the middle leg of our tour, we followed the route my father and I had taken on Saturdays to do “the

Helen Epstein (October 12, 2003). “Enough to Make You Sick?” New York Times Magazine, pages 75-81. 11

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weekend shopping.” The memory of that marvelous weekly ritual, more than anything else, powerfully and joyfully evokes for me the Yonkers of 1946. That route, which I detail in Chapter 1, is what I most wanted to retrace in 1989. But, by seeing the desperate conditions about which Epstein writes, I could only reflect that the reality of “my Yonkers” actually exacerbates the despair by reminding me of what urban life could be; it does not have to be what we now sadly look upon. 1946 was real. It did happen then, so there is no compelling reason why it can’t happen again. The only obstacle is that of the general political will. Leaving these urban areas to their despair and hopelessness is not only counterproductive to the development of national well being, it is immoral as well.

CHAPTER 1: SATURDAYS I always thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson. Washington Irving

I loved the Saturday morning shopping trips I took with my father through our section of South Yonkers. I waited during each week, with barely contained eagerness, for that Saturday ritual, in part because of the stores we would visit, but mostly in anticipation of the many Assyrian friends and relatives we would encounter on our route. These were exciting journeys marked by the wonderful smells and the myriad products in the stores, the lively conversations, and the reaffirmation of the specialness of our neighborhood. And, of course, there was the joy of being with my father, who my siblings and I called “Pop.” As with most Assyrians, his given name came from the Bible. He had been baptized Eprim Shlemon Ameer, in 1904, in the village of Geog Tapa, in the district of Urmia, in the province of Azerbaijan, in what was then the Iranian Empire. I have no recollection as to why my brother, sister, and I called him Pop. Why not “Pa” or “Papa” or “Dad?” Why the ridiculous sounding “Pop?” He seemed not to mind “Pop;” at least, he never indicated that he considered it peculiar or unwanted. If it did bother him to any extent, he has his posthumous revenge, with interest—my grandchildren call me Pop-Pop. Pop was a remarkable man in many ways; at least it seemed that way to me. Like most of the men in the Ameer clan, he was very strong, even though he weighed only about 170 pounds and was 5’6”. On innumerable occasions I watched him carry with ease loads of well over 100 pounds. That included his floor sander, which he carried up to and down from our second story apartment. Pop was almost completely bald for all the time I knew him, yet pictures of him in his twenties and early thirties show a man with a fine head of wavy hair. As with most men of our ethnicity, he had ample body hair everywhere but on his head, a fact that he joked about regularly, saying, “Why couldn’t some have stayed on my head?” As I reached my early thirties, I was able to fully and immediately appreciate his complaint! 15

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Though he had a pronounced middle-age paunch, he was not even close to obese proportions. In fact, other than his rounded middle, he might have been described as wiry. In those same early pictures, he can be observed as almost model-like in his slimness. Usually in those pictures, he has on a three-piece suit and holds a fedora at his side. He was a handsome man with facial features softer and less pronounced than those of most of us of Middle Eastern background. His disposition was similarly subdued; Pop was one of the gentle people. What I think I most remember about him is the immense love he had. This was not only for his immediate family—he certainly had an unlimited supply of love for us. But he also dearly loved his relatives, his friends, the Assyrian people, and people in general. Pop thoroughly enjoyed people— watching them, speaking with them, noting their accomplishments, worrying about their distress, feeling deeply for any suffering he saw or heard about. Whether from his experience of World War I, from natural inclinations, or both, he had an enormous capacity for empathy. At the same time, he did not tolerate fools easily. Whenever he was mistreated by someone, or whenever someone in whom he put trust betrayed that trust, he simply ceased to consider that person. This turning away was not accompanied by anger or a grudge; Pop simply no longer recognized that person’s existence. That has always struck me as a very healthy manner of coping with unpleasant personal relationships and encounters. He also tended to have a healthy skepticism regarding most politicians, and of people of influence in general, a common trait among working class Americans. But those persons were minor characters in the particular drama of life encompassed within his observation. The major actors that he observed and considered important and worth watching lived in South Yonkers. With this appetite for people’s lives, it should not be surprising that he had a reverence for history, enjoying reading articles about historical events and viewing movies with historical themes. Pop, like most Assyrians, was a deeply devout individual, but he never, ever, preached at anyone, neither at us in the family circle nor at those outside. Although he would probably not be able to articulate it, he acted in his faith from a belief that one preached by practice, by example. He simply, yet profoundly, tried to live the essence of the Christian faith, and was uninterested in the panoply of ritual, theology, and polity that too often suffocates religious faith and expression. He rarely talked about prejudice or racism, yet he practiced an anti-racist, anti-prejudice program in his encounters. Pop took people on their own merits. He believed in judging

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people, as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s powerfully memorable phrase states, by “the content of their character.” He worked as a house painter, mostly on a self-employed basis. Occasionally, however, a job would require his hiring on an extra painter or two. Quite naturally, his first choice was to seek out another Assyrian painter if one was available. If not, he would hire one of the Puerto Rican or African-American painters in New York City with whom he was acquainted. He knew that these painters had difficulty obtaining jobs. I noted when I started keeping his accounts that he paid all of his hires the same wages, whatever their ethnicity. I also noticed, on those jobs when I was taken along, that he would treat these temps as fellow workers. Pop liked to go to the luncheonettes of the neighborhoods in which he worked, and he would take along his workers. The conversations at the tables were as among two or three peers, not as boss and hired help. There was absolutely no way that Pop could ever be patronizing or condescending to people he knew and to those with whom he worked. He told me one time that he took on the Puerto Rican and AfricanAmerican painters because he knew that they had trouble getting into the union and, even when they were able to do so, would find themselves intentionally overlooked in the hiring. That was only one reason he despised the painters’ union. He paid his dues regularly, but only to avoid any hassles. He assumed the union leaders had no interest in any aspect of their jobs besides that of lining their pockets. Evidence of racism by the union officers simply validated Pop’s general disdain for this particular officialdom. This discordant note in regard to unions was endemic among South Yonkers’ workers. On the one hand, it is unarguable that without unions, these workers would be considerably less well off and less secure. On the other hand, the workers believed, often without evidence, but with deep conviction, that their union officials were dishonest. They felt powerless to confront this. As long as the union supported higher wages and benefits, its unseemliness, to whatever extent this was present, could be overlooked. By emphasizing the highly personal nature of Pop’s religion and ideology, I do not mean to suggest that he was reluctant about his church— quite the contrary. Together with family, the church shaped the core of his identity and the circumference of his life. Pop never missed Sunday services; on the rare occasions when he was not in Yonkers on a Sunday, he would attend church where he was. He served either as deacon or as elder in our Assyrian Presbyterian Church for all the years that I can remember. As with most Assyrians, he was conscious of the seventeen hundred year

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history of Nestorian Christianity, and very proud of that story. As my generation came quickly to understand, he and his contemporaries were keenly aware of the terrible persecutions that Assyrians had experienced for holding on to Christianity in the midst of a persistently hostile context. This lent a dimension of solemnity to church membership that might not otherwise have been there. Every Sunday morning that we were home, he would, quietly and alone, in the living room, read some passages from the Bible and then stand, with eyes closed, and pray for about ten or fifteen minutes. Religion was for him, therefore, both a collective and a personal experience, even as it was his core. Obviously, I was always proud that this remarkably mature, kind, loving, and strong man was my father, so it naturally followed that I had such a bursting pride in being in my father’s company on any occasion. To be his companion on those Saturday shopping tours was delicious. I could hardly contain myself each Saturday morning as I waited for us to start. Though my weekdays were filled with school, after-school playing, and the afternoon radio programs, all of which, I remember as great fun, the Saturday shopping trips with my father had their own kind of specialness. 1946 was only one year beyond the end of World War II, but the celebratory feeling that resulted from the in the War already permeated our lives and attitudes. We had made these same marketing trips during the War, but the end of that conflict seemed to lift the seriousness and heaviness that inevitably were our companions on these walks in those remarkable and unique war years. Even though my friends and I were only at elementary school age at the time, we still could feel, if not fully understand, the enormity and significance of that struggle. The magnitude of that war and the totality of the victory inevitably made its aftermath, for most Americans, a time for joyous celebration, in spite of the reality of so much death and destruction. In 1946 it was finished “over there,” and I fancied that we walked with lighter steps on Saturdays. Pop and I had a specific, unchanging routine of direction and of stops. Our marketing took us to vendors who sold the ingredients necessary to our Assyrian menu: the Riverdale Butcher Shop, Weiss the greengrocer, Finkelstein’s dairy, Blue Bell Bakery and Weber’s Bakery. The goods my father purchased looked and smelled wonderful, but the greater wonder was the marvelous way that Mom converted these ingredients into superbly delicious meals. That would come later. While shopping I had to defer final gratification, but that only made my mouth water more than usual as each item was put into a brown paper bag. The substitute for tasting pleasure

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that would come later was the joys of the stops and encounters on that shopping route. Given the small size of the community and their common history and ethnicity, each member of South Yonkers’ Assyrian community of about 300 people felt close to the other fellow members. Because of that, the time our trip took was happily extended as we met many of our Assyrian friends and relatives along the way. At each meeting, Pop engaged in a lengthy conversation. I loved these conversations both for their content and for the sound of the language. I liked hearing our Syriac language spoken, and still do; to my young ears, it seemed to be more spontaneous and animated than English. Only with great difficulty may Syriac be spoken without hand gestures. So it is performance as well as speech. The adults seemed to relish the words and the phrases for their sounds as much as for their meanings. As with the other Semitic languages, Syriac has fewer words in its vocabulary than do most European languages; Arabic has the most extensive vocabulary among the Semitic languages. This is important in regard to the modern development of Syriac, where, in the absence of appropriate descriptors, it has had to borrow a great many terms from other languages. Out of necessity, it is, therefore, very much of an eclectic language. In our American context, if there wasn’t a Syriac word for a thing or idea, then an English one was inserted. A sentence could, therefore, include code switching: “Jarich asin to the subway sabap brickshin ul Music Hall.” (I have to go to the subway because I’m going to the Music Hall.) Since our people had been a minority presence in the Middle East, our language inevitably adopted and adapted vocabulary from the dominant languages of the area: Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Azeri, and Arabic. Following the arrival among the Assyrians of American missionaries early in the nineteenth century, English served to provide borrowed words as well. We speak the vernacular Syriac, as distinct from the classical version. Classical Syriac has survived in university departments of Near Eastern languages and as the liturgical language of several eastern Christian churches including the Syrian Orthodox, Maronite, Chaldean, Syrian Catholic, and our own Church of the East. Because it is a language spoken by such a small number of people— there were not more than 250,000 Assyrians scattered throughout the world in 1946—when one hears it, even from a stranger, it signals a shared kinship. Even now I get excited with pleasure and anticipation whenever I hear it. While I have never been comfortable approaching strangers, I do not hesitate to introduce myself to someone I hear speaking our language. I ask: “Suryayit?” (for a male) or “Suryayet?” (for a female), “Are you an

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Assyrian?” It’s the same with most of us. We have an idiom in Syriac that expresses so well this warm feeling that comes with these meetings: libi p’tikhli (“my heart opened”). Adding to the excitement on Saturday mornings was my understanding that these people were as glad to run into each other, as I was to meet them. Unless there was some sad news to report, the conversations were filled with laughter, with joking, with genuineness and always began with “Shlamaluckh. Dakhi-la chepuckh?” (Literally, “Peace to you. How are you?” Syriac’s shlamalukh is comparable to the Arabic salaam calaikum and the Hebrew sholem aleichem, all of which mean “peace be unto you,” a startling common greeting for an area of the world that has known so little peace.) There wasn’t much hugging, except when the two people had not seen each other in a long time, and it was rare even on those occasions. These men just did not lean toward that physical kind of familiarity, and, as a rule, men certainly did not hug women who were not their wives. But there were vigorous handshakes and frequent pats on the back. Anyway, the words themselves and the manner in which they were uttered seemed to me to be a special and more meaningful kind of hugging. I loved these encounters—the more, the better. I basked in the joy and friendliness that radiated from them. The bond among the Assyrians in this community was a strong one in any case, but the attachment among those from the same village “back home” in Iran was stronger yet. The greeting among same villagers was, “Shlamalukh, b’ne matta.” (“Hello, member of my village.”) For Assyrians, as for all Middle Easterners, there is a hierarchical order of loyalties. The primary one is that of immediate family, followed in order by relatives, relatives-by-marriage, fellow villagers, tribe, ethnicity, religion, and, last, political loyalty. The Assyrians from Urmia did not belong to tribes but those who came from the mountains of Kurdistan did. With that exception, we followed the remainder of this hierarchical order. My father had two villages that he considered to be his—Shemshajian, the original village of his father’s side of his family, and Geog Tapa, the village of his father’s mother to which his grandfather had moved after his marriage. The story is that when Pop’s grandmother married, she insisted that her husband move to Geog Tapa. Because I knew my greatgrandmother (she died in 1944), I had no problem believing that she had the charisma and determination to have set this condition. In Yonkers, there were only a few from Geog Tapa, but Shemshajian was well represented, and Pop was considered to be from Shemshajian even though neither he nor his father had ever lived there. The contingent from

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that village that now lived in South Yonkers included our cousins, the brothers Jiwargis (usually shortened to Jiwu, and often called George) and Sargis Ameer, and their families; my father’s grand-uncle, Abraham Ameer; my cousin Luther Ameer and his family; and several others. We would invariably meet many of them on the market trip, and Sargis Ameer’s house was right on the route, at the corner of Herriot and Jefferson Streets, just before we came to Riverdale Avenue. Thus it was that I lived within two comfortable and secure within a geographically defined boundary, that of the Assyrian community within the larger community of South Yonkers. The peculiar geographic features of the southwestern part of the city and the river that bordered it provided an unmistakable perimeter. These features had such clear definition that they gave a comfortable sense of manageable space and, therefore, of familiarity and protection. For us, there wasn’t any ambiguity to the dimensions of South Yonkers; we knew where it started and ended. To the west lies the most dramatic of these boundaries, the Palisades, across the river, opposite to the city. They rise impressively straight and dark, looming above the Hudson River. From most locations in South Yonkers, one has at least a glimpse of the Palisades, and, often, a full view. I had the pleasure of looking at them again on these recent trips to city, and was confirmed in how much I love that panorama. On a clear day, when, from the vantage point of one of Yonkers’ hills, one can view the river north and south for miles, the impact is even more breathtaking than the one from looking just across the river. Living at the top of one of those hills that rise eastward from the river, I could see a part of these cliffs from our second floor front porch, as they appeared in between the houses across the street from ours. In comparison with similar geographic features, the Palisades are not especially high, yet they give off an aura of massiveness, due in part to their dark coloring. I remember them mostly as a looming presence, even a foreboding one during rainy days, an impression reinforced by the magnificently wide and powerful river over which they presided. On those gray days, this feeling of being overwhelmed was more pronounced, because they seemed to be not only larger but closer as well. Most times, they conjured up for me a highly fanciful image. The Palisades, at our section of the river, went up almost perfectly vertical from the riverbank. This configuration, together with their dark coloration, gave them the aspect of a stage curtain, on the other side of which were the actors and scenery that was the rest of the United States. These imagined sets were in fact the myriad different places of this country with unlimited

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possibilities for interesting and adventurous experiences. All I had to do, it seemed, was to pass through that magic curtain into the magnificent variety of this country. As youngsters we weren’t all that clear what exactly lay in this “western” part of the country. I know we expected to see cowboys somewhere to the west. Cowboys were very important in our lives in 1946. Through films, radio, and comic books, we kept close tabs on our cowboy heroes—and even on their villainous adversaries. It is a mark of the impact of films on our cultural lives that many of us are able to recall the names of villains just as easily as we can bring to mind Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and others. The “crooks” were most often played by Yakima Canutt, Harry Woods, Roy Barcroft, Charles King, Cy Kendall, LeRoy Mason, Noah Berry, and Dick Curtis. We knew that if we actually ever got way out there to ranch country, we would put on chaps, ten-gallon hats, and holsters, and enter a paradisiacal playground. One day, during my second grade year, while waiting with friends on the school playground for the first bell, I learned a most distressing fact about my cowboys. A couple of older boys noted from our banter that I believed that horses were faster than automobiles. Of course I did; what fool wouldn’t. While taunting me about such foolishness, they nevertheless convinced me that the exact opposite of what I believed was true. I was devastated; how could something as mundane as an automobile be faster than the noble horses of my western idols? The process of demythologizing the information in my experience had begun. For most of us, except for learning about what was west of us by means of the occasional visits to friends and relatives in the Assyrian communities of Philadelphia and Elizabeth, New Jersey, the real nature of the places beyond that curtain remained speculative. Whatever sets and actors actually lay beyond that curtain would have to wait until after childhood to be discovered. Our travels beyond Yonkers were mostly confined to Westchester County and New York City. That was fine. It made the anticipation and the imagining of the rest of the country that much greater. In any case, this immense rock outcropping provided a clear and absolute definition for our community’s western boundary. The other boundaries, while lacking the drama and majesty of the Palisades, were well defined as well. To the South was New York City; we touched the northern limit of the borough of The Bronx. This touching took place at a series of parks—City Line Park, Moshulu Park and Van Cortlandt Park. Even though only the first of these three actually bordered our city, we nevertheless considered the whole complex to be our city’s southern boundary. It was a wonderful border to have since we had as ready access to these park

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facilities as did New Yorkers, perhaps an even easier one. They are beautiful spaces, hardly expected in an urban context—spacious and green with lots of trees surrounding the playing areas. In one of too many examples of political short-sightedness and, indeed, stupidity, the complex of parks is cut by three major highways—Henry Hudson Parkway, Moshulu Parkway, and the Major Deegan Expressway—and the city and state are currently planning to build a water filtration plant in the Park. Fortunately for us, the parts of Van Cortlandt Park and Moshulu Park that bordered Broadway were sufficient distance from the highways. Three of the major Yonkers trolley lines traveled south on Broadway, ending at the 242nd Street/Van Cortlandt subway stop. Actually, from the Dyckman Street stop to 242nd Street, the IRT was above ground and should have been called “the Elevated.” But, for us, it was always “the Subway.” On their way to the 242nd Street stop, along South Broadway, the three Yonkers trolleys made several stops along the western fringe of these spacious parks. Yonkers had trolleys since January 7, 1886, when the Yonkers Railroad Company was established. Subsequent companies were the North and South Electric Railway in 1894 and the Yonkers and Tarrytown Electric Railroad Company in 1896. As each of these companies came into being new routes were added so that, with a combination of trolleys and some walking, a person could get to almost every area of the city. The replacement of buses for trolleys, in the fall of 1952, was inevitable. It is actually quite remarkable that they lasted as long as they did given the pressure from residents for “more modern” transportation. Still, there was something very comforting and pleasant about those trolleys with their rattan seats, clanging bells, and slow pace. While waiting at a trolley stop, the sight of one of these stolid and calm conveyances approaching was reassuring. Besides, with trolleys, we were spared the suffocating exhaust fumes of buses. In our teen years, we sometimes passed up on the buses and walked from Van Cortlandt Park back to our apartments in Yonkers, a hefty fivemile trek. We did this either because we had only the fifteen cents fare for one way, that we naturally used going to the Park so as to get there faster, or, even when we had he fifteen cents, we passed on the bus rides to remind ourselves that we were fine fellows who were up to such an effort, even after a whole day of touch football, baseball, or generalized horsing around. It is an uphill walk, since there is an upward gradation from 242nd Street to the Yonkers border. In the 1940s and 1950s the idea of walking from place to place was rarely done to satisfy an aerobic exercise program; it simply was done either for fun, such as our trek from the Park to our

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homes, or out of necessity. Nowadays, I suppose that most parents drive to the park to pick up their offspring. In 1946, most of our families didn’t have cars, and, even if they did, they would not have taken the time to pick us up when buses or feet were available alternatives. I much prefer the freedom and independence that we had to get there and back by ourselves over the chauffeuring that is so characteristic of present arrangements between parents and children. It was not only physically more helpful, but also fueled a growing need among us adolescents for a feeling of independence This immediacy of New York City is a mixed blessing. Yonkersites have easy access to the unlimited opportunities for cultural, sports, shopping, and recreational activities of that incredibly exciting city. At the same time, it was, and perhaps still is, an unshakable article of faith among most older Yonkersites that this proximity to “the City” deprived Yonkers of its own distinct identity. This belief received constant reinforcement from visitors to the area who were sure, until emphatically corrected, that we were in fact a borough of New York City. Interestingly, in the late nineteenth century, the Yonkers city council petitioned to become a borough of New York, but New York’s authorities wanted no part of us and rejected the proposal. So, we were not a legal part of New York City, but we were more culturally and ethnically of it than we were of Westchester County. The rest of the county was much too upscale to welcome this industrial city. An interesting and typical example of this disdain was how Sarah Lawrence College identified itself—while within the borders of Yonkers, the college uses Bronxville as its mailing address. From time to time, Yonkers’ political leaders tried a variety of gimmicks to emphasize our separateness. In the 1950s, for example, the city fathers went so far as to mandate that a huge sign be painted on the roadbed of Central Avenue, the major thoroughfare in east Yonkers. That sign, to be read by planes flying overhead, informed the world that our city was 300 years old. I recall that it read something like, “Yonkers, 1650-1950. City of Gracious Living.” Many of us had difficulty understanding why a few people, randomly passing overhead in Piper Cubs and Cessnas, reading that sign down below, would enhance our standing in any way. Most especially, as much as we enjoyed Yonkers, the adjective “gracious” is not the one that came readily to mind to define our city. In any case, this sort of boosterism and Babbittry usually defies rational analysis wherever and whenever it appears. In 1946, with a significant number of factories, large and small, with a reliable school system, with several user-friendly parks, with relatively clean

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streets, with little crime to speak of, with an excellent transportation system, and with enough religious institutions to meet the spiritual needs of a wide range of the theological and devotional spectrum, the city seemed to be just fine for us and for our elders. It was a wonderful place in which to live and play. We probably thought that it could have had a few more parks, but I recall that even that condition didn’t bother us very much. We did, after all, have our streets for sports and other games. All in all, we liked our city immensely and did not feel we were missing very much by not living someplace else. In addition to the cultural and recreational riches that access to New York City provided, its proximity on our southern border served as a critically important economic asset as well. The large number of jobs to be had in the City greatly increased the inventory of positions from which Yonkersites could find employment. In the post–World War II period, these good jobs were easily reached by commuter rail, bus, subway, or car. Every morning a parade of commuters from the area’s streets, including our own Caroline Avenue, headed for bus, subway, or train. Standing on the porch, I could see them walking quickly down the block—one cohort walking north, then turning east on Herriot Street toward Broadway and the buses to the IRT stop; a second group walking south to Cedar Avenue to head for the train stop at the foot of Ludlow Street. A few, very few in 1946, and none from our street, went by car down the west side. Many of these toilers were women who worked as secretaries or bookkeepers in the more interesting precincts of the City; with stores, restaurants, and shows available for after work, there were delights that they would not have had access to in Yonkers. Unless married and until married, these young women lived with parents or with other family members; it was rare for single women in our community to live alone in those years. Even an innocent arrangement of living with roommates was considered peculiar. The gossip surrounding a young woman living alone could be virulent, and parents’ reluctance to board a daughter would have brought at least silent condemnation. Besides the constraints of these restrictive social prescriptions, economics made living with family a sensible arrangement. In any case, the jobs in the City provided at least a mild diversion, and a culturally enriching one, from this pattern of social confinement. The eastern boundary of our community is a line of hills gradually ascending eastward from South Yonkers toward Central Avenue. Like Broadway, Central Avenue is a relatively straight north-south route that similarly originates in The Bronx, passes through Yonkers, and continues through Greenville and points north. These hills tend to level off at Central

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Avenue. East of that artery were and are residences much tonier than the ones of South Yonkers—many more single-family residences, for example, and considerably fewer multi-family structures or tenements. While east Yonkers was dotted with a few small manufacturing plants, it was predominantly a residential area. The larger plants were either in our southwestern quadrant or in the areas north of Getty Square, along the river, and northwest from the Square. Whereas Broadway was the artery that unified South Yonkers, Central Avenue was a border separating the two southern halves of the city. Our northern boundary, Getty Square, was the political, banking, and shopping center of the city. The opening of malls and shopping centers and the accompanying sprawl away from the hub, would soon change that in Yonkers as it would in so many other cities. But in 1946, the Square was a vibrant place for business, for socializing, and for politics. It had two fiveand-dime stores, Woolworth’s and Grant’s, and, right near them, our own local department store, Genung’s. These three larger stores shared the Square with banks, offices, bakeries, clothing stores, stationary stores, florists, drug stores, and restaurants. The huge St. John’s Episcopal Church dominates the Square, and is the largest of the city’s Protestant churches. The original part of this impressive, red stone church was erected in 1752. By 1946, the Church of the East congregation, having left St. Andrews, was housed at St. John’s. The connection with the Episcopal churches originated in the Middle East. The original missionaries to work with the Assyrians in Iran and Turkey were American Congregationalists and Presbyterians. In the 1880s, however, Anglican missionaries had arrived, one result of which was the formation of a close relationship between the Church of the East and the Church of England. Naturally, when Assyrians emigrated to the United States, this relationship was transferred to the Episcopal Church, America’s Anglican relative. Rising immediately north from Getty Square is yet another set of hills which then led through tenements and manufacturing plants on Ashburton, Nepperhan, and Warburton Avenues. The first of the city’s post–World War II housing projects (“the Projects”) were built on Nepperhan Avenue near the Square. Broadway, as part of the Albany Post Road, continues through the Square, after which it is known as North Broadway. After passing through this commercial and tenement district, North Broadway widens through North Yonkers, a district that, in 1946, had mostly impressive single-family homes and mansions, the largest and most expensive residential properties of our city.

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Main Street ran directly west from Getty Square to the Yonkers Pier, a distance of only a few short blocks. This extension from the Square finished off our northern boundary. The Hudson River Steamship Liners picked up passengers at this pier, and numerous youngsters went “crabbing” off the pier. They would take their catches home or try to sell them to the fishmongers on Riverdale Avenue and New Main Street. A block north of Main Street was the Plaza, a park-like mall used for concerts and such, at the western end of which is the main Yonkers stop of the New York Central Railroad. This plaza encompasses part of the history of post–World War II urban America. In 1946 it was still a well-groomed park, with trees, grass, comfortable benches, and an area for performers. Shortly thereafter, all of this was torn up so that a parking area could be put in place for the cars of commuters and shoppers. This was during the phase in our history, still very much with us, which might be best characterized as, “Damn the people, full speed ahead for the cars!” In 1989, we noted that this ugliness was still in place, but, due to the turning of a new page, the park was put back a few years ago. These were our boundaries, and we benefited from the manageability and security of this well-defined context. This must be an important need in people’s lives, as evidenced recently, in many places in the country, in the intentional construction of identifiable and circumscribed communities. Apparently there is a vacuum in many people’s contexts that they believe can be filled by definable space and population. We were fortunate; for us, it was the way things were. Our family life, religious life, social life, school and play life, all took place inside these boundaries, as did our banking, medical, and shopping activities. Significantly, all of these activities and places were easily accessible by foot or, if one desired or needed to, by trolley. I had decamped into this wonderful context on November 14, 1936, at the Professional Hospital on Ludlow Street in South Yonkers. I was born into the middle of America’s worst economic crisis, the Great Depression, just a few days after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt overwhelmingly won his second term in office. Since my admiration for that political leader has grown and continues to grow over time, I take particular pleasure in having my birth associated, in my mind if not in the public’s, with that brilliant and awesome second term victory. This admiration for FDR is widespread among many in my generation. I usually ask my high school students in U S history classes to interview their grandparents about the 1930s and 1940s. One of these student’s interview reports, in 1996, epitomized the tone of most of these intergenerational conversations. He

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told the class that his grandfather thought that FDR “was a god.” Reactions to FDR similar to that one are recognized with no difficulty at all by most of my contemporaries, but probably not by those born after that time. In 1946, my father was 42. Along with most of the Assyrians who lived in the Middle East at the time of his birth, he had been born into that area that includes the Azerbaijan Province of northwest Iran and the adjoining Turkish district of Kurdistan, then the northeastern part of the Ottoman Empire. The Assyrian people lived in this section of the Middle East until most were brutally dispossessed during World War I. It was a dispossession characterized by the most heinous of crimes—murder, rape, pillage, arson, and kidnapping—as the reader will see in the Chapter 2. After 1918, as a consequence, the Assyrians became a transnational people, scattered around the globe. While many chose to remain in the Middle East, several went to France, Australia, England, and Germany, but by far the largest group of émigrés, thousands of Assyrians, came to the United States. These immigrants experienced a remarkable, almost miraculous transition, from death and destruction in their homeland to security and opportunity in the United States and the other Western countries. It is a story that can be told by numerous immigrant groups in this country. In recent years, through the immediacy of television, Americans have become better acquainted with the kind of evil that the Assyrians experienced from 1914 to 1918. When I view the images of unceasing suffering in Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, Sudan, Iraq and elsewhere—images that are awesome in the profundity their horror—I come closer to understanding the Assyrian experience in those World War I years. Of course, our elders talked about their suffering and flight, but television news footage gives an immediacy that the narratives could not achieve. The pictures of the Kosovars, in particular—long lines of refugees on the move, kids clutching at parents, small wagons of household goods— seemed to replicate exactly the stories we heard about the Assyrians’ flight. There were between 75,000 and 100,000 Assyrians left in 1918 from double that number in the pre-war population. The chaos of the refugees’ flight makes any accurate statistic on their numbers impossible to ascertain. Several thousand of these survivors, after stops in France or India, finally came here. They settled primarily in Yonkers; New York City; New Britain, CT; Elizabeth, NJ; Philadelphia; Gary, IN; Flint, MI; Turlock, CA; and, the largest Assyrian community, in Chicago. The choice as to where to settle had been determined by earlier Assyrian émigrés—young men who, like my father’s father, had come to the US before the War, not as refugees, but with the intent either of sending later for their families or of earning an

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appreciable income with which to return to the Middle East. Where these young men chose to locate became, inevitably, the destinations of choice for the war refugees and the settings for stable and permanent Assyrian communities. My grandfather lived in Yonkers, as did his uncle, so his family and several Ameer cousins naturally settled there. My mother’s family, the Yaures, settled in Philadelphia in the 1920s, although my mother, Agnes, and her sister, Nadine, did not join the family until 1934; they had been boarded in 1924 in a Lutheran facility in Marseilles. Several hundred Assyrians, on their way to the United States, stopped for a time in Marseilles waiting for visas to be approved. It is characteristic of the closeness of the Assyrian communities that even though my parents met each other in Philadelphia in 1934, their families had come from the same village in Urmia. When I was born, my family lived in an apartment on Stanley Avenue, but we moved just before my first birthday, to Caroline Avenue, to an apartment in a six-family house. We lived in a second floor, three-bedroom apartment, that included my parents, my father’s sister Catherine, my siblings, Franklin and Eleanor—“The Twins”—and myself. My parents stayed in that apartment for 36 years, not uncommon in that less mobile time. This street was only a single block long, at the summit of one of the hills that ascends eastward from the Hudson River. It was a pretty street then, notable for four very large trees, three elms and an oak, which, in full bloom, actually hovered over a significant area of the sidewalk and roadbed. The largest of these shade trees, across the street from our house, had so great an expanse that its branches actually reached across to shade our sidewalk. In spring and summer, the full-bloomed trees were impressive in their expanse; in fall they were impressive in their color; and in winter, maybe most impressive of all in the way their large, bare branches powerfully underscored the bleakness of a northeast winter. These four magnificent trees neutralized the urban context and stimulated a friendly feeling more normally associated with a small town than with a city. These and the many other trees in the general area around our street brought many birds within view—sparrows, of course, but also robins, orioles, cardinals, blue jays, bluebirds and woodpeckers. One red-tufted woodpecker I particularly remember (I think it was always the same one) had a distinct preference for telephone poles over trees. What a wonderful anomaly—in the midst of a major urban area, those trees insured that we, nevertheless, had the full season-changing panoply of spring bloom, summer lushness, autumn transformation, and winter bleakness.

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In this recent visit to our block, the very first, stunning impression that I experienced as we turned on to Caroline Avenue was the absence of those trees. The houses, yards, and sidewalks have decayed dramatically, but this erosion would have been less noticeable with those trees in place. Without them, a bleak, neglected urban landscape is even more depressing and distressing than it would otherwise be. In 1946, those trees and the others throughout the city were under the care of the city Arborer and his staff. Do cities like Yonkers even have official arborers anymore? I doubt it. Or, at most, if they are still holding on, they do so with skimpier budgets. The houses on our block, with three exceptions, were two-family, three family and six family structures. The exceptions were an apartment building with eight units on the northwest corner and, at the southwest corner, two small single-family houses that, in 1946, were the homes of Miss Cauley and Mrs. McCreedy. The apartment house is yellow brick; all the other structures are of wood. Mrs. McCreedy’s house was white, Miss Cauley’s a dark blue, and the other houses on the street were white, brown, green, yellow, light blue, or, like our building, gray. Most of them were well kept, many with small lawns or gardens in the front that were carefully tended. Bushes in the front yards were common, hydrangea and forsythia being the most popular choices. The largest of these front yards, bordered by a chain-link fence and neatly trimmed forsythia bushes, belonged to Mrs. McCreedy. This property was a striking presence on our block, as anomalous as those four trees—a single-family cottage that looked exactly like a small farmhouse. It was so out of place that one could imagine that it had been plopped down suddenly, like Dorothy’s house landing in Oz. I have often subjected my memory to a great deal of investigation about this house; it seems so improbable that I thought I had concocted it entirely in imagination. I was happy to note on this return trip that my memory was accurate. There it was. Of course, now that large front large yard has been eaten up by an extension to the house and a paved area for cars. The bushes and fence have been torn down so that the cars can enter from the street. Parking spaces once again trumped flora. Mrs. McCreedy herself could very well have been Central Casting’s response to a call for a character in a fairy tale that took place in a small cottage—Mother Goose goes to Yonkers! I recall this short, round, chubby, white-haired elderly lady, tending the flowers and shrubs in her yard. The pleasant Irish lilt in her speech was very real, however, but so was a tendency toward sarcasm that belied the movie image. Nor were there homemade cookies or cake for the neighborhood children. I think that Mrs.

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McCreedy did not take too kindly to having to dwell among so many southern and eastern Europeans and Assyrians. Mr. McCreedy was not there; I heard no discussion about him except that he had died a long while before my time on the block. Another feature of her property that took that scene from the anomalous to the bizarre was the building that rose above and behind the cottage. Directly behind the southwest corner of Mrs. McCreedy’s property is the northeast corner of a large apartment complex, Riverview Gardens, which fronts on Highland Avenue and backs on that part of Caroline Avenue. Planned zoning was obviously not a part of urban policy in our part of the city. What did the apartment dwellers of this modern brick complex think about looking down from their windows on this displaced farmhouse with its owner, perennially in her housecoat, tending her plants? Right next door, going north, is the single-family home that housed Miss Cauley and her aged and invalid father, whom she cared for. Miss Cauley was my first-grade teacher. Mrs. Halpin, my third grade teacher, lived in the Riverview Gardens. It was characteristic of the times that teachers, for the most part, lived in the communities in which they taught. As school reformer and psychiatrist James Comer has pointed out, this was a significant asset for close school–family relationships, one too often missing in our time of long commutes. Teachers of P.S. 19 were of Yonkers, not visitors to the city. Most of the Caroline Avenue apartments had both front and back porches. The front porches served as observation posts from which we could keep watch on the comings and goings of the neighbors. They were also ideal conduits for gathering and dispensing local news. Notable items were passed on from the porches to passersby and to neighbors on their own porches: “Is your mother getting better?” “Did you hear about the fire on Riverdale Avenue?” “I just heard that the knitters at that mill have been laid off.” “Isn’t this heat terrible?” “I don’t mind the heat, it’s the humidity...” “Congratulations on your daughter’s engagement. I saw it in the Herald Statesman.” These bits of information and reflection were conveyed in English between people of different ethnicities. Among Assyrians, however, the news would be given in English or in Syriac, or, most frequently in the perennial code-switching mixture of the two to which I have referred: “Brikhshin gudmi ul m’deeta to buy kha chursi ga living room de’en.” (I’m going to the city tomorrow to buy a chair for our living room.) The back porches, on the other hand, although occasionally serving as venues for conversation among neighbors, were used primarily for storage and for drying laundry. One porch window served as a terminal for the

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clothesline, the other terminal was the closest telephone pole. I can remember my father, on more than one occasion, climbing the pole spikes to untangle a clothesline twisted by wind gusts that used the hanging sheets as playthings. My memory hasn’t helped me to answer two questions about this arrangement: How did those housewives who lacked a family member with my father’s agility and strength get their lines untangled? And how did the women, my mother included, manage to hang clothes and linens during the winter months? I know they did—I vividly remember my mother taking in sheets during the winter that had frozen into a stiff board-like condition so they had to be thawed before they could be ironed and folded. How did she get them out there in the first place? There is no way to overestimate the value of the electric or gas clothes dryer. In the warm months, the backyards were cultivated for vegetables and flowers. These were often tiny plots, but they were used to maximum efficiency. Tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers were the vegetables of choice for the Assyrians because, along with squash and eggplants, these were necessary elements for dolma, the stuffed vegetables that are the crowning achievement of the Assyrian menu. The gardeners always had a good supply of herbs growing as well—parsley, cilantro, and dill. The small plot in our backyard that should have been planted was fallow and unkempt. Our house, unfortunately, had the negative distinction of being the worst kept up on the street; Mr. Nader, the landlord, an immigrant from Syria and a member of the Syrian Orthodox Church, cared neither for plants nor for the appearance of his house in general. He was the stereotypical curmudgeon and recluse. I cannot recall him receiving any visitors except for periodic fly-by appearances by a nephew whose function, it seemed, was to keep the Nader family informed as to whether or not their relative was still living. Given this profile, it was inevitable that Mr. Nader had a lot of tales made up about him, most, if not all, being fantasies conjured up merely to fill in the blanks. He spoke only seldom, usually to growl at kids who might be playing in front of his house. We never understood the words, they were probably a mixture of Arabic and English, but we had no difficulty discerning their intent. To avoid that unpleasantness, we just made sure, on seeing him walking up the street, to keep some distance between him and us. Mr. Nader believed that the only function of a landlord was to collect rent. Since he worked regularly at the Sugar Refinery and had five tenants paying rent and ate sparsely and meagerly, he must have left a nice estate to those relatives. Had my father and the other tenants not made their own repairs and painted their own apartments, the house would have looked

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even more decayed. Fortunately, Joseph Abraham, Ephraim Joseph, and Pop were painters who went ahead on their own to paint their apartments. In contrast to the exterior, therefore, each of the apartments, except of course for Mr. Nader’s, was neat and clean. Fortunately Mr. Nader (neither I nor anyone else knew his first name) had sufficient understanding of his indifference to keep the rents lower than that of most other apartments on the block. My only disappointment in my father was his unwillingness to move out of that house. I loved living on that street, but I was selfconscious about the condition of the house. Pop was one of those who had been made too wary by the Great Depression. Like so many wage earners of his generation, he awaited throughout his life for the next Depression. From his point of view, therefore, this apartment was an affordable choice in a pleasant street in a part of the city in which he wanted to live. Why take a risk by moving into a more expensive apartment or take the greater risk of assuming a mortgage? It is mildly ironic that during the Depression and right up to his retirement in 1976, Pop was never without a job; he was one of the luckier ones in the Depression. So he could have made the move to a more expensive apartment with no real risk. Easy for me to say; difficult for him to grasp. Arranging for a down payment on a house, while possible, would have been too great a stretch for him. In spite of the condition of our house, the pleasure of this location for us was the number of Assyrians around us. On the first floor of number 54 was the Joseph family—Ephraim and Mary, and their son, Peter, and daughters, Doris and Agnes. Even though I was younger than them by a few years, they always included me in their games and conversations. In the other second floor apartment were the Abrahams—Joseph and his wife Shireen, and their son, James, and daughter, Margaret. Margaret commuted to the New York Central headquarters in New York City where she worked as a secretary. James was also a painter, but also an accomplished trumpeter. He was devoted to the instrument and rarely missed a day of practice. During World War II, he served in the European Theater where, in addition to putting in combat time, he played for one of the army bands. Listening to him practice made it abundantly clear just how much time and effort it takes to sustain one’s standing as a professional musician. After the war, he had regular gigs with local bands, and eventually was elected business agent for the musicians’ local in Yonkers. One third floor apartment was occupied by Mr. Nader, the other by the Lazars—Hannah with her sons, Benjamin and Joseph, and daughter, Florence. Both sons had also served in the military during the War. Interestingly, our house represented the Assyrian religious mosaic. We and

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the Lazars were Presbyterian; the Abrahams were members of the Church of the East; and the Josephs were Roman Catholic. The majority of Assyrians from Urmia, as a result of their contact with the American missionaries, were Presbyterian. Most of the remainder belonged to the Church of the East; and a tiny minority was Roman Catholic. By contrast, only a few of the Assyrians from the Kurdistan Mountains were not members of the Church of the East. There were very few of these mountaineers in Yonkers. Hannah Lazar was always referred to by the respectful title Khat, sister, an honorific accorded most of the community’s older women. She was always Khat Khenna (Sister Hannah), just as my great-grandmother was always Khat Repka (Sister Rebecca). Mrs. Lazar went out of her way to spend a lot of time with me. When I was three and four and not yet at school, she took me with her on shopping errands on weekdays, along the same route and to the same stores that my father and I frequented on our Saturday trips. Khat Khenna knew only rudimentary English phrases so our conversations were all in Syriac, a situation that happily forced me to speak only in “our language” with her. Those conversations, as well as those with my great-grandmother, who knew no English, ensured my fluency in conversational Syriac. This was especially fortunate for me since my parents, in the habit of most immigrants, spoke with their children almost entirely in English. Across the street, the Nweeia family—Isaac and Sophia and their children Alex, Lucy, Lillian, Robert and Susan—owned number 55. They attended our Assyrian Presbyterian Church; Isaac served with my father as one of the church’s elders. They lived on the first floor. On the third floor were the elderly Jacobs couple and their daughter, Lilly, congregants at the Church of the East. One can get an appreciation of the importance of village of origin in Assyrian identity by noting that I can still recall the villages of each of these families, as well as I can remember their names. The Josephs were from Shemshajian, the Nweeias from Tasmalui, the Lazars from Cherajooshi, and the Abrahams and Jacobs were from Ardishai, the largest of the villages of Urmia. This association by village appears to be common to rural cultures everywhere. I remember watching some of the Puerto Rican Day Parades in New York City during the 1960s in which the contingents were organized by municipalities and towns, each of which was represented by its benevolent society in New York. To complete the inventory of Assyrian families was the family next door to the Nweeias, at 57 Caroline, one house north from Miss Cauley: my father’s cousin Luther Ameer with his wife, Mary, and their children

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Newell, Joseph, Amard, and Celeste. Finally, down on the northern part of the block was an Italian-Assyrian couple. Interethnic marriages were still a rarity among my people in 1946. That may explain why I can recall only that Assyrian man’s first name—Nick—and that he was a mechanic. I cannot recall his last name or his village. It helps to understand the manifold interrelationships in our community to note that Sophia Nweeia’s sister Sonia was married to our cousin George Ameer, who lived at 129 Stanley Avenue, the street of our first apartment, three blocks west and one south from Caroline Avenue. My mother’s mother was from Ardishai, the same village as the Abrahams and the Jacobs. Furthermore, in 1947, Alex Nweeia married Nellie Lazar of New Britain, Connecticut. Nellie’s mother, Eslie, was the first cousin of my mother’s father. Nellie dressed for her wedding in our apartment. Many of my non-Assyrian friends are convinced that all Assyrians are related to each other; at times I think they may very well be right. Ethnic consciousness was a powerful and constant reality in heavily immigrant Yonkers. When a questioner, in those days, asked, “What are you?” there was no mistaking the intent of the question. The inquirer was asking after one’s ethnic origins. The main reason for this question was one of cataloging—it seemed important for people to categorize those they met by ethnic classification. It is interesting to recall that there was no other intent. The questioner wasn’t looking to establish a social relationship. It just seemed necessary to be clear as to the ethnic category of each person with whom one came in contact. Due to this understanding by all in the community as to the purpose of the question, there wasn’t any ambiguity or hesitation by the one to whom the question was addressed. One didn’t respond with one’s religion, or job, or anything other than one’s ethnic identity. It is a mark of the dominant position ethnic origins had in our thoughts that it wasn’t until I left Yonkers to go to college, that I fully appreciated how parochial that question was. In fact, I came to learn that many people had never considered identification other than American. (The descriptor, “American,” for most of my parents’ generation of Assyrians, meant someone of Western European background.) One of my roommates, a blond, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon from Texas, was puzzled by this question, “What are you?” In his setting, far different from mine, he had not been compelled to ask after this information, and he didn’t feel any necessity to do so nor, until prompted by his contact with me, did he have any interest in the matter. His presumption, I guess, was that he was the result some variation of Western European origin, and he didn’t need further specification. After I explained about my experience in

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regard to this question, he was motivated to call home to ask his mother what his ethnic roots were—Dutch and English it turned out. His puzzlement that I thought this information to be important matched my puzzlement that he didn’t. But even in his case, it is suggestive of declining interest from generation to generation that, while he was not informed as to his ethnic roots, his mother was obviously well acquainted with them. Almost everyone in South Yonkers would have been equally surprised by his disinterest about his ethnicity, although they probably would have attributed it to the privilege of being an American of Anglo-Saxon origin. Because of his standing, therefore, it was not necessary for him to break the identification down any further into its particular European components. There is an important timeline in regard to distance from the old country that affects this as well. Even the person of Western European background doesn’t come to ethnic indifference right away. The Scots, Irish, Germans, Dutch, Welsh in Yonkers who were first and second generation American citizens had ethnic organizations, festivals, and such, as did the rest of us. The difference is that as distance increased from original immigration, so also did ethnic identification diminish. The physicality of the Western European made inevitable his and her disappearance into the category American. For those from other parts of the world, on the other hand, with different physical appearances, this total blending does not occur no matter how thorough the assimilation. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. When a Western European group maintains an enclave within a city, and when that enclave is infused by new immigrants from the same country, then the process of assimilation, even for them, is slower than it would otherwise be. The Irish in South Boston and the Italians in the North End of that city provide excellent examples of this. When I enrolled at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in 1985, I saw this relationship between physical appearance and the American identification yet again. At a reception for new students, I was asked several different times, by several different people, from where I came. American students were interested to know my home country, and foreign students came up to me to establish contact with a fellow foreigner. Some of the Americans seemed annoyed when I said I came from New York. I could have saved them some of this annoyance because I was aware of why I was asked that question and could have responded that I “was born in New York.” But their stereotyping of what an American looked like annoyed me so I, in turn, put a little difficulty in the way of the questioners. On hearing my answer, they naturally assumed that I was referring to having arrived from Kennedy Airport in New York City. So, still maintaining a pleasant

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and welcoming demeanor, they tried to explain that they meant, “Where did you really come from?” or, “Where are you from originally?” The foreign students, caught up in their own stereotyping of Americans, seemed puzzled as their presuppositions were called into question by my physiognomy. Rather than explore this phenomenon and subject their truisms to review and reconceptualization, they naturally preferred to break off the conversation and went off in search of those who were really foreign to the United States. Being born in this country and having lived here for 48 years was not enough to compensate for not “looking like an American.” Last year, in a conversation with a public school teacher in Boston, I was reminded yet again of this much too facile categorization. His ethnic background is Chinese; his great-grandparents came to this country in the nineteenth century which makes him a fourth-generation American. He told us about a recent national conference of social studies teachers where, in an informal conversation, people asked him what he was. When he finally understood the intent of the question (they were not asking him at what grade level he taught), he answered, naturally, “I’m an American.” He reported that the response he got from more than one individual was, “But you don’t look American.” The surnames on Caroline Avenue often made the question unnecessary: Nader, Nweeia, McCreedy, Lasher, Ottaviano, LoBianco, McGinn, Zosciak, Estony, Bubaco, Howard, Wodja, Renner, Hovorka, O’Brien, Toth, Cauley, Williams, Abraham, Horner, Joseph, and so forth. If you couldn’t get the exact country from the name, you could accurately locate the region: Eastern, Western, or Southern Europe, or the Middle East. The ethnic social organizations in the city helped to sustain the ethnic separateness as well—Italian-American Club, Assyrian-American Association, Polish Community Center, Ukrainian-American Social Club, etc. In some cases, churches contributed to maintaining the separateness— besides our Assyrian Presbyterian Church and the Church of the East congregation, there were the Hungarian Presbyterian Church, the Dutch Reformed Church, an Italian Methodist church, as well as Roman Catholic churches with distinct Irish, Italian, or Polish congregations. The ethnicity of a few of the Catholic churches was clear from their names; St. Casimir’s, for example, was for congregants from Poland. When the name of the church didn’t indicate an ethnic affiliation, then the membership did. The Dayspring Presbyterian Church, for example, was made up almost entirely of Scots.

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Religious identity, whether linked with ethnic ties or not, also contributed to identity formation. In addition to the faiths and congregations mentioned above, there were several synagogues in South Yonkers, representing the three main branches of Judaism. There were also Greek and Russian Orthodox congregations. One of our important South Yonkers locations, on a knoll along South Broadway just before the avenue descends into Getty Square, provided clear evidence of this religious and cultural diversity. On the west side of this knoll stands St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital. In a corner of that property sat the Catholic Youth Center (CYC) building, housing the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO). Diagonally across the street from this was the Jewish Community Center (JCC), a building almost identical in size and style to the CYC. Next to the JCC, going south, sat the Masonic Building, a mostly Protestant stronghold. There were some Jewish Freemasons, but very few Catholics. Most Catholic men, instead, who were interested in joining a fraternity, selected the Knights of Columbus that met in the CYC. The hospital is redbrick with the usual oxidized copper turrets, and has extensive grounds. The other three buildings were constructed with concrete and looked enough alike to have been designed and erected by the same architects and builders. What had attracted this diverse population to Yonkers was the manufacturing sector. South Yonkers was home to Flo-Sweet Sugar Refiners (“the Sugar House” in local parlance). This complex on the riverbank had housed different sugar refining companies, Flo-Sweet having survived longer than the others. Because the demand for liquid sugar naturally went up during the summer, Flo-Sweet took on about forty temporary employees each summer, and they fulfilled that need by hiring college students. Some of these were sons of upper management personnel for whom this money for college was not a make-or-break proposition. For the rest of us summer employees, however, this was an incredibly fortuitous opportunity. I worked there four summers with a take-home packet that ranged from $900 in the first summer to $2,200 in the fourth, a very substantial sum in those days, especially considering that the full cost at my college, Yale University, went from $1,600 for tuition, fees, and room and board in my first year to $2,000 in my fourth. Since I was one of several students to whom Yale awarded scholarships covering the total cost, the money from the Sugar House was supplemental. Because of such arrangements in those days, therefore, the opportunity to actually work one’s way through school was very real. Even if a college student today is able to take home as much as $5,000 for summer work these days, not a

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highly probable situation, how much of a dent would that make in annual private college costs that range from $25,000 to $40,000? I must put in a good word for the Sugar-House’s union, the International Longshoreman’s Association. Union’s officers had insisted that the summer temps be paid at the same rate as the regular employees and the company had readily agreed. They did not have to do that, though, because we would have worked there without protest for half of what they paid us. I believe it was enlightened on the parts of both union and management to avoid this easier route. My good fortune resulted from yet another benefit of membership in the Assyrian community. I was able to be one of the favored 40 because of the intercession of Albert Shikaly who was a supervisor at the plant. Just north of the Sugar House, also on the river, was the world-famous Otis Elevator Plant. North of that was Phelps Dodge’s Habirshaw plant. Northeast of Getty Square were the extensive buildings of the Alexander Smith Carpet Company, in 1946 the world’s largest rug and carpet mill. Of these manufacturing powerhouses, only Flo Sweet remains today. The exodus of these plants began in 1955 with Alexander Smith’s departure for Mississippi in a search for cheap, non-union labor. Otis Elevator left in 1983 after 130 years in the city, and Phelps Dodge closed its two plants in 1980 and 1984. In 1946, however, all were going strong. In addition to these big plants, there were a number of smaller manufacturing operations, including a few small knitting and sewing mills. Many of the Assyrian women worked in these ramshackle, hand-to-mouth establishments. Depression-ending World War II generated a lot of activity in all of these plants, large and small, and led to the construction of yet one more—the Blair Shipyards just south of the Sugar House. As a consequence of this strong manufacturing sector, the city’s laborers, both skilled and unskilled, made good livings and were able to move themselves up to the lower rungs of the middle class. Those who were careful with their earnings bought their own homes or rented comfortable apartment space at affordable prices. The departure of many of these companies after the 1950s created the reductions in jobs that broke the back of the city’s economic base, and caused major dislocation in the southwest quadrant. Prospects for security and social mobility for newer arrivals are considerably reduced from those available to their predecessors, and this, more than any other factor, accounts for the dilapidated and decayed condition of the area that we saw on our tour in 1989. What is discouraging is that none of these companies moved because they were losing money—all were realizing appreciable profits. Their moves, causing

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all of this dislocation and community destruction, were made in order to make more money. Many defenders of the system denigrate critics of this kind of economic Darwinism for being anti-capitalist. But the fact of the matter is that most of us who are critical of these decisions that weaken communities are not anti-capitalist, far from it. We recognize the enormous contribution that the capitalist system has made toward the well-being, growth, and overall strength of this country, including the improved opportunities for immigrants. What we oppose, however, is a variant of the system that considers only profit to the exclusion of all other relevant factors, a system that French diplomat and economist Jacques Delors, has accurately characterized as “savage capitalism.” A robust and thriving Yonkers, where residents had the security of jobs and the ability to provide decent living conditions to their families is at least as important as the amount of the profit statements of the companies. The devastation of Yonkers’ manufacturing base is just one of many examples in the United States of the destructive consequences to people and their communities, to human relationships, and to a sense of security that results from this aberrant form of capitalism. I find it astonishing, and even immoral, for companies whose sound status is in large part the result of the work ethic of their employee force, to turn around and use that favorable position to engineer geographic moves and/or consolidations that cause harm to that very same work force. The fault line between Yonkers’ strong economic posture and vitality as a community and the subsequent urban pathologies that beset the city was the departure from the city of the manufacturers. My father had worked only for brief periods in the plants. When he first came to Yonkers, he worked a few months in a small hat factory on Stanley Avenue. After that, he followed the trades popular among Assyrian men—carpentry, floor laying, and house painting. The Depression reduced employment for carpenters and floor-layers, so he came to spend more and more time as a painter, joining that small army of Assyrian painters. Most of the Ameer men were painters. During the War years of 1943 and 1944, these painters, Pop included, left work on houses to paint ships at Blair Yards. Assyrian men joined painters from other ethnicities in swarming over the new ships. They enjoyed speaking Syriac rapidly to each other as they worked as part of a national war work force that was churning out war materiel in record time. They were part of that legion of millions of American men and women who were responsible for an enormous industrial output from 1941 through 1945. There is no question that the wages earned was a considerable relief from the dry days of the Depression,

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and a source of pleasure, but, at the same time, these workers had a justifiable pride in the contribution they were making toward the war effort. I cannot help but reflect that if some of the current foolishness about restricted language use on the job had been in place then, these Assyrians, war effort or not, would have been fired or, at the least, reprimanded for speaking Syriac. If it didn’t bring about their termination, it sure would have reduced production and taken the fun out of the work atmosphere. It continues to astonish me that there are people so uptight that they are annoyed at hearing so many foreign languages spoken in the United States. Do they not look at demographic charts? In 1995, just after I gave a lecture on the American missionaries to an Armenian cultural group in Cambridge, one of the women asked me quietly what I thought about so many languages being spoken so openly these days. She said that one could hear people speaking foreign languages loudly and without concern. This she contrasted with her parents who, she said, “spoke Armenian quietly when they were in public so no one could hear them.” Like too many adult children of the immigrants of the 1920s and ’30s, this woman was nostalgic for that uptight time in our history. Unfortunately, she has too many who agree with her, including politicians who keep pushing for English-only laws as if there is anyone in the country who doesn’t know that one must learn English in order to function successfully in the society. Except for his brief time in the war plant, Pop, right up to his retirement in 1976, worked as his own contractor, painting apartments. While he occasionally took free-lance jobs, most of his work was for Mr. Cowan (I never did know his first name), who owned six large apartment buildings in the area, on South Broadway and Park Avenue in Yonkers, and on Gun Hill Road, 144th Street, Pinehurst Avenue, and Woodycrest Avenue in the Bronx. Since the law for multi-family dwellings specified how often the apartments should be painted, Pop was sure of steady work as long as he stayed in Mr. Cowan’s good graces. He was a difficult man to work for—a tightwad in what he paid his workers—but Pop enjoyed the security of the constant work, as well as the freedom to be his own man without supervisors or foremen. He admired Mr. Cowan for the man’s coming to wealth by means of very hard work, determination, shrewdness, and sound business judgment in spite of very humble beginnings as a poor kid hawking papers on New York City street corners. For Pop, Mr. Cowan’s Horatio Alger story, including the need to overcome anti-Semitism, symbolized the best of the American promise.

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My mother believed that the greater part of Mr. Cowan’s success was due to the fact that he was simply cheap, and there was truth in that as well. My father always looked past this characteristic of stinginess in his employer to the hard work and struggle that lay behind it. Mr. Cowan obviously embodied both sets of characteristics. It was almost a certainty that Pop should be a painter—his father did that work, as did his father’s uncle, and most of their cousins. In fact, my grandfather died in a painting accident in 1938. He was doing some exterior work at Mr. Cowan’s Park Avenue building, and fell off the ladder, hitting his head on some kind of concrete appurtenance. He was rushed to the hospital but died after only a few hours. After that, and because of it, except for the interlude at the shipyard, my father avoided taking on any exterior painting work. As with most of his friends, Pop was capable in several construction skills besides painting. In addition to carpentry and floor laying—he could put down a beautiful parquet floor—he was able to do more than acceptable work in plumbing, masonry, plastering and joining as well. I believe that the only part of construction work that he would not take on was electrical installation and repair. The Depression had put a hold on carpentry, especially of the customized kind, so Pop fell back on painting. He was quite good at it. When I purchase paint these days, and watch the computer determine the amounts of colors needed to obtain a particular color, I recall Pop doing that just as accurately with his tubes of colors. With remarkable accuracy he was able to match existing colors or create other colors to the apartment-dweller’s specifications—yet another skill that has been lost to the machines. In that time of too-facile ethnic identifications, we youngsters felt comfortable with our generalizations, assuming that most painters were Assyrian, most barbers were Italian, most policemen and firemen were Irish, most factory supervisors were Scots, most factory line workers were eastern Europeans, and so on. These categorizations were too simple, and simple-minded, of course, and inaccurate. There were many Assyrians, for example, in the factories, and several painters were Italian. But there was just enough commonality of occupation within each group to make the generalizations easy to come by. In any event, the tendency to describe each member of an ethnic group according to standard formulas about character, religion, and occupation was endemic. Hollywood’s portrayals of these people only fueled the practice. Can anyone recall seeing a barber in a 1930s, ’40s, or ’50s movie who wasn’t Italian or a policeman in the same movies who wasn’t Irish?

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Eprim Ameer’s work was important to him only as a means to an end. His primary commitment was expressed in his unconditional love for his family. This meant, in the first instance, his immediate family, who, for our people, included parents, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews. Our extended families embraced cousins to fifth, sixth, seventh degrees and so forth. Moreover marriages brought others within this orbit, so that family included in-laws. I am still amazed and derive enormous pleasure from recalling how these lines of relationships were so clearly known and passed on. I imagine that for a people with a rich oral tradition, the capacity to memorize and retain such information is to be expected and is related to social and cultural imperatives. It is astonishing nonetheless. One would hear, for example: “Mary’s sister is married to your cousin David’s son, Jonathan. Remember, David’s aunt Sarah was married to your grandmother’s first cousin, Samuel, and her sister was married to your other cousin, Yonan, Michael’s son...” and so on. Our shared history and religion, the small size of our population, and the prominence of kinship loyalties fostered this strong emphasis on intersecting relationships. Most important, it ensured that everyone in the community would be cared for because familial connections defined responsibilities. As a consequence, it was almost impossible in the Assyrian community for members of the group to fall into conditions of homelessness or hunger. These genealogies, therefore, constituted important and necessary information. These relationships and the geographic and economic characteristics made up our communal context. It was the place where our shopping was done, including the Saturday morning excursions. My father prepared for these trips by donning his gray suit, white shirt, a floral-printed tie, and gray fedora. He always had two suits on hand, this gray one and a black or blue serge one for Sunday services and other church events, as well as for his Masonic lodge meetings, weddings and funerals. When I went off to college, and was conformed into the traditional Ivy League dress style, I tried to move Pop, at least part way in that direction, by means of gifts of striped (“rep”) ties. I brought some home as Christmas and birthday presents. With the exception of one or two that he kept to wear on his visits to the college, he gave the rest to me and to my brother, so I soon gave up my sartorial crusade. By remaining loyal to his floral patterns through changes in style, he found himself, during the 1970s, much more in step than I was. Except for the warmer days, when he substituted slacks, shirt, and cap for the suit and fedora, this outfit was his regular Saturday marketing attire. Dressing in this manner formally symbolized, for him and for his friends,

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who wore similar clothes on weekends, that they were affiliated with the middle class, despite the fact that they were blue-collar workers. This style of dress was part of the badge of that class, and it was important to these men to demonstrate that they had attained this status. The nature of their work, and its standing within the hierarchy of the employed, was considerably less important than the fact that they had jobs that made possible care of their families. The formal dress spoke loudly to the satisfaction they had in knowing they were fulfilling this responsibility as husbands, fathers, and productive citizens. I believe that Pop also intended, by this outfit, to signify the importance he attached to his weekend time with his family. Most of the male friends whom we met on our route were similarly dressed, undoubtedly for the same reasons. None of these men would have made GQ, but that wasn’t the point. This was the dress of an adult. As kids, we aspired to the time when we could dress as adults. Nowadays, this seems fully reversed with adults aspiring to dress as kids. My undergraduate students too often dress like they were still in middle school. In parks or at shopping malls, the difference between adults and children is obvious by size and age, not by difference in attire. I often wonder at the sociological implications of this shift. On these weekend trips, even Pop’s pace of walking seemed different from his workday pace. At work, in his painter’s overalls, he always walked quickly. Because he preferred loose-fitting work shoes with shoelaces untied, he tended to shuffle but always glided along at a rapid pace. On these marketing trips, on the other hand, he walked with a more leisured and relaxed gait. I attribute this, and I don’t think this is fanciful on my part, to a feeling of dignity and worth that he had. He was in most ways a humble man, grateful for what he had and what he had been able to accomplish. At the same time, almost paradoxically, he and his friends and relatives felt a great deal of pride in their ethnicity, in their religion, in this country that had welcomed them, in their families, and in their being productive people. So, he didn’t slow his pace down just to accommodate my shorter steps, but because he was content with who he was. The other reasons that he was in no hurry were because he enjoyed having me with him, because he enjoyed the purpose of our shopping trip, and because he enjoyed the anticipation and the experience of the many conversations he would have before returning home. On reflection—I couldn’t have understood this at that time though I believe I felt it—he was fully justified in being proud of his life. His manner of dress on Saturdays and Sundays is less common now, although one can find similarities among men of recent immigrant groups. I

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was startled recently to see in Worcester a gardener who was Latino (evident from the name on his van) mowing a residential lawn with white shirt, tie, and jacket. They were scruffy as a result of much use, but they were clean and they indicated that their wearer had pride in who he was and in his occupation. By contrast, our weekend clothes are invariably casual and definitely more comfortable. The common dress for weekends is sweatshirts, tee shirts, jeans, and the like, as seen on both the young and the less young. At the same time that I appreciate the casualness and comfort in this style, I nevertheless harbor, as I have said, a gnawing feeling, perhaps originating more in nostalgia than in serious analysis, that something important has been lost in this transition. While I feel certain that there has been some degree of loss, I am not able to articulate with sufficient clarity, nor with any degree of specificity, what that is. It might be that we now have a diminished sense of stability and order, and/or, perhaps, it might be that the necessary demarcation between adults and pre-adults is not as welldefined as it was then. If I am correct in either or both evaluations, then we have indeed lost something important. The shift in style is certainly not the cause of the change but rather one of the symbols of it. Our walk through the community began as soon as breakfast was over, when Pop and I would launch off on our weekly ritual Naturally, I was dressed and ready to get moving even before breakfast, while my father enjoyed the leisure of a weekend breakfast. And when that was over, I had to cool my heels until he had bathed, shaved, and put on his traveling attire. My impatience was due in part to the wonderful experiences of these trips that I have mentioned. In addition, no small part of it was due to looking upon the shopping and the visits as part of a special male ritual into which I was being inducted. I was being initiated into a fraternity of responsible adult men. This allowed me to have my own kind of pride. I would be privy to those wonderful conversations among the Assyrian men. However unimportant some of the subjects of these conversations might actually be, I looked upon all of them as substantial. After all, the participants were adult males, so, ipso facto, the conversations had to be momentous. The marketing actually began when Pop received the shopping list from my mother. The items changed only slightly from week to week. She could just as easily have said, “Buy the usual, and also get...” Having the list, on the other hand, precluded my father forgetting something and having to make a return trip. The list itemized the ingredients needed for the Sunday dinner and for some of the upcoming weekday meals as well. My mother was an outstanding cook, not only of Assyrian foods, but of American, Italian, Russian, and French meals too. She learned new recipes

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unbelievably quickly and well, in spite of the fact that when she arrived in the States in 1934, at age 20, she could, by her own account, barely succeed in boiling water. In this as in learning languages, Mom was a quick study. Mom was an avid reader. She devoured books in English and French at what would be considered a remarkably fast pace for anyone, let alone someone for whom both of these were second languages. Although born in Urmia, she had lost her fluency in Syriac because of her family’s flight from the area when she was only four. From the time of their 1916 flight until 1924, her family conversed more in Russian than they did in Syriac. After that, until 1934, living in Marseilles, her language was French. Yet by the time that I could understand speech, she had not only regained command of Syriac, but was as fluent in English as she was in French. She had not developed any facility to read Syriac, however, and, because of a lack of use, her Russian skills had withered. The only way that one could tell that English was not her first language was in her difficulty with English words beginning with h. She always wanted the h to be silent. Her interest was eclectic—novels, histories, biographies, theologies, and inspirational or devotional readings. She had read most of Tolstoy and Dostoevski, had gone through both Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina twice that I knew of, and worked her way though Lloyd Douglas’ novels as they came out. The first novel that she gave me to read was Douglas’ The Robe. Mom was a great admirer of Martin Luther, some of whose works, I noticed, she had underlined extensively. Sometime during her time in France, she had read Plato’s Republic and one or two of his other dialogues. Mom completed the French equivalent of high school yet, in spite of her obvious intellectual qualifications, she never considered entering college, either there or in this country. That is neither unusual nor surprising for her time, her social context, and her gender. Fifty years later, Mom would have been a certain candidate for university work. She probably would have opted for a career teaching at the university level. As it was, she very much enjoyed conversing with or listening to people of obvious intellectual abilities. Even though, like my father, she generally voted Republican, she would shift gears if the Democratic candidate seemed to her the brighter of the two. As much as she admired and respected Eisenhower, she voted for Adlai Stevenson both times. Even though, like most Assyrians, Mom considered divorce to be just this side of sin, she nevertheless ignored Stevenson’s divorce to vote for him. Her perception of him as a learned man was not diminished by his personal life. Nothing, for Mom, could trump a good mind. I am absolutely certain that,

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had she been alive now, she would have considered Bill Bradley to be ideal for the Presidency. Mom was as devoted to family as was Pop, and she had a large family in her Caroline Avenue apartment. Pop’s father, until his death on March 16, 1937 aged 56, and his grandmother, until her death on January 29, 1944, aged 80, lived with us. My father’s sister Catherine stayed with us until her marriage in 1953 took her to Turlock. To Mom they were as much family as if they were her own father, grandmother, and sister. My parents were very much in love with each other; I have rarely seen such mutuality, respect, and affection between two people. Mom fully appreciated Pop’s hard work for the family, his gentleness, and his sharing with her of all decisions. It is remarkable, I think, for a man from the Middle East to be as enlightened as my father was in regard to women, especially in the time he lived. He had no interest in being the head of the household in any patriarchal sense. My mother and the rest of us certainly acknowledged him to be the head of our family, but he was not interested in any of the privileges or powers usually associated with that status. She respected his judgment, his honesty and integrity, and his commitment to her and the family. Pop, in his turn, respected my mother’s intelligence and common sense, and admired her several capabilities associated with housekeeping. This mutuality and the deep love that suffused it was a marvelous but difficult model to which to aspire. Their relationship was similar to the one described by Ernest Borgine’s title character in the 1955 film Marty: “...My mother adored him. She told me how she used to get so miserable sometimes, like everybody, you know. And she says my father always tried to understand. I used to see them sometimes, when I was a kid, sitting in the living room, talking and talking, an’ I used to adore my old man, because he was always so kind. That’s one of the most beautiful things I have in my life, the way my father and mother were.”

When Mom died in 1976, of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), the heart went out of Pop. That is a normal reaction for a surviving partner after a mate’s ordeal with illness, and ALS is as devastating a degeneration of the body as there is. Yet I believe that Pop’s detachment from life following her death related at least as much to the end of their wonderful relationship as it did to her progressive deterioration from the disease. Like Pop, she was a caring and loving person. She was always available to help friends, neighbors, and relatives. I still run into people who recall her with great affection. A few years ago, I was at a dinner in Yonkers with

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some people I hadn’t seen for about 40 years. One woman didn’t recognize me when I gave my name, and so I added, “I am Eprim and Agnes’ son.” The light went on and she immediately offered the following unsolicited comment: “I loved your mother; she was a wonderful woman.” This admiration was due in large part because she was so genuine in her relationships; it also resulted from people’s awareness that she was the most honest person most people had encountered. Mom’s extensive reading included skimming through cookbooks; she really liked trying out new recipes as well as preparing traditional dishes. She also picked up recipes from friends and acquaintances. She made wonderful Italian sauces, for example, from recipes she got from Mrs. Ascollilo, who lived on Cedar Place, around the corner from Caroline Avenue. Mrs. Ascollilo was noted for her Italian cooking, so if you had pasta, lasagna, or Parmigiana dishes at our house, you would assume an Italian cook was working in the kitchen. Mrs. Ascollilo’s son, Marco (Mickey), incidentally, married an Assyrian, Emmy Elias, from Philadelphia, putting yet one more countrywoman into our Caroline Avenue ethnic enclave. Whatever my mother prepared, including leftover meals, was a great pleasure. But there were for me two notably awful exceptions in the Assyrian repertoire. One is an herb soup called shimkha. I have no idea what all the herbs are that go into shimkha. The primary ingredient is wild garlic. If you see it being cooked, however, you will be sure that the ingredients are simply grass and water; that’s exactly what it looks like. The second exception is a stew called reshekli, literally, “head and feet.” This recipe includes beef shanks, beef feet, and tripe. Given the name for this dish, however, I assume that brains were the original ingredient for which tripe was later substituted. In any case, not only were these two meals decidedly unappetizing in appearance, but the aroma they gave off was horrible. I couldn’t stay in the apartment while they were being cooked; the malodorous stuff permeated every corner. My father and aunt were devotees, endlessly extolling the health benefits, so Mom prepared the dishes, even though she would only take the occasional spoonful while cooking to be sure they were right. I can’t recall ever seeing her actually eating a full plate of either. But she would prepare them for Pop and Aunt Catherine, about twice a year, and more often than that prior to my greatgrandmother’s death in 1944. Sometime, along about the middle of the 1950s, they mysteriously and happily disappeared altogether, and not only from our house. I don’t remember their even being offered at most other Assyrian homes in our neighborhood. I would have known of their preparation because my father would have been invited by neighbors to go

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over and partake. These neighbors would similarly be invited over to our house at these occasions. Isaac Nweeia was a devotee of both shimkha and reshekli. My mother certainly gave these invitations honestly and with care, in the traditional Assyrian manner of hospitality. At the same time, I am convinced that her other motive was to make sure the food would disappear more quickly by means of the assistance provided by the guests. I guess most of my generation were as squeamish about these two dishes as were my brother, sister, and myself. Both my father and aunt kept on assuring us that these were very healthy foods. They could have come from the fountain of youth and I still would not have eaten them! Sunday dinners were another matter entirely. This meal, in our home as in so many homes, especially in those pre-television years, was the main event on the week’s menu. The primary course was sometimes roast pork or roast beef; occasionally it was roast lamb or chops, either lamb or pork. But on most Sundays it was one or two of the three varieties of dolma: dolma d’bademjani, literally, “tomato dolma” though it was made with various stuffed vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, and eggplant; dolma d’chalama, stuffed cabbage; and dolma d’arpi, stuffed grape leaves. These dishes, in some form or other, and under various names, are common throughout the Middle East, Greece, and the Balkans. Our Assyrian version, however, is the ne plus ultra of this dish. The keys to this are that we use very small cubes of lamb as opposed to ground meat in the stuffing, and the herbs included are cilantro, leeks, parsley, dill, garlic, and onion. Dolma could not be served without rice. Rice was essential. We boil the rice for a few minutes, and then steam it in the oven with butter and a little water. When the rice is risa sadir, perfumed rice, the aroma that it sets off in the house is unbelievably delicious. Mom and Aunt Catherine devoted most of Saturday evenings to preparing the dolma stuffing and filling the vegetables in preparation for Sunday cooking. The list for our Saturday shopping included, therefore, ingredients for whichever of these dishes would be in Sunday’s meal, as well as for an easily prepared Saturday dinner and for the dinners for the rest of the week. Our house was the second one from the end on the east side of the street at the southern end of the block. With grocery list in hand, we left this building, turned right, walked north to the end of the block, turned left at Herriot Street to walk west toward the Hudson River. Immediately facing us, across Herriot Street, before we turned west, was a high wall on the other side of which was a plant we called “the medicine plant.” I think that they actually made vitamins and supplements there, not medicines. What

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was important to my friends and I was that the property had a lot of open space around the main building where we could play. The company must have had an enlightened corporate leadership since no one ever came out of that building to chase us away, even when we might have been a bit too noisy. I wonder if, in our increasingly litigious society, the company could be so expansive and generous now as it was then, or whether they would feel compelled to close off the property and restrict access to it for fear of lawsuits if one of us had an injury. On turning left from our block, we saw, in their fullness, the Hudson River and the Palisades. Herriot Street proceeds westward at an only slight decline for one block and then descends sharply three more blocks to Riverdale Avenue, where it levels off for its final two-block stretch to the river. The first street that enters Herriot after our street is Groshon Avenue, also a single block that runs parallel to Caroline. At its southern end, cutting off the street, are the Riverview Gardens, and, just before reaching them, on the western side of the street, is P.S. 19, our neighborhood elementary school, always and only referred to as “Number 19.” A few Assyrian families lived on Groshon—the Hasratos, Carams, and my very close friend Norman (Baboo) David and his widowed mother, Esther. She, like the Nweeias, was from the village of Tasmalui. Esther later married Baba David of Shemshajian, putting her and Norman within our village kinship. From the perspective of our strip-malled and franchised present, the corner of Groshon Avenue and Herriott Street, as it was in 1946, seems quaint. The corner was probably just the same in my childhood as it had been for the twenty or thirty years preceding. It was marked by three older Ma and Pa stores, and a fourth just recently renovated. Two were on the corner itself while the other two a few doors west from that corner, on the north side of the street. Three were grocery stores, the fourth a candy store. On the southeast corner was the oldest of this group, Mrs. White’s grocery, the widow White’s domain. It was usually the busiest of these stores, presided over, rather imperiously I thought, by Mrs. White. She employed one worker, known to one and all, as Johnny. I think none of us at that time knew his last name, Sheedy. He was a study in constant motion, all of his moves characterized by high-speed motion: stocking, bagging, selling, delivering, cleaning. Johnny was a short, thin, wiry man, with perennially red cheeks, an unfailingly smiling, courteous, willing, and helpful attitude, especially noticeable when he waited on elderly customers. While noting how polite he was with almost everyone, by listening closely, one could just barely discern a gentle and subtle dig, delivered always with a smile, to those

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customers who were particularly annoying, unnecessarily demanding, or noisily impatient. Seldom, if ever, did these problem customers pick up on his gentle barbs, but I did, and maybe some others did as well. It wasn’t because of language difficulties that people missed them; it was because he delivered them with subtlety and cleverness. And then his smile disarmed the targets. I suppose I picked up on it because I would invariably stand in the background from where I could indulge my preference to be an observer. It was wonderful to watch him. I envy that capacity for subtlety, being more inclined myself to tread with considerably heavier feet in encounters with especially annoying people. His employer, on the other hand, could herself be overtly snippy and impatient. Mrs. White was a stout woman, with a beady-eyed look that gave the impression that she was forever suspicious of everyone. She always wore black dresses that were always decorated with dandruff and cat hair. Her hair was notable for a poor dye-job and an untidiness that gave it a look of artiness. There was just a trace left of what once was a more pronounced Irish accent, but she had lost the lilt normally associated with that language, assuming she ever had one. In stores today, I notice clerks relying on rubber gloves to protect the consumers from germs as they slice meat and cheese and can’t help comparing this practice to Mrs. White performing those tasks in her store without gloves and with that hair shedding in all directions. The store’s convenient location, and Johnny’s friendly manner, mitigated the liability of the inevitable encounter with Mrs. White. Besides, the store was a clearinghouse for neighborhood news that we all wanted to know. These corner stores were important agencies in the neighborhood’s ability to maintain its distinct identity. Knowing the comings and goings of neighbors helped to sustain this feeling of belonging, of enjoying security and predictability. The items of interest were passed on to Mrs. White by customers who hung around the store chatting for several minutes before and after they made their purchases. The other customers, of course, listened in on these news reports and so served as conduits of the information to their friends and neighbors. Customers who came in later would receive the news from Mrs. White, and they too would pass it on. So a neighborhood news network, efficient if not always accurate, would function on a continuing basis. We made a weekly trip to the A & P supermarket for our “big” shopping, and we needed the specialty shops that Pop and I frequented on Saturdays to obtain specific ingredients. But for immediate requirements— another loaf of bread, a box of cereal, an extra bottle of milk, some cold

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cuts, a box of cookies, etc.—we whipped over to Mrs. White’s or one of the other groceries. I negotiated a rite of passage when I was allowed to go alone as far as the grocery store. By 1946, I was the designated grocery store runner, so that what had originally been a privilege had been transmuted into a chore. The grocery stores helped with dairy products between milk deliveries. Most dairy goods for our families came from home delivery. In South Yonkers households chose delivery from either Sheffield, my family’s choice, or Dellwood. Each dairy had its advocates, some arguing that Dellwood’s had more cream in the milk, others that Sheffield’s was better processed. Regardless of the accuracy of these descriptions, what mattered was that the milk came in bottles so that it was always deliciously cold. That is a pleasure that can never be matched by milk from a carton. And if the cold milk was accompanied by a piece of chocolate cake, the resulting ecstasy is almost beyond description. When the delivered milk ran out, I went to the local groceries to replenish the supply. Across the street from Mrs. White’s, on the southwest corner, was another store that sometimes housed a grocery. At other times it was a wallpaper and paint store. I can’t recall all the owners since it changed hands several times. In 1946 it was being transformed from a grocery run by George, a Polish immigrant, who had a new store built across the street. I do remember that for a brief period, probably right after George left, the Caram family, who owned the building that housed the store and lived in one of the apartments above it, kept the grocery going. Out of ethnic loyalty and friendship, we naturally shopped there during the short time they had the business. I believe some other people tried to keep it going as well, but three convenience groceries at one location, even in those years, was not economically feasible. Diagonally across the street, downhill a few buildings distance from these two stores, were the candy store and George’s new grocery. Candy stores were designated as such because they stocked candy, chewing gum, magazines, toys (notably marbles), comic books, tobacco products, chips and pretzels, and ice cream. This store on Herriot Street was a cliché of its species. It was a cheaply constructed building, cramped for space, with sagging wooden counters, naked hanging light bulbs, and creaking wooden floors, but none of that was relevant to us. The store had what we wanted. It is hard to imagine anyone making a living from that store, but it lasted a long time (without, by the way, additional income from a bookie operation in the back room that supported some of the other candy stores in our city).

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The neighborhood kids spent some good money there, but, I believe, the proximity to Number 19 certainly boosted sales. As soon as I was permitted to cross the street, I rushed to this oasis with my classmates right after school let out. I did this as often as possible, which means whenever I had a few coins. Most of my generation who will read this are familiar with the candy I was looking for: Turkish taffy, those small colored dots on paper rolls, chocolate bars, jellybeans, Black Crows, Jujubes, Dots, Mary Janes, Tootsie Rolls, and licorice sticks. My age group remembers with longing that the amount of candy we got, including the size of the candy bars, was considerably greater than they are now, and they cost a lot less. As important as the candy itself were the cards that came in packs of gum: war cards, baseball cards, and western hero cards. The gum was incidental when collector’s cards were part of the package. We collected the cards, traded them, and often played a game in which you skimmed the cards toward a wall trying for a leaner, a card that leaned against the wall. The winner in each of these games, by getting a leaner or by being closest to the wall, got to collect all the cards played by the losers. I have no idea what happened to my extensive card collection, so whenever I pass by collectibles stores, I cannot avoid a gasp and a wince at the price this stuff now commands. Who could have thought! George built his new grocery next to this wonderful candy store. A story circulated, though I cannot certify its veracity, that he had been in partnership with Mr. White, but then, after the latter’s death, could not work out satisfactory arrangements with the widow White and so opened his own store on that southwest corner. The story sounds too much like one of those tales that the neighborhood wished was true because it made our community so much more interesting. In any case, given the personalities of Mrs. White and George, there is no way that they could have lasted long in any partnership. I have already described her unsavory aspects. George’s mannerisms, while determinedly somber, were tolerable, because he was efficient and ran an excellent grocery store. I can assert with absolute certainty that I never saw George smile; sometimes he even seemed to be gruff. Of greater importance to us was that his store was always immaculate, much more so than the other corner stores, and he kept up his stock inventory so that one could rely on him. That consistency and the fact that Pop simply couldn’t stand Mrs. White caused him to prefer George’s, except during the brief time the Carams had their store. Even Pop’s normal equanimity fell away when he had to encounter the widow White. Her too personal questions and her sloppy appearance always annoyed him.

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George’s shirt and apron, on the other hand, were always freshly laundered, starch-stiff, and sparkling white. He was a bear of a man. His hands seemed, to a youngster like me, to be enormous, and they were obviously constantly washed. His face rarely had color in it, and he invariably wore a nondescript beige sweater, and, on warm days, a nondescript shirt, either beige or white, but always worn with neatness. Complementing this colorlessness was the fact that he shuffled and mumbled. The shuffling I could understand—since he moved around small stores for so many years, he inevitably developed the cautious shuffle in preference to more defined steps that would have carried him further than he intended. By shuffling, he also avoided reverberations on the wood floor that might disrupt the items on the shelves. Because he had a posture that was downright bearish, his shuffling was even more exaggerated. The goods on his shelves were always as neat and orderly as soldiers in a line of march. Obviously, George had a great deal of pride in his store. I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I know that I very much respected George—he worked hard, cared about his work, built a successful small business, and, in so doing, he was able both to provide a useful service to the neighborhood while integrating himself into the American economic system. I consider it unfortunate that changes in economic arrangements and the power of large corporations have made it almost impossible for small businesses like George’s, Mrs. White’s, and the candy store to survive. These changes may well have been inevitable, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are culturally poorer for them. The Wal-Marts and Targets may be cost effective for consumers but, unlike the mom and pop stores that grew organically out of their communities and serviced the people of those communities, the big stores are like spaceships that have imposed themselves upon our urban landscape and into our cultural contexts. Furthermore, many of the large stores now have check-out arrangements where the consumer simply uses a computer scanner to total his purchases so that he need not have any encounter with a human being. It boggles my mind that anyone is able to look upon this as a positive development. No matter how long the lines at check-outs with a human cashier, Margarita and I always prefer waiting in line so as to have contact with a person. I think it would be helpful for all of us to revisit the Twilight Zone episode in which Richard Deacon plays a factory owner who gradually replaces all of his staff and line workers with machines, until, finally, the machines get rid of him as well. There was, even in the ordinary task of computing customers’ bills, the kind of intimacy between purveyor and buyer that characterized relationships in these small neighborhood stores. Not unlike most small store

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owners of that period, George would put a brown paper bag on the counter, write the price of each item purchased on it as he touched the item so that you knew what was being listed, and then add the column of figures about as fast as a calculator. While most store clerks performed the operation in this manner, few could match George’s rate of speed. He toted up the figures, speaking each one aloud, but in a deep-throated rumble in which nothing he said was distinguishable, except of course to George himself. I am certain that even those fluent in Polish could not understand this stream of mutterings any better than the rest of us. When you paid him and picked up your bag, his thanks came out something like, “Uhrr.” In place of George’s grocery is a vacant space. Where Mrs. White held court, there is an apartment; in place of the grocery store across from that is The International Ministry House of Prayer, Pastor Jesus Christ. And the candy store is now the International Church of God. Marx may have been right about religions and opiates, at least as far as my old neighborhood is concerned. Walking downhill we came next to the intersection with the two blocks of Jackson Street. The houses on Jackson emphasized the hilly nature of our district. On the west side of the street, one entered the first floor apartments by walking down some steps onto a porch that was below street level. Actually, the second floor apartments ended up almost on street level. On the east side of the street, however, one had to walk up long flights of concrete stairs before coming to the first floor porches. This north block was a very important place in our lives. Near the end of the street, at number 39, was the Hungarian Presbyterian Church building that housed two congregations—the Hungarians who owned the building and our Assyrian Presbyterian Church that was the tenant. Except for the August break when the church closed, we were there every Sunday that we were not out of town. It was a rare week when one family member or other did not also have a function to attend at the church one week night as well—Elders or Deacons’ meetings for my father; Women’s Missionary Society and Sewing Circle meetings in which my mother and aunt were at various times officers; Westminster Fellowship for young people; and choir rehearsal on Fridays. Once a year, there were rehearsals for the Dramatic Club that took up two or three evenings each week prior to the performance. The club put on plays in Syriac, mostly around Biblical themes and events but occasionally about village life in Urmia. This northern half of Jackson Street has another claim to fame in my reminiscences: a full scale snowball fight took place there during the winter of 1946 between two schools, Number 19 and St. Mary’s. The block ended

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at Vark Street across of which was Vark Street Park. The designation “park” needs to be clarified for those unfamiliar with urban areas. Except for a sandbox for little kids, the park is made up entirely of concrete, the play area as well as the perimeter walls. The walls are great for handball played with tennis balls. Basketball stanchions and nets were at both ends, and across from the north border of this park was St. Mary’s School, a K–8, Roman Catholic parochial school. On a winter day in that year, whether by prearrangement or by accident, students from Number 19 clashed with their contemporaries from St. Mary’s in a massive running snowball fight on Jackson Street. The block’s residents who were at home during the day had a great ringside seat at a classic among snowball fights, although, given a natural fear of windows breaking, they surely did not view the proceedings with any degree of equanimity. I had not seen before nor since, so many kids engaged in one snowball free-for-all. Somehow, in that mysterious way that kids have for disseminating information, the word went out during the lunch break and we crowded into the street facing the parochial kids coming at us from the other direction. Most of those in front were the older kids together with some of the more courageous (or foolhardy) members of my age group. Most of my friends and I were content to bring up the rear. I wonder if our thrown snowballs even got past our own frontlines. There were snowballs everywhere and the frontline kept flowing, first in our favor, then against us as we retreated. Since St. Mary’s included grades 7 and 8, while Number 19 went only to the sixth grade, we were at a disadvantage, at least in physical capacity, though certainly not in enthusiasm. I don’t remember what ended it, probably the bell ending the lunch period. It would be something that simple. We were authoritarian personalities, so we responded with alacrity to directions such as school bells. This was not a time notable for youthful rebellion. The St. Mary’s kids reacted the same way; fear of the teacher-nuns, even among the biggest male students, was awesome to behold. In a matter of minutes, the block only just filled with screaming kids, was emptied of everyone. Of course, after the event, there were a number of exciting narratives about what actually happened. The tales about the snowball fight resembled, in a minor way, of course, the film Rashomon where several people, in spite of having witnessed or been part of the same crime, give conflicting versions of what actually took place. My friend, Peter Joseph, for example, a St. Mary’s student, included in his narration an account of his school’s older students planning the “attack.” He described the Catholic

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kids attacking in ranks. According to him, the oldest students organized their attacking forces by class phalanxes—eighth-graders first, seventhgraders next, and then sixth, fifth, and so on. I doubt that this strategic planning actually took place. There would not have been time for so complex a strategy to be explained and implemented. Besides, it would have taken a good deal of pre-fight practice to insure anything like that kind of precision and obedience. A wonderful story though, the kind the neighborhood appreciated hearing and repeating. One aspect of the event that, in retrospective, pleases me: I can’t recall any administrators, on either side, neither teachers from Number 19 nor nuns from St. Mary’s trying to break it up. And there were no lawsuits, by anyone, on either side. Perhaps, if someone had been seriously hurt, there might have been some legal and/or administrative repercussions, but I doubt it. Not in that year, not in South Yonkers. The other block of Jackson Street, going south from Herriot ended at Highland Avenue. At that terminus, on the east side, was the lower entrance to Number 19; the main entrance was on Groshon Avenue. On the west side was Dumbro’s tiny candy store. Dumbro (undoubtedly a contraction of Dumbrowski), was a short, wizened man with crispy, gray hair and enormously thick eyeglasses, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe. He walked with very small, shuffling steps, not unlike George, and always wore an off-white pharmacist’s jacket, a white shirt with black tie, and a white apron. Dumbro spoke very little, except that, as befits a candy store operator, he mostly smiled when he did speak. The store had four stools and a marble counter on the south side and magazine and comic book racks on the wall opposite. A comic book cost ten cents. A newspaper rack stood on the street, just outside the door. On the wall behind the counter were cabinets with fancy candy boxes, cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products. Abutting the marble counter, near the door, was a glass candy case upon which sat a large brass cash register. Atop the counter, at its far end, sat a large metal and glass container that held the most delicious potato chips I have ever eaten. As a potato chip devotee, I have sampled most of the available brands, but the closest I have come to that taste of Dumbro’s chips is a recent Lays’ product called Deli Style Potato Chips. Dumbro refilled this container from five-gallon tins in which the chips were delivered. When you ordered chips, for a nickel as I remember, Dumbro used a scoop to put the potatoes in a small brown paper bag. Our purchases were invariably for take-out. But, if you had a little bit more money, you could sit at the counter and order Dumbro’s crowning achievement, an egg cream, to drink with your chips. If you were

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financially flush, you could move up to an ice cream soda, a shake, or a sundae. It is a startling realization, as it is recalling the grocery stores, to remember that a candy store or a grocery store, without even the added income of lottery sales, could in 1946 provide enough income for a decent living standard for a family. Sometimes, on these Saturday walks, my father would make a detour south from Herriot Street so I could buy something from Dumbro’s. In that case, after the stop at the candy store, we would continue our trek down to Riverdale by way of Highland Avenue. Whether or not he made that detour depended, I guess, on how persuasive I could be. Whining would not have worked; my father was wholly unreceptive to that, so I must have succeeded with just the right amount of gentle pleading. The usual manner this negotiation took was as follows: “If I can get something at Dumbro’s, I won’t ask for anything more today.” “Are you sure?” “I promise.” This was a little ritual of its own. Whether he treated me at the Herriot Street candy store, or at Dumbro’s, or at one of the Riverdale locations, I knew I would consume some treat before returning home. My father enjoyed providing some small treat on every trip. On week days, Pop had the habit of bringing treats home with him for all three of his children. He did this almost every day. Before he took off his coat, he would reach into his pocket and take out three lollipops, or three pieces of bubble gum, or three candy bars. It meant a great deal to me and my siblings at the time, and even more so now in recollection. It tells much about his affection and thoughtfulness that, each day, in his evacuation procedures at his work—cleaning brushes, putting away paint, getting the paint off his hands, changing clothes, locking up his shop in the basement of each of the buildings where he painted—he took the time to stop at a store and pick up treats. I can remember how pleased he was with our eagerness as we came running up to get whatever he had, which was always preceded by someone shouting, “Pop’s home.” Despite the clichés possible in this description of those moments, I have to write that these interactions with his family were, for Pop, the material of riches. If we didn’t take the detour to Dumbro’s, we would continue down Herriot hill to the next intersection, Jefferson Street. On the northwest corner was a very small vacant lot bordered by cousin Sargis Ameer’s house. Uncle Sargis was a widower with three daughters: Margaret, Shirley, and Beatrice. Further north, on the same block, lived Ruel Eshoo with his

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wife Marjanita and sons, Rubin, Arthur, and Arnold, and daughter, Dorothy. Uncle Ruel was also from Shemshajian. Arnold was my age; he and I, together with my cousin Sonny Ameer, started together at Number 19, and remained classmates through Hawthorne Junior High School. We went separate ways for high school: Sonny to Saunders Trade School, Arnold to Gorton High School in North Yonkers, while I opted for Yonkers High School, at the top of Park Hill Avenue in the Italian section of South Yonkers. Where the three of us were or are in recent years typifies the general dispersal of this Assyrian community after the 1950s—Sonny was in Brooklyn, Arnold in Hastings, New York, and I am in eastern Massachusetts. On every trip when weather permitted, I was sure that among the men we would meet would be Uncle Sargis. Most of the Assyrians we met on these jaunts were males; the women were usually at home completing the same chores as were my mother and aunt. As I note contemporary discussions and scholarly writings about adult male role models for young boys, I have to be grateful that I had so many of these men to whom I could look to for clues as to how I should behave when I reached adulthood. Through observing their behavior and by hearing their stories, I was being initiated into what our community expected of its adult males. These expectations revolved around responsibility to family and community, honesty, hard work, moderation and temperance, and seriousness. By contrast and comparison, one realizes the enormous difficulties for all those young boys growing up in today in our inner cities, or elsewhere for that matter, who lack any kind of significant male presence. On Saturday mornings, on fair days, Uncle Sargis would hold court on the corner, chatting with neighbors and other passersby. We really enjoyed meeting him; he and my father would have long conversations. Uncle Sargis and his brother, Uncle George, were big men, tall and broad-shouldered, but, whereas Uncle George was soft-spoken, Uncle Sargis had a booming voice. My memories of him are filled with images of his laughter and friendliness. He had a wonderful, toothy smile and a loud laugh, all of which, together with his dark-rimmed glasses, made him look like an Assyrian Teddy Roosevelt. Both my father and Uncle Sargis enjoyed hearing a good story or telling one. The subjects of these tales were mostly of people they knew; occasionally they would reminisce about times past in Urmia. Most often, it seemed, the anecdote was about someone who had done something foolish or comical. A few persons seemed to be regulars in these anecdotes.

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When Uncle Sargis and his family moved into that corner house, my father, along with other relatives, did some of the floor work and painting, as part of that support system characteristic of our community. This house had a backyard garden, and, during the summer months, our meetings with Uncle Sargis moved to the yard where my father would be given some herbs or vegetables to add to whatever goods we would purchase. Most Assyrians, whatever jobs they had in this country, were farmers at heart, even if the farm was only a small backyard patch. They shared what they grew, as little as it was, and it was amazing how much production they could get out of a small patch of urban soil. The community must have transferred this green thumb to its émigrés, even those working in factories or in the trades, through some form of a collective cultural consciousness. The block of Jefferson Street south from Herriot was unique for our area as African-Americans made up almost the entire population of the block. Why this one block? How did these people come to be here? How long had this street housed black Americans? Had they been limited to this block by the usual means of exclusion? I have never been able to find credible answers to these questions. The children from this block were with us at Number 19. I suppose that most of the men and some of the women worked in the plants along the river or in the small knitting plants. I do not know for sure since there was no discussion of these black Americans in the conversations that I heard. The next and final intersection on our route, Herriot and Riverdale, was the southern border of our marketing area. On the southeast corner of this intersection was Friedman’s Grocery Store, whose owner, Julius Friedman, was a Hungarian Jew. His son Sandor was a classmate of mine from kindergarten through high school. He went on to university in New York City, I believe, while I went out of the state for college. The Friedmans lived in an apartment in the building right next to Dumbro’s, at the corner of Jackson Street and Highland Avenue, a fact that made me envious of Sandor. Mr. Friedman was my first employer; I worked there as stock and delivery boy during parts of my tenth and eleventh grade years, 1952 and 1953. My work time was two and a half hours after school on weekdays and eight hours on Saturdays, for $14.50 per week. Those wages, and any other money I earned or received as gifts, went into a savings account “for college.” I never found out why Sandor did not do this work for his father. If my understanding of Mr. Friedman is correct, he reserved the job for a youngster who needed the income. In any case, I am glad it was there for me.

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I really enjoyed working for Julius Friedman. He was tall, probably six feet or at least close to it, slim, with white hair cropped in a crew cut. He was an immaculate dresser, with his white shirt and tie and off-white clerk’s coat always clean and well pressed. His eyes, behind steel-rimmed glasses, were almost always smiling, and he spoke English with the precision and clarity of articulation that characterizes someone who has taken care to learn a new language well. Mr. Friedman was an intelligent and well-read individual; I enjoyed listening to his commentaries. He always delivered his opinions on the current scene as pronouncements, but they were informed judgments and usually well worth hearing and considering. While the specifics have been dimmed by time, I recall one such pronouncement with perfect clarity as if it had occurred just yesterday. I am not sure why, of all his commentaries, this particular one has stayed with me; it is probably that I was so startled by it. We learned one day that President Truman was scheduled to come through Yonkers, motoring up Broadway to give a speech someplace or other north of our city. This was during the President’s last year in office. Most people I knew were eagerly planning to be at curbside to cheer the motorcade as it passed. After all, how often would there be a presidential visit, even of the drive-by variety, to Yonkers? I asked Mr. Friedman if he was going to be there, but it was pretty much of a rhetorical question, first because I could not imagine anyone not wanting to see the President up close, and second, I realized that he would be reluctant to close the store since the neighborhood relied on the neighborhood stores to have regular hours. Mr. Friedman took my question seriously, but, to my surprise, didn’t give the need to keep the store open as his reason for not going to the motorcade route. His reason was of a significantly different nature: “The day they bring by the chief Mafia gangsters in handcuffs and in irons,” he pronounced, “on their way up to Sing Sing, then I will close the store and go up and watch them pass by.” In this instance as in all others, Mr. Friedman’s ideological judgments were delivered pithily and with pertinence. Diagonally across from Friedman’s, on the northwest corner, was a pharmacy where Norman Baboo worked during the same years as I was with Mr. Friedman. Actually, it was Norman who had alerted me to the availability of the job at Friedman’s. I don’t recall the name of Norman’s pharmacist, but, as with all other pharmacists in the area, he was addressed and referred to as “Doc.” Norm stocked the shelves and made the prescription deliveries.

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Next to the pharmacy was a stationery store, where we bought most of my school supplies. I noticed one day in the fall of 1946, on display in the store’s window, a stamp album. This particular album was a very poor cousin of its sophisticated betters, but it was impressive enough for me. The green colored album had an embossed image of a clipper ship on the cover and cost 75 cents. I pointed it out to my father one Saturday as we passed the store on our way back home. I don’t remember that he had any noticeable reaction, so I brought the subject up again at dinner. I reported that two of my buddies from school, George Hovorka and Donald Gurka, had already started collections and I wanted to get in on this. That kind of special pleading, emphasizing that I wanted no more than my friends elicited no more response than had my original foray into this subject. That seemed to end the matter, until one evening, a few days after this conversation, when my father came in from work and, instead of giving me one of the usual treats, he handed me a brown bag that contained the album! He then brought out from his closet a box in which he had kept over the years the corners of envelopes with canceled stamps. He apparently thought that stamps were interesting to look at, and should, therefore, be kept. He might even have thought that one of his kids might someday start a stamp collection. Pop and Mom had very little to spend on purchases beyond the regular household expenses, but, if the object to be purchased had something to do with learning, they always tried to extend themselves in that direction. Margarita told me that even though her family was in tight economic circumstances when she and her sister were in elementary school, her father extended himself to buy a globe and a set of encyclopedias. That parental message is the best “school readiness” program that a child can receive. As a result of this attitude, I had my album and about 100 various stamps from Pop’s envelopes with which to start my collection. As an introduction to cultural and political geography, stamp collecting provides an engaging and stimulating learning tool for an elementary school youngster. Now there are many more ways to enhance learning beyond the classroom, including television and the Internet. In those days, there was nothing better than stamps for learning geography. My green album has long since been discarded, having been replaced inevitably by more comprehensive versions. I continue to be a stamp collector. At Mr. Friedman’s corner, we turned north on Riverdale, past a small bar, and went in at our first marketing stop, a butcher shop. In 1946, the store had new owners, an Italian couple; I don’t know if I ever heard their

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names. During the War, in the time of ration stamps, shortages, and the black market, this shop had been owned by an eastern European immigrant. It is unlikely that he was involved in any undercover meat purchases, but it was fun to think so. Such meanderings in imagination let me hypothesize a B-movie about black marketers and gangsters. What a wonderful term—“black market.” It conjures up images of intrigue, crime, conspiracies and the like. In my imagined B-movie, the cast, in dark suits and black fedoras, would include Eduardo Cianneli, Sheldon Leonard, Ted De Corsia, Joseph Calleia, and Marc Lawrence, driving up in the middle of the night in darkened trucks to unload the illegal meat at the back door. Actually, there was no place in the back where the truck could drive up; deliveries were made right on Riverdale Avenue, in full view of any passersby, including any passing police. A good story, as usual, was preferable to the reality. In this post-War year, plentiful supplies of meat had already replaced the scarcity of the duration. The shop now had lamb for the dolmas, some beef chuck for khurush (a stew of beef, green beans, celery, green peppers, onions, and tomato sauce), and roasting chickens. Dolma, rice, khurush and roasted chicken made for a substantial Sunday menu. This abundance was necessary since it was an infrequent Sunday when we did not have guests. Sometimes these visitors were friends or relatives from Yonkers; often they were from out-of-town. So we needed to buy enough to enable my mother to prepare a dinner with more food than the family could consume by itself. The amount of food prepared may puzzle modern readers used to higher costs for meat and poultry, but in 1946, these were relatively inexpensive meals. From the butcher shop we walked north, where we encountered the exciting vibrancy of people engaged in talking and shopping on a busy avenue. Almost every store on Riverdale had apartments above it so there were lots of people on the street—walking, window shopping, and talking. Many of my classmates came from these apartments. On Saturdays, we shoppers augmented the resident population. Many of the people were Assyrian men and women gathered in small knots along the avenue. There were also Poles, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Czechs, Irish, Germans, Italians, Russians, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Swedes, Greeks, and Lithuanians, all who made up Yonkers’ diverse demography. While the men lingered in these gatherings, the women usually had time only for a greeting and a brief chat. The groups usually included three or four participants—one or two who remained for long stretches while passersby joined in for briefer periods.

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Invariably, in the male conversational groups among Assyrians, one man presided, acting as if he were holding court with courtiers. Tatta the watchmaker, dressed in a three-piece suit, usually brown, a tan overcoat, and a gray fedora, presided regularly over such a group. I don’t know if he had a watch making shop; I doubt it. I think he repaired watches and conducted other aspects of the jeweler’s craft in his home as a kind of moonlighting supplement to a regular job. Acquaintances would hand him some work during a street encounter, and receive it back the same way. Neither receipts nor claim checks were necessary. Tatta usually held forth in close proximity to Weiss the green grocer, our next stop. Weiss’s store was a bare room with an aisle down the middle and the fruits and vegetables piled up in their original boxes on either side, with some additional boxes along the front of the store on the sidewalk. At regular intervals along this aisle hung flypaper strips, well stocked with unsuspecting flies. Patrolling this aisle, usually eating some of his profits, was Mr. Weiss, a big, balding man with an apron in perennial need of a wash, and a drooping paunch into which part of his apron disappeared. He knew virtually everybody who shopped there, so there was a good deal of conversation prior to and during purchases. Clearly, he knew his produce. He stocked grade A merchandise, which not only the Assyrians, but the others in the district demanded. Since most of our cooking was done from scratch, prime quality vegetables and herbs were essential. Across the street from Weiss was Mr. Eshoo, our cobbler (we didn’t use that term, preferring “shoemaker” instead), an Assyrian from Cherajooshi. His son Joe was one of a very small number of Assyrians who made it in professional athletics. Joe played shortstop in the pros, a few years with the Newark Bears, a New York Yankees-owned team in the triple-A International League, and then with the Chicago White Sox. With Phil Rizzuto holding tenure on the shortstop position for the Yankees, Joe was traded, much to his relief actually, however prestigious it might have been to be part of the Yankee organization. Unfortunately, a nagging heel injury cut short his time in the pros, but we were privileged to see him play for years, as he roamed around the shortstop position as captain of the Assyrian-American softball team. The softball league games were played on the diamond at Pelton Field Park on McLean Avenue. He moved around that position with such genuine grace and effortlessness; he was so much fun to watch, albeit somewhat awesome for any of us who aspired to play baseball even at the informal level. Joe died in the 1980s and the city renamed the baseball part of Pelton Park as Joe Eshoo Field.

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Continuing north with our purchases from Weiss, we passed other stores, including a drug store owned by a Russian émigré and some small warehouses. One building housed a candy and tobacco wholesaler whose establishment emitted an aroma of sweetness more powerful than any other I have experienced. Of course, I walked as slowly as possible, with my own shuffle, past this doorway. Across from this delight was a junkyard where the owner kept not only his junk but also his horse and dray. A year or two after 1946, this yard was replaced by a new Gulf gas station and auto repair shop opened by David Shimon (“Dave the Mechanic”) and John Aziz (“John the Mechanic”). These two Assyrian men, on returning from the War, opened an auto repair business in a garage on Highland Avenue after which they had built this Gulf station on Riverdale Avenue. At the next intersection, Riverdale and St. Mary’s street, just past the tobacconist and the junkyard, on the northeast corner, was an honor roll board, one of several that had been erected during the War. As with others of this type, this one contained the names of those from our district who had served in the conflict, with gold stars next to the names of those who did not come back. Beyond that was Chachkes’ Furniture Store and then Sam Aslan’s diner. Aslan’s, with both American and Assyrian dishes on the menu, was a highly successful operation and a favorite meeting place for Assyrian men, especially bachelors and widowers. I cannot recall Sam Aslan’s village in Urmia, but I do remember my mother saying that his family was with hers in the World War I escape to Russia. The diner had white porcelain walls typical of the type, with a single row of tables on one wall opposite a counter with stools. I regret never having eaten there myself, but eating out seemed to my parents to be an unnecessary and frivolous extravagance. Occasionally, on these marketing trips, my father would stop in if he wanted to join in the non-stop conversation that went on there from opening to closing. Various participants came and went, entering and leaving the conversation, leavening it with their contributions. My father would order a coffee for himself and a Coca Cola or a glass of milk for me. Very few Assyrians were merchants; most were in the trades or worked in factories. In addition to Sam Aslan, David Jacobs had a liquor store on the corner of Valentine Avenue and South Broadway, the Yohannans had a dress store, also on Broadway, across from the Park Hill Theater, and Alex Ameer had a rug and linoleum business on Riverdale Avenue. Assyrians, unfortunately, unlike most ethnic communities, did not have a well-developed sense of loyalty to the merchants of their

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community. Sometimes, in fact, this indifference manifested itself in a negative attitude toward their own. I had noticed early in my years that this negativity caused, in place of a celebratory satisfaction at the success of one of their own, a feeling resembling resentment. The underpinning of this attitude was the peculiar concept of shuhara—roughly translated as overweening pride or hubris—by which ambition was considered to be overreaching. I recall that, sometime in the 1950s, an Assyrian family tried to open an upscale Middle Eastern restaurant in the theater district of central Manhattan. I never understood all of the details, except that, as with so many new restaurants, it failed spectacularly. Naturally, the Assyrian community’s collective analysis was that, by attempting such an ambitious project, this family had succumbed to a bout of shuhara. Of course, it would have helped the restaurant if the community had decided collectively to be patrons instead of critics. I grew to hate that term and the disdain for ambition that it signified. It was too much a part of the Assyrian vocabulary and derived no doubt from my people’s experience as an oppressed minority in the Middle East. Living among a hostile Muslim population, it was the better part of discretion to minimize accomplishments and successes. Maintaining a low profile was a survival skill. That is most likely where the concept of shuhara originated, but, where that attitude was a necessity in Iran, it could be a debilitating liability in this country. After leaving Sam Aslan’s diner we arrived at the famous, or, rather, infamous, corner of Washington Street and Riverdale Avenue. The infamy dates to a confrontation that occurred there in the early 1920s. In those early years of the Assyrian immigration, our people had interethnic problems with some of the eastern European groups, Poles in particular. We heard many stories about street fights that took place because these Euro-Americans resented the presence of darker peoples among them. The oral tradition has it that various Polish men would randomly attack lone Assyrians walking on Riverdale or Buena Vista Avenues. As the story goes, on one Saturday morning, a small group of young Assyrian men decided to make a demonstration of strength as a way, hopefully, of ending this harassment. These men purportedly walked down Riverdale Avenue beating up on any Polish male they found (presumably they could distinguish them from other Euro-Americans). When this group reached the intersection of Riverdale and Washington Street, a generalized melee developed—men fighting each other, women throwing various objects from upper story windows at the battlers below.

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The police eventually ended the battle and brought the fighters before the district judge. Tradition has it that his honor delivered an impromptu and stinging rebuke to both groups. And the symmetry of the story is completed by the belief that this battle ended the overt harassment. There is no way to ascertain to what extent we heard a true account of the fight and of the incidents leading up to it. The record is clear only that some Assyrian men and some Polish men were brought before a judge and fined for their actions. The story, however, was repeated so often that it earned the status of truth. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” says the newspaper editor in John Ford’s 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. However this Saturday afternoon incident happened, I would have liked to have been there to see it. In 1946, at this intersection, on the southwest corner was a delicatessen known as “Tiny’s.” Tiny, as his name implies, weighed at least 300 lbs and served mountainous pastrami and corned beef sandwiches. Our destination, though, was Finkelstein’s, on the northeast corner. It is simply not possible to satisfactorily convey to anyone who has not had the pleasure of entering Finkelstein’s, the sheer delight of entering that store and being met with that beautiful combination of aromas. It was primarily a dairy store, but stocked coffees, teas, and some spices as well. “There was never a perfume as good as an old time grocery store,” Cary Grant, as Dr. Praetorius in People Will Talk, correctly muses. All of the clerks wore the same uniform and apron as did Dumbro and Mr. Friedman—the white shirt, black tie, and off-white jacket. The butters and cheeses, the store’s main products, were kept in bulk in wooden cabinets with glass fronts behind the counter. The clerks cut off and put into small, rectangular cardboard trays however much the customer requested and, then weighed and wrapped the tray. Their estimates were seldom more than an ounce off. There was rich and creamy butter, salted or unsalted, cream cheese, jack cheese, and, in large tubs, cottage cheese. Eggs were in large wire baskets on a table by the window. If you wanted a dozen, the clerk picked them and placed them in egg cartons for safe carrying home. If you got fewer than a dozen, he put them into brown paper bags. We usually got two dozen so I never saw how one managed to get bagged eggs safely home. It must have taken remarkable dexterity and care. In wooden cabinets, also with glass fronts, across from the eggs, were the bins of tea and coffee. We usually bought tea and a few pounds of coffee that were ground by the clerk. I remember being pleased that my father was seldom in a hurry; I think he enjoyed the aromas as much as I

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did. I do believe that one could walk into that store, sated from a full meal, and develop a ravenous appetite nevertheless. A few doors further on was Blue Bell’s French Bakery that featured French bread, baked daily of course, and fancy cakes and pastries. In addition to frequenting Blue Bell’s for the French bread, one went there for birthday and wedding cakes that featured butter cream frosting and flowered designs. They also baked cup cakes that were about twice the size of those one finds in markets nowadays. We always bought a few loaves of the bread and, for Sunday breakfast, some of their renowned crumbed coffee cake. This delicacy was displayed on the counter on the sheet on which it was baked. The clerk cut off the number of pieces requested. We then crossed the street, walked a block south, to get to the second bakery on our route, Weber’s. On Saturdays, this temple of Jewish baked goods was always the most crowded of the stores we visited. Actually, one would find a crowd there even on weekdays, and why not? They baked the finest loaves of Jewish rye around, either with or without seeds. Weber’s sold many other items as well, but I don’t remember my father buying anything besides the rye bread. The clerks were Weber himself and his two middle-aged daughters. He moved at half-speed while the two women waited on customers in hyperdrive. The bakery purchases ended the marketing. From Weber’s we continued home, past the little movie theater next door. The Lido was a small movie house, much smaller than the other movie theaters in the city. It was about the size of many of those mini-theaters currently fashionable at cineplexes in shopping malls. The Lido’s preferred nickname among my age group was “the bug house,” although I never experienced whatever it was that gave rise to that name. Pop and I, and later on, my brother and sister as well, frequented the Lido regularly. For the most part, the programs were Westerns, the “cowboy movies” that my father so loved. He knew all the heroes and most of the villains well. He had a long list of “favorites,” including Ed “Hoot” Gibson, Eddie Dean, Al “Lash” LaRue, the Three Mesquiteers, Tom Tyler, Al “Fuzzy” St. John, Tex Ritter, Gordon “Wild Bill” Elliott, George “Gabby” Hayes, Roy Rogers, “Crash” Corrigan, Gene Autry, Allen “Rocky” Lane, Ken and Kermit Maynard, William “Hopalong Cassidy” Boyd, “Sunset” Carson, Tim McCoy, Dave and George O’Brien, “Whip” Wilson, Buck Jones, and, of course, John Wayne. At the top of his list of favorites was Johnny Mack Brown. I think the stolidity of Brown’s character appealed to Pop. They were all part of the large posse of cowboy heroes and an equally large cohort of villains that populated these movies. Sometimes Pop and I returned to the Lido on Saturday afternoons after we

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had delivered our purchases. Most often, however, during one evening per week, after dinner, when people now park in front of television sets, we went to the movies. On Saturday mornings, however, there was no time for that. We had to get the ingredients home so the food production could proceed and, if we were lucky, meet a few more Assyrians on the way.

CHAPTER 2: FLIGHT Seventy thousand Assyrians, a mere seventy thousand of that great people, and all the others quiet in death and all the greatness crumbled and ignored, and a young man in America learning to be a barber, and a young man lamenting bitterly the course of history. 12

William Saroyan, “Seventy Thousand Assyrians” (1934)

Eprim Shlemon Ameer was a house painter for most of his life. That is not what he wanted to do. He really wanted to be a telegrapher. He started to learn telegraphy in Mesopotamia, in 1919, at age 15, from a British signal corps sergeant. My father served with the British army, at that time, in their war with the Turks. Along with hundreds of other Assyrian men and boys who were auxiliaries or “irregulars” with the British army, Pop found himself in the thick of the fighting in Mesopotamia. He was assigned as a mounted messenger, so he had to hang around the signal tent waiting for messages to be carried. One of the sergeants on duty there, in the manner of thousands of soldiers, in hundreds of wars, took pleasure, and some amusement no doubt, in the interest shown by this native youngster in the telegraphic operation. So he started to give the boy regular lessons on how to receive and send on the key. Pop spent about an hour each day with this sergeant, and told us that he had attained a fairly proficient level with the key. He knew a good bit of English even then, more than enough to handle the short, specific messages that military units exchanged. He had learned English, along with most of the Assyrian children, at the schools in Urmia that had been organized by American Protestant missionaries. Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries had started

12 William Saroyan (1934), “Seventy Thousand Assyrians” in Bernardine Kielty (1947) A Treasury of Short Stories. New York City: Simon and Schuster, pages 733740.

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arriving among the Assyrian people in 1834 and had maintained mission stations from that time until the end of World War I. Early in the nineteenth century, American Protestants started on a vast missionary enterprise with the aim of converting the world to Christianity. Some of these Americans went to lands where there was no Christian presence in order to initiate one; others went to the ancient churches, such as our Nestorian Church, with the goal of revitalizing these congregations so that they, too, could join this great evangelistic enterprise. The most significant result from the work of these mission stations was not evangelization but the creation of comprehensive school systems. Among the Assyrians, for example, schools were established by the Americans that encompassed 13 primary through college education. My father had attended the school in his village of Geog Tapa. Learning the operation of the telegraph was a pleasant divergence from his assigned duties. Delivering the messages from unit to unit was a wholly different and enormously frightening task. Riding alone in that battle area, where there was seldom a constant, definable front line, had to be harrowing. The place a British unit would have occupied the day previous could the next day contain hostile forces. One recollection of these days that he shared with us describes especially well the fears and dangers he lived through. It happened in the dead of night. As he rode with his message, he was sure that each piece of vegetation was a Turk laying in ambush, that each small hill hid a group of the enemy just waiting to pounce on a lone rider. When he arrived at his destination, the sergeant there, noting Pop’s pale and shaking condition, gave him a shot of brandy to calm him down. Since most of the reformed Assyrians were decidedly temperance, this had to have been his first experience with alcohol, but it did the trick. How enduring such experiences can be was made clear to us one Sunday at breakfast when Mom told about a nightmare my father had that night. In the middle of a deep sleep, Pop had suddenly lunged to his left, off the bed, crashing to the floor. He explained to her that he had been dreaming about those years and, in his dream, responded to a call that the Turks were coming, so he reached over to the stacked rifles to get his. In

Justin Perkins (1843) Residence of Eight Years in Persia Among the Nestorian Christians. Andover MA: Allen, Morrill, and Wardwell. 13

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reaching for this dreamed rifle, more than twenty years after the actual event, Pop took his dive off the side of the bed. He told us that the expressions, “The Turks are coming!” or “The Kurds are coming!” were all that was necessary to raise an alarm among Assyrians. My father was one of about 150,000 Assyrian refugees who had been driven from their homes in Turkey and Iran by a coalition of Turkish army divisions, Kurdish irregular forces, and local Iranian sympathizers. In the last year of the Great War, the refugees fled south seeking protection in Mesopotamia, inside the lines of the British army. They were settled in hastily constructed refugee camps around Baghdad, and many of the men and boys took service with the British against the Turks. Following the War, several stayed with the British forces to help in a pacification program against local Arab forces opposed to the British occupation and to British 14 designs on the future of the former Ottoman provinces. The Assyrians were drawn into World War I partly by their own decisions (they were sympathetic to the Christian nations), but mostly because the Muslims among whom they lived, by both official and unofficial actions, gave them no choice. The Assyrian villages in Kurdistan, in the eastern Ottoman Empire, and on the Urmia plain of northwestern Iran, just across the border from Turkey, lay between the combatants, Russia and Turkey. The Ottoman Turks entered the War on the side of the Austro-Germans in November, 1914, putting them in conflict with the Russians on their eastern boundary and the British and French on their southern boundary. Assyrian and Armenian Christians, residing in the corridor between the opposing Turkish and Russian armies, would inevitably become caught up in the conflict whether they wished to be or not. Trapped in this way, both of these peoples, throughout the four years of the War, suffered the fate common to minorities in similar situations.

14 Readings on the Assyrians in the Great War include: H. H. Austin (1920) The Baqubah Refugee Camp: An Account of Work on Behalf of the Persecuted Assyrian Christians. London: The Faith Press. Available online at www.aina.org; Yusuf Malek (1935) The British Betrayal of the Assyrians. Warren Point NJ: Kimball Press; Joseph Naayem (1921) Shall This Nation Die? New York City: Chaldean Rescue; Joel Werda (1924) The Flickering Light of Asia or the Assyrian Nation and Church. Published by the author. [A new edition has been published in Chicago (1990) by Assyrian Language and Culture Classes.]

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Troubles between the Ottoman central government and these Christian minorities did not originate with this War; the oppression of these Christian minorities was a continuing story. In 1842 and ’43, the Turks had persuaded their Kurdish subjects to attack and massacre the Assyrians who lived in the Kurdistan Mountains. The pretext offered up by the Ottomans was that Assyrians were ignoring the central government in Istanbul, living in their mountains as an independent entity. The government’s stated rationalization for inciting the Kurds was the necessity to bring the Assyrians under proper governmental control. The Kurds’ motives were of a different order: they were working toward an independent Kurdish state—as they still are today. In anticipation of the coming into being of their own state, they wanted to eliminate non-Kurdish peoples from their territory, a process to which we now refer to as “ethnic cleansing.” Hence, they were more than willing to carry out Istanbul’s wishes in this matter, in spite of the antipathy they themselves had for that government. This internal war within the Ottoman Empire against Christian minorities included attacks on the Armenian Christians as well, ending in the Armenian holocaust of 1915. From 1894 to 1896, the Ottoman government of Sultan Abdul Hamid persuaded the Kurds to launch a series of attacks on the Armenians similar to those previously unleashed against the Assyrians. The Kurds were more than willing to join Turkish troops in the killing fields, again for the purpose of ethnic cleansing. Eastern Turkey had once been part of an Armenian state, so the Armenian population was a significantly large one. Because they still occupied most of the land that had been the historical Armenian state (the other part of that state had been swallowed up by Russia), the Armenians had always been looked on with apprehension by the Turks as potential separatists. Given the much larger number of Armenians, the Ottoman government was obviously more apprehensive of Armenian nationalism than they were about Assyrian independence. Further fueling this volatile situation, including raising the level of paranoia of an increasingly incompetent and decadent Turkish government, were claims emanating regularly from the Russian government that it had a responsibility to protect Christians in both the Iranian and Ottoman Empires. The Ottomans were well aware of their weakness in comparison to the powers that threateningly eyed their tottering empire—Britain, France, Germany, and Russia. Some modern observers have a tendency to exaggerate Turkish and Kurdish fears in regard to the favors that Christian minorities received from foreigners, but a weak and decaying Ottoman Empire certainly feared any advantage, real or perceived, that western

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nations had over them. The presence of Christian minorities in the empire, more sympathetic to fellow Christians in the West than to their own government, was considered one of these advantages. Increased hostility by the Ottomans toward their Christians subjects flowed naturally from this juxtaposition of imperial designs and local fears. To whatever extent the Russians made such claims, which clearly served Russia’s imperialistic designs, the animosity among Turks, Kurds, Armenians, and Assyrians was already rooted in ethnic and religious differences, and so predated these nineteenth and twentieth century issues of foreign policy. Foreign affairs, in effect, simply and destructively exacerbated ill-feelings that were already present and virulent. The 1914–1918 War provided Turks and Kurds with yet one more self-justified reason to revive the pattern of brutality toward these Christian minorities, giving them the excuse that these peoples were closely allied with the Empire’s enemies, and consequently not loyal to the government. Had the phrase been in use then, the Turks would have labeled the Assyrians and Armenians as a fifth column within their nation. When the Ottomans, in a plan designed to further mobilize support for the war effort among the Muslim majority, declared the conflict to be a jihad—a holy war—the fate of the Assyrians and Armenians was sealed: Muslims are obliged to fight non-Muslims until the latter accept either the religion of Islam, or the status of protected subjects (dhimmis, Ahl ulDhimma), the latter choice being open only to the ‘People of the Book,’ i.e., to Jews, Christians and Sabaens-Mandaeans...Orthodox Islamic tradition holds that jihad is obligatory in all generations and circumstances...In principle, any war by a Muslim country against a nonMuslim one may qualify as a jihad, but Muslim tradition requires jihad be 15 proclaimed officially.

Never mind that the Turks’ two allies, Germany and Austria, were Christian nations, nor that the Armenians and Assyrians were clearly, in Islamic doctrine, “People of the Book” and, as such, protected minorities. These theological niceties and political inconveniences were neatly set aside in the

Y. Shomoni and E. Levine (1972) Political Dictionary of the Middle East in the 20 Century. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Publishing House, pages 210-211. 15

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cause of imperial policies. As a consequence, the full weight of this fauxreligious pronouncement fell upon the Assyrians and Armenians. These moves against the minorities also conveniently ignored the fact that neither the Assyrians nor the Armenians had their own countries. Lacking the status of independent nations, they did not have the sovereignty toward which declarations of war could be legitimately directed. As citizens of the Ottoman Empire, albeit with second-class status, they could hardly have expected to be designated as sovereign belligerents. By calling for a jihad, however, the Ottoman government intended to circumvent the proper legal relationship by perpetuating the pretense that the War was a religious conflict between Muslims and their non-Muslim enemies. How had these Assyrians come to reside in harm’s way? From its formalization as a distinct church during the second century until it was almost wholly destroyed by Mongols and Turks in the thirteenth, the Church of the East had been a dynamic presence in Asia. Its most notable achievement, prior to this destruction, was a vital missionary enterprise extending from Mesopotamia to China. In the middle of the fifth century, the Church of the East, like most of the other eastern communions, severed its ties to Western Christianity, a development that turned its attention away from the West and toward Eastern lands. What followed was an exuberant missionary movement that historian John Stewart has characterized as “a 16 church on fire.” At the high point in the history of this church’s enormous missionary endeavor, in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, the Nestorian Patriarch was headquartered in Baghdad and presided over a church with sees headed by Metropolitans (similar to archbishops) stretching from his city all the way to the China Sea. In the 1920s, in Sian-fu, China, scholars discovered a Nestorian monument on which were carved summaries of the Church’s achievements in that country. Evidence has come to light recently that these Nestorian monks may even have crossed over and reached Japan. If they did reach that island, they must have had little or no success as there is no evidence of their sustaining a presence. In China, on the other hand, Nestorian monks had been enlisted into the service of the khans as advisors and bureaucrats,

John Stewart (1928) Nestorian Missionary Enterprise: The Story of a Church on Fire. London: T & T Clark. 16

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notably in the court of Kublai Khan.17 The woman who is reputed to have been the favorite among Kublai Khan’s wives was a Nestorian Christian. In the early thirteenth century, when the Muslim Caliph in Baghdad determined to send an ambassador to the royal courts of Europe, he selected the Nestorian metropolitan Rabban Sauma as his representative. It is illustrative of the demographic range of this church that both Rabban Sauma and the Patriarch at the time, Yaballaha III, were ethnic Chinese. As successful as the Nestorians were in their evangelization activities, evident by the great geographical distances traveled by their missionaries, the Church was nevertheless unable to gain a sufficient number of converts to displace the hegemony of the indigenous East Asian religions. Consequently, when disaster struck in the form of slaughter and pillage by East Asian tribes, the Church did not have the numbers to stage a major comeback. The Nestorians had experienced persecutions over time from Persians and Arabs, but these thirteenth and fourteenth century invasions delivered the coup de grace to the Church’s missionary activity. During the thirteenth century, the eastern area was disturbed by the irruption into the Muslim world of a non-Muslim Mongol dynasty from eastern Asia, with an army formed of Mongolian and Turkish tribesmen from the steppes of inner Asia. They conquered Iran and Iraq, and 18 brought to an end the ‘Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad in 1258.

Following these cataclysmic events, the Nestorians had to transfer their energy and attention from evangelization to survival. The several sees across Asia were cut off from regular contact with the Patriarchate and forced to go their independent routes. The remnant from the original congregations in Mesopotamia and Iran gradually began to concentrate north of the main population centers, settling in northern Mesopotamia, in the Kurdistan Mountains, and in the Azerbaijan province of Iran. By 1914, these Nestorian Christians, commonly referred to since the 1890s as Assyrians, were living in villages at three locations that adjoined each other. Both the largest group, approximately 100,000, and the smallest,

17 E.A.W. Budge (1928) The Monks of Kublai Khan. London: The Religious Tract Society. 18 A.H. Hourani (1947) Minorities in the Arab World. London: Oxford University Press, page 110.

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between five and six thousand, were within the Ottoman Empire. The large group, called durayi (mountain dwellers), divided into tribes each headed by a malik (chieftain), was clustered in villages in the Kurdistan mountains. The Patriarch had his center and residence among these mountaineers, in the village of Qudchanes. The smaller group lived in the foothills of the Kurdistan Mountains around the city of Mosul. A third group of Assyrians, between 25,000 and 30,000 lived outside the Ottoman Empire, across the border in northwest Iran, in and around the city of Urmia, on the plain of the same name. These Assyrians are known as Urmizhnayi (dwellers in Urmia). The Kurdistan group had been able for several years to maintain an independence from any effective control by the central government in Istanbul. Their mountain villages were so difficult of access that the inhabitants were able to exist in relative isolation from administrative control. The Patriarch formally acknowledged the suzerainty of the Ottoman government in order to maintain the proper relationship, but that didn’t make access to them by the government any easier, at least until the middle of the nineteenth century. Hence, they were generally referred to as the Independent Nestorians, and later, as the Independent Assyrians. They worked primarily as sheepherders, with some cattle, some hardscrabble farming, and a bit of iron mining. Unfortunately for them, this isolation did not include separation from their more numerous Kurdish neighbors who maintained a running and bloody feud with the Assyrians. From the 1840s and throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, this isolation became increasingly diminished. In 1842 and 1843, the Kurdish sheikhs (local tribal chieftains), aided and abetted by the Ottoman central government, launched a series of concerted and murderous attacks on the Assyrian villages. In these massacres, approximately a quarter of this population was destroyed—babies killed in their cribs, old men drowned, young men shot or beheaded, women driven over cliffs, young girls kidnapped and given to Kurdish men. Because of the success of the Kurdish attacks, the Assyrians no longer had either the isolation or the strength to sustain their previous independence. Second, the modern world and its realpolitik were catching up with the Assyrians. Russian and British imperialists sought all means possible to dominate the declining Ottoman Empire, and competed with each other for the anticipated spoils. They were quite happy, therefore, to add a supposedly sincere interest in the fate of these Assyrians to their tactical repertoires. We became one more item on each country’s contrived list of justifications.

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Third, this erosion of their protective isolation was quickened by the increasing presence of Western missionaries among the Assyrians. American and English Protestants began arriving among the Assyrians during the nineteenth century with the intent of helping to revitalize eastern 19 Christianity. These attentions, from the imperialists and from the missionaries, were mostly welcomed by the Assyrians who looked to Western support to prevent further depredations by Kurds, Turks, and Iranians. There were times when the Patriarch and his family expressed some concern and some jealousy about the people’s affection for the missionaries, but, overall, the Patriarchs understood the value of Western attentiveness. All of this attention and the decreasing isolation notwithstanding, the affection the durayi had for their mountains and villages, together with their religious affiliation, remained a powerful element within their sense of identity. This strong attachment for their mountain fastnesses only added to the pain they felt at their exile from these precincts as a result of World War I. Samuel Rhea of Tennessee, an American missionary who worked among the Independent Nestorians from 1851 to 1865, provides us, in a hymn he composed, with a sense of the intense attraction these mountains had for the durayi. Reflecting the Nestorians’ own feelings about their land, he combines religious zeal with a vivid description of this mountain terrain: Wild leaps a dashing river, Whirls boiling, gurgling, roaring, With foam and splash for ever, Down chasms and gorges rolling. From up each side that river, Far down in madness wailing, Vast mountain cliffs, in grandeur, The heights of heaven are scaling. God’s Koordish ramparts, towering To passing man proclaim— His eye and soul o’erpowering—

19 For narratives of the missionary activity among the Nestorians, read Coakley (1992) and John Pierre Ameer (1997) Yankees and Nestorians: The Establishment of American Schools among the Nestorians of Iran and Turkey, 1834-1850. Cambridge MA: Harvard University. Unpublished doctoral thesis.

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ASSYRIANS IN YONKERS The great Creator’s name. There crumbling, ancient churches, On Living Rock once founded, Lie desolate; dark ages Since gospel note resounded. Poor blind lead blind, affrighted, To ditch and darkness there; Blood-bought men, benighted, Are groping to despair. How can Christ’s flock be gathered, If none will guide their way? How long shall they be scattered? How long left lost to stay?20

In a paradox that would lead almost to their decimation, the precariousness of the Christians’ position in both the Ottoman and Iranian Empires was both ameliorated by the presence of these missionaries among them and simultaneously made more tenuous by this same Western attention. This Western presence exacerbated suspicions already in full cry among the Muslim majorities. This contradiction of both greater safety and increased danger turned out to have important implications for the manner in which the events of 1914–1918 unfolded. At this point in this narrative, it is necessary to provide the reader some additional information about these missionaries. Why and how did they come to reside among the Assyrians? American Protestant missionaries, sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), headquartered in Boston, began arriving in the Middle East in 1819. The first pair went to the Ottoman provinces of Palestine and Syria and later arrivals went to other parts of the Empire—Istanbul, Harpoot, Kurdistan, Mosul, and Baghdad. Others went to Egypt, and, beginning in 1834, a contingent arrived at Iran’s Urmia plain. All of these missionaries to the eastern Christians went with the intent of encouraging and assisting these churches to initiate a program of revitalization. The

20 Quoted in D.W. Marsh (1869) The Tennessean in Persia and Kurdistan, Being Scenes and Incidents in the Life of Samuel Audley Rhea. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee.

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Americans assumed that a dynamic missionary effort conducted among the Muslims by the indigenous Assyrians, Armenians, and other eastern Christians, would have more chance of success in the evangelization task than if it were carried out by Westerners themselves. The necessity for evangelizing the World was for many western Christians in this period their most compelling responsibility. Many of these true believers, American and European, were convinced of the impending end of the world, of the fulfillment of the promised Second Coming. This anticipated return of the Messiah was to be followed by the final realization and establishment of the Kingdom of God—the ultimate triumph of God’s plan for the world. This eschatological certainty led naturally to a sense of urgency that translated into a compelling need and duty to evangelize as much of the world as possible prior to the final cataclysmic event. The world needed to be prepared for this time of glorious fulfillment. Christians’ interpretations of recent events led them to assume that they saw the purposeful hand of God at work to bring about this final scenario in the history of God’s relationship to men and women. The increased access to all parts of the globe, the reports coming out from European explorers about hitherto unknown regions, the invention of faster and more reliable means of intercontinental and overseas transportation, the dominant world position that the Western nations had attained in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—all of these developments convinced evangelical Protestants of God’s active work in the progression of their world. Since they believed in a sovereign and active deity, they could not accept all of these developments as accidental. God had brought into being a context that he prepared for the obvious purpose of fulfilling his plan in the promised final Christian glorification. The evangelicals saw in these developments, and in the rise of the power of the West, an unmistakable sign that they were privileged to have been anointed for this great task of helping the world to get ready. As many of the world’s people as possible had to hear the eschatological message so that they could have the opportunity to believe and insure their salvation. The Great Command, “Go ye into all the world...” had been moving Christians to be missionaries for two millennia, but the rapidly approaching end gave to it an even greater imperative. It was an enormous burden to assume, albeit a glorious one. What finer way could there be to serve than to carry His message to the benighted areas of the globe? Accordingly, the ABCFM, a collaboration of the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Dutch Reformed churches, sent missionaries, mostly

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from New England and New York, to various mission stations around the world. At some of their destinations, India, China, Africa, and the Pacific Islands, for example, in the absence of any significant number of indigenous Christians or of any at all, the missionaries planned to undertake the evangelization directly. In the Middle East, on the other hand, there was a large enough Christian population that could, with proper training, take on the task of proselytization among the Muslim majorities. The Westerners were logical in their assumption that the eschatological news and the message of salvation would be better received coming from locals than from foreigners. It was, however, an unrealistic expectation because it minimized two serious constraints on this optimism. First, the countervailing power that the messages of the eastern religions had on their own adherents was formidable. These religious practices and beliefs had at least as much holding power as the Christian message had attracting power. Second, the missionaries’ vision of indigenous Christians at work in the Middle East was not informed by sufficient understanding of the reality of deep ethnic and religious hostilities. The Muslim population was not particularly interested in looking for alternatives to Islam nor could they separate the Christians’ ethnic identity from their religious one. With only minimal consideration of these two critical factors, and with confidence in the powerful agency of the Holy Spirit to provide support, strength, and guidance, the missionaries went ahead and planned two implementation strategies, the second following necessarily from the first. The first and primary task was to prepare local men to become effective preachers and local men and women to be schoolteachers. The second strategy followed from this—schools would have to be established to effect this quality preparation of preachers and teachers. The ABCFM missionaries therefore established extensive primary, secondary, and college school systems throughout the area. The establishment of these schools was accomplished with amazing rapidity. It is actually astonishing to see how quickly school systems were brought up to levels of respectability and credibility. A partial list of these institutions testifies to the success of this educational enterprise: American University of Beirut, Roberts College, Urmia College, Fiske Seminary for Women, American University of Cairo, the Beirut College for Women, Aleppo College, the Near East School of Theology are among the more notable of these achievements. The educational establishment that grew up among the Assyrians on the Urmia plain was an example of this prodigious effort as well as

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testament to it. By 1850, there were elementary schools and/or Sunday schools in almost every village on the plain, and the men’s college and women’s school had been started. Expansion of this network of schooling continued right up to the chaos of World War I. The first American missionaries to reach Urmia were Rev. Justin Perkins from Massachusetts and his wife Charlotte, who was born in Vermont. Perkins had received his education at Amherst College and the Andover School of Theology. Within a year, the Rev. Doctor Asahel Grant and his wife Judith Campbell Grant, from New York State, joined the Perkins.21 After a year spent mostly in Tabriz learning the Syriac language from two Nestorian priests, the bishop Mar Yohannan from Javilan and the priest Qasha Abraham of Geog Tapa, these four moved to Urmia and began immediately to set up a main school in the city and additional ones in the surrounding villages. In 1834 the literacy rate among the Assyrians was seriously low, about four or five persons per one hundred. Even a number of the clerics were illiterate, relying on rote memorization for learning the liturgical services. There were no schools among the Assyrians and very few of the clerics could read the classical Syriac used in the liturgy, while the vernacular Syriac, the common language of the Assyrians, had not yet been codified into a grammar text. Given this limited condition of learning among the Assyrians at the time of the missionaries’ arrival, the changes recorded in 1900 by observers and historians of the missions are indeed dramatic. In spite of the dim prospects at the start, there were, by 1900, approximately ninety common or grammar schools throughout the Assyrian villages, mostly in the Urmia plain, but a few in the mountains as well. There were also a few secondary schools; two kindergartens; a male college, Urmia College, with faculties of medicine, theology, and arts and sciences; a female college, Fiske Seminary; and two hospitals, one for men and one for women. Sunday Schools were in operation in almost all villages, with religion and literacy classes for adults as well as for children. The literacy rate had soared. While the exact numbers are impossible to come by, the evidence from letters, books, journals, and school tests demonstrates clearly that literacy, rather than illiteracy, had become the norm. A printing press had been installed in the

21 Grant was one of those who believed the Nestorians were, in fact, the ten lost tribes of Israel and wrote a book asserting this: Asahel Grant (1841) The Nestorians or the Lost Tribes. New York City: Harper & Brothers.

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mission in 1839. By 1900 this press had printed over 3,000,000 pages in both the classical and vernacular Syriac.22 Two grammar texts for the vernacular Syriac were written, the first in 1855, by the American Presbyterian David Tappan Stoddard, and a second in 1895, by the Scottish Anglican, Arthur John MacLean. Other Christian churches had set up schools in Urmia as well. From the 1880s on, the Anglicans had an extensive missionary staff working with the Assyrians—the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Mission to the Church of the East. Actually, the presence of competing missionary endeavors—in addition to Anglicans, some Baptists, Lutherans and others came in to the area—created new problems of competition and fragmenting of the community, but that is another story. This pattern of educational and literary achievement initiated and directed by Western missionaries was replicated as well among the Armenians, the Syrian Orthodox, the Maronites of Lebanon, the Palestinians, and the Copts of Egypt. An unintended but not surprising consequence of this attention, especially stemming from the schooling, was a significant improvement in the socio-economic condition of the Assyrians. When the Americans first arrived, most of the Urmizhnayi lived at poverty level or barely above it. They worked primarily as agricultural laborers, with only subsistence wages. The majority of the landowners were Muslim, although a few Assyrians had succeeded in getting title to land. Only a few were tradesmen or craftsmen. Western travelers passing through this area in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries wrote in their journals about the widespread poverty, drunkenness, and illiteracy among the Assyrian minority. Relationships among husbands and wives and between parents and their children too often included abuse or indifference. Inevitably, after so many years of political and economic oppression, and in the absence of education, the Assyrians had fallen into a condition of cultural and religious malaise bordering on despair. This is startling to those of us born into the Assyrian community in the United States. We grew up noting strong family connections, remarkable affection between husbands and wives, a widespread antipathy to drinking, and an intense attachment to education. This current reality, in

J.F. Coakley (1995) Edward Breath and the Typography of Syriac. Harvard Library Bulletin. New Series. 6/4. Winter, 1995, pages 41-64. 22

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contrast to the reality of 1834, makes the achievements of the Assyrians and missionaries, working together, all the more remarkable. Maintaining their faith within a hostile environment was tiring in the extreme, even as it is an admirable part of the history of these people. Yet the weariness that resulted from their being excluded from full participation in the society took its toll. Most of their religious life, for example, was form rather than substance—maintaining fasts and engaging in rote performance of the services. The contrast of this with the social and religious life of Assyrians in this country that was vital and celebratory is striking and dramatizes the changes from pre-missionary to post-missionary conditions. Not only did the social life of most Assyrians in this country and elsewhere revolve around their churches, but their home life as well was characterized by a profound and omnipresent religious faith. These realities contrasted dramatically with the conditions prior to the arrival of the Westerners. Many Assyrians from both the durayi and the Urmizhnayi communities became teachers in the schools, professors in the colleges, doctors, missionaries, lawyers, and craftsmen. Most remained farmers, but a significantly larger number now owned their own land, while those who worked on the lands were employed in much better working conditions. Working classes, and the large new middle classes, were in more stable, protected, and loving relationships than they had been a century earlier. The threat of violence had by no means disappeared; the periodic Muslim outbursts still occurred and so Assyrians continued to seek a way out. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, for example, there was serious consideration among the Urmizhnayi to move the people in its entirety up to Russia and the protection of a Christian government. At the same time, however, in peculiar contradiction to this fear, the Assyrians had developed a sense of empowerment and agency about their lives and futures and less a feeling of complete powerlessness. That increased sense of self-esteem should not be unexpected among a people who have experienced a significant improvement in their standard of living. For us who did not personally experience life in Urmia, this peculiar dichotomy was puzzling. I was unable to comprehend it until well into adult life. As youngsters, we were aware that Assyrians generally thought of their status as somewhat less than that of the Anglo-Saxon majority in this country. At the same time, we noted their deep pride in their history, language, religion, and conduct. How to account for this duality? I finally came to understand that the former attitude derives, almost inevitably, from the experience of being members of an oppressed minority. That kind of

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existence, characterized by a perennial need for caution in political and economic relationships, is bound to cause the community to internalize the imputed inferiority. In spite of successes that people achieve, therefore, some of that internalized sense of inferiority lingers. The improvement in their spiritual and socio-economic conditions was not without costs: thousands of Assyrians left their historical church because they were attracted to the churches of the Westerners among them. In the 1850s, they organized a Reformed Nestorian Church affiliated with the Presbyterians. Second, many of the local Muslims resented the special attention that their despised and inferior neighbors were receiving. Since this assistance came from foreigners, the resentment on the part of the local Iranians took form in a belief that the Assyrians constituted a disloyal faction in their midst with allegiance not to Iran but to the Western nations. Third, the improvement in their condition made leaving Iran easier. Prior to this missionary period, Assyrians had only two choices in the face of oppression: to fight back and most probably die in the process, as did so many of the mountaineers, or remain acquiescent and submissive in their oppression, as did the Urmizhnayi. Now they were able to choose a third option: they could get up and go elsewhere, either to Russia or to the West. Naturally, the preferred destination of most of these early emigrants was the country from where the missionaries had come. Even before they reached the United States, the Assyrians’ contacts with the Americans had given them a familiarity with this country. This proved to make the transition to life in this country easier and smoother than it was for many from other areas of the world who emigrated to the United States. And so, a trickle of Assyrian young men began moving abroad, a few to England but most toward the United States. World War I converted this tiny stream into a flood. My grandfather, Shlemon Ameer, together with his brother Alex, joined the procession of young Assyrian men who came to this country before the War. They arrived in 1910. With the assistance of Presbyterians in this country, Alex completed his high school education at Cook Academy in upstate New York and went on to Syracuse University. He played on the college’s football team but did not get the opportunity to complete his studies because he was among the millions of Americans who succumbed to the flu epidemics of that period. Had Alex been able to complete college and go into the professions, my father’s life and work options in this country would have been significantly different since he would have received financial and educational support from his uncle. My grandfather settled in Yonkers amid a small but growing group of Assyrians, and he

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quickly obtained worked as a painter. These early Assyrian travelers had planned either to send for their families to join them here, or else to return to “the old country” to improve their families’ situations with money earned in the United States. My grandfather was originally one of the latter group, but after experiencing life here, he decided to send for his family. He was actually in the process of arranging for the family’s emigration when the 1914 crisis broke. They did not leave without regrets; the Urmizhnayi had as deep an affection for their villages and the Urmia district as the durayi had for their mountains. This plain is a rich and lovely place, with gentle hills and relatively mild weather; even the winters are tolerable. And, it was home. One could easily hear in the conversations of the Assyrian immigrants their fond remembrances of life in the villages and their sense of loss. I remember, for example, Pop telling us about how he enjoyed sleeping out in the family vineyards on warm nights, together with his pet dog. He retained this deep affection for both his pet and his family’s land through time, distance, and vicissitude. These happier memories were not destroyed by the tragic events of the War, but dwelt side by side with the recollections of the horrible events that took place during their flight from their homes. From his vantage point in the village of Seir, on a hill from which he could look out over the Urmia plain, missionary David Tappan Stoddard daily contemplated those features that made the area so attractive to the Assyrians. He described the panorama in a letter home to his mother. Stoddard had graduated with high honors from Yale University and received offers from several colleges to teach in the sciences. Instead, he opted for the mission field, completed his theological studies at Andover Theological Seminary, and arrived in Iran in 1843. He was put in charge of the male seminary that later became Urmia College that, at the time of his appointment, was located on a grassy slope in Seir, the village of my father’s mother and her family. He remained at this post until his death from cholera in 1857. He wrote, soon after his arrival: We are about forty miles from the boundary of Turkey, and one hundred and fifty from that of Russia. The village is on the grassy slope of the mountain, which rises 2,834 feet above the neighboring city of Oroomiah [Urmia], and 7,334 above the ocean. The side of the mountain on which we live faces the northeast, and is consequently somewhat bleak in winter. The snow also lies upon it in the spring long after it has disappeared from the southwestern side. From the village of Seir we look down on the very beautiful and extensive plain of Oroomiah, forty miles in length, and from twelve to

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ASSYRIANS IN YONKERS twenty miles in breadth, which possesses a deep alluvial soil, and bears on its fertile bosom several hundred villages. The city of Oroomiah, the ancient Thebarma, situated near the center of the plain, as well as many of the villages, is surrounded by innumerable gardens and orchards, and rows of poplars, willows, and sycamores, which make large portions of the plain resemble a continued forest. The mountains of Koordistan [Kurdistan] encircle the plain on three sides, while to the east lies the lake of Oroomiah, studded with islands, and reflecting the pure azure of an Italian sky. This plain is watered by three rivers of moderate size, which come down from the Koordish mountains, and are distributed by a network of small canals and water-courses over its whole surface. Without artificial irrigation, but few crops can be brought to maturity, although here and there wheat fields are cultivated on the slopes of the neighboring mountains, which are wholly dependent on the rains of the spring and early summer, and sometimes yield a tolerable harvest. The principal productions of the plain of Oroomiah, are wheat, barley, corn, millet, flax, tobacco, rice, cotton, castor oil, apples, pears, plums, grapes (which are cultivated in immense vineyards), cherries, apricots, nectarines, peaches, melons, pomegranates, almonds, and the jujube. The fig, with care, may be also cultivated but is often destroyed by the cold of winter.23

In 1914, all of the ambiguities with which the Assyrians lived came to a crashing, numbing, brutal conclusion in the Great War. (“Great” is a peculiar adjective for the war that brought death to millions, and disease, starvation, and dislocation to millions more.) The questions about staying or emigrating, about prospects for their future in this politically hostile environment, about whether or not they even had a future in Turkey and Iran—all of these were answered with the War’s unambiguous brutality. The Ottoman government published its jihad that intentionally made belligerents of Christians in the empire regardless of their own wishes in the matter. When the Turks and Kurds crossed the border into Iran, the Assyrians of Urmia had this final solution imposed on them as well. The Iranian Muslims accepted the jihad as a carte blanche to join with the Turkish army and the Kurdish irregulars in attacking Christians.

23 David Tappan Stoddard (1845) Letter of Stoddard to Rufus Anderson, in the collection of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

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A few contemporary Assyrians criticize their leaders of that period, arguing that it was foolish for their people to have declared war on the Ottoman Empire. I have not seen any evidence that they ever had any real choice in the matter, that they were given the alternative of neutrality. War was declared on them. Some actions by the Assyrians might have precipitated the hostilities sooner rather than later, but the notion that the brutality could have been avoided is wishful thinking not supported by the evidence of the history of local Muslim attitudes nor by the reality of the condition of second-class citizenship. The Assyrians had as little responsibility for the conflict with the Turks as the Jews had for their persecution by Germans. Assyrians, consequently, had only two viable options, to defend themselves or to perish without a struggle, not really a choice after all. These critics go on to assert, furthermore, that the Assyrians should have relied on the protection afforded them by Islamic doctrine, the Qur’anic provision for the People of the Book, Christians and Jews who are to be protected within Muslim communities, albeit in second class status. This argument asserts that if Assyrians had kept their distance from Westerners, they would not have been molested. This theory unfortunately does not stand up under a review of Middle Eastern history. The persecutions during World War I were, as we have noticed, just the latest in a series of Muslim persecutions of Christian minorities. True, throughout history, these events were interspersed with periods of toleration and peace; nevertheless, whenever the Muslim body politic was under some stress or other, Christians and Jews became targets. Excessive religious zeal at times, and political interests at other times, moved authorities to conveniently forget this special protection. Muslims are no less capable than other religious folk of disregarding their scriptures when caught up in religious frenzy, economic pressure, and/or war hysteria. It is important to note, in addition, that even in times of relative calm, the Christians lived in a state of uncertainty due to the legally sanctioned parameters imposed on them. The Ottoman authorities had constructed a series of confining and humiliating rules for their minority populations that bear a striking resemblance to another version of this kind of oppression, the 1930s Nuremberg Decrees promulgated by the Nazis on the Jews. In both cases, the decrees were designed to humiliate designated groups and were later used to justify their extermination. Each of the dhimmi minorities in the Ottoman Empire were organized into an ethnically defined group called a millet. Each millet was left to take care of its internal affairs— cultural, social, and religious—under the direction of its own ethnarch, usually a religious leader such as the Assyrians’ Patriarch. They were allowed to

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testify in court only against other dhimmis, not against Muslims; there was a death penalty for converting a Muslim to Christianity or to Judaism; the construction of new churches or synagogues was not permitted, only repair of existing structures was allowed; worship had to be conducted quietly so that Muslims would not be offended by the sound of non-Muslim worship; dhimmis could ride only on mules or donkeys, not horses, and only bareback or with a simple saddle that had to have two pomegranate-shaped balls on the cantle for purposes of identification; no dhimmi building could be higher than the highest Muslim building in the city or village; special taxes were levied on the dhimmis, and they were frequently called upon to supply men for the military; distinctive clothes had to be worn, and the turban was not permitted for either Christians or Jews. The ability of the central government to enforce these rules varied, but, regardless of that, the restrictions defined the relationship between majorities and minorities in the Empire. In addition to these proscriptions, dhimmis were subject to periodic depredations such as murder or robbery raids. Since the dhimmis did not enjoy the protection that would have been in place if the government was both honest and effective, there was little to stop predators from pouncing on them other than whatever defenses the victims themselves could muster. These attacks frequently resulted in the kidnapping of young girls and women. If a dhimmi female was kidnapped, the abductors tried to immediately convert the female to Islam, and they did not hesitate to use coercive methods to achieve this result. The reason for the rush was that once converted, the female could not be reclaimed by her non-Muslim family. One of the means that the Nestorians and others used as a preventive was to marry their girls, especially the more attractive ones, earlier than they would otherwise prefer to do. Missionary letters and journals include numerous accounts of families of these stolen women beseeching the help of the Westerners in retrieving the abducted persons. It was characteristic of these times of an expanding Western presence that the dhimmis came to see the Americans and Europeans, whom they accurately perceived as being able to exert some degree of power over the Muslim governments, as potential protectors. Before the arrival of the missionaries, the task of negotiating with the kidnappers, for example, fell on bishops, priests, or rabbis. While periodically effective, these clerics did not have the force and power of great nations at their back. When the missionaries came on the scene, negotiations after the raids had rather better results due to the aura of power that surrounded the Westerners. Whether negotiated by local clerics or by the missionaries, the captive would be released if a mutually

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acceptable price could be agreed upon. If the victim had been forced into conversion, however, that was an indication that money was not the motive for the crime; instead the kidnapping was arranged by a man who had the particular girl in mind for himself. This was the context into which World War I exploded into the Middle East in 1914. Given the historical suspicion and antipathy of the Ottoman government toward its Christian minorities, it was inevitable that officials assumed the Christian minorities to be allies of their enemies. Whether this was based on an honest assumption by the Turks or was a cynically engineered creation of a scapegoat, the effect was the same. The fact that Assyrian and Armenian Christians happened to live at the meeting point between Ottomans and Russians merely intensified the actions directed against them by the government. As for the Kurds, the conflict provided them yet another incentive for their plans to ethnically cleanse their area of non-Kurds. The history of mutual hostility simply prodded them all the more to become willing partners with the Turkish army forces in attacking Christians. In a century that continues to breed unspeakable holocausts, this particular one began with the horrendously brutal slaughter of the Armenians in 1915, when between one-and-a-half and three million of this people—men, women, children, the aged, babies—were butchered or starved to death in the eastern deserts and mountains of Turkey. The chaotic conditions of the massacres make it impossible to absolutely pinpoint the exact number of victims. The momentum of the violence of 1915, more terrible even than those that had preceded it, then moved eastward engulfing the mountain Assyrians and the remaining Armenians in the Kurdistan Mountains, and, finally, washing over their Christian kinsmen in Urmia, when the Muslims followed the fleeing mountaineers across the Turkey-Iran border. Iran was officially a neutral in the War. During the nineteenth century, the Iranian Empire had become an international “basket case,” declining into a weakened condition even more precarious than that of its Ottoman neighbor. Iran was at the mercy of competing Russian, French, and British imperial designs, and maintained its sovereignty, nominal though it was, by playing off these three countries against each other. The Iranian government was especially adept at currying favor alternately with Victorian England and Czarist Russia. Historian Philip K. Hitti has summarized this condition of dependence: The Anglo-Persian treaty of 1814, directed against Russia, left Persia dependent on Britain in its foreign policy. The Russo-Persian treaty

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ASSYRIANS IN YONKERS (Turkoman-Chai) of 1828 put her at the mercy of Russia...Six years after the signing of the Turkoman-Chai treaty an Anglo-Russian agreement was reached guaranteeing the independence of Persia and revealing the degree of distrust between the two contracting parties. The shah’s 24 country became a mere pawn in the game of world politics.

Hitti goes on to describe how this condition determined what role Iran would take in the Great War: At the outbreak of hostilities in the summer of 1914, Persia proclaimed a state of neutrality which neither she had the might to implement or any of the belligerents the desire to respect...Persian territory was freely violated by both sides in the conflict...In January 1915 Turkey opened a front against Russia through northwestern Persia on her border. Kurds 25 joined Turks in the attack.

The neutrality of the central government in Tehran was ephemeral in relation to either the actual feelings of its Azerbaijan subjects, or to the real situation in this region. Local Muslims felt no particular inclination to abide by the foreign policy of their government, inclining instead to side openly with their Turkish and Kurdish co-religionists. Moreover, the jihad proclaimed by the Ottomans gave local Iranians cover for whatever violence they chose to launch against their Christian and Jewish neighbors. There were two developments that determined the course of this local version of the larger conflict. First, there were Russian troops stationed in the Azerbaijan province, including many on the Urmia plain. They had been moved into this region even before Turkey’s formal entry into the War. As long as they were on hand, Iranian locals were deterred from any moves of overt aggression toward the Assyrians. As co-religionists of the Assyrians and Armenians, the Russian soldiers considered themselves protectors of these people and were viewed as such by the Muslims. Their departure, later in 1914, was a signal to the locals to fall upon their non-Muslim neighbors. Second, the Urmia Assyrians took to arming themselves and volunteered to render military assistance to the Russians against Turks and Kurds. While doing so, they informed the central government in Tehran that their

24 Philip K. Hitti (1960) The Near East in History: A 5000 Year Story. Princeton NJ: Van Nostrand, pages 394-395. 25 Hitti. Ibid.

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militarization would not be directed against Iran. Whether the government in Tehran accepted this explanation was immaterial to Azeri locals; why would they believe this or even want to believe it? Too many years of hostility, mistrust, religious rivalry, and bloodshed had passed for there to be near enough trust for them to have taken the Assyrians at their word. In addition, it does appear that local Muslims were not averse to taking justification for their attacks wherever they could find it. As the TurkishKurdish forces neared, driving the Assyrian mountaineers in front of them, the local Iranians, emboldened by the departure of the Russians, went on a rampage through Assyrian homes and farms. This occurred in December 1914, a day or so after the Russians left. From that time to the final flight in July, 1918, the Assyrians were caught in a see-saw conflict, alternately winning and losing, but rarely having any significant breaks from the violence. On December 20, 1914, following the departure to the north of the Russian troops, posters appeared throughout the city proclaiming the Sultan’s jihad. On December 24, 1914, the local Iranians attacked the Christians, not only in the city, but also throughout the surrounding villages. The violence was horrible. People were slaughtered regardless of gender or age. Homes were robbed and many were set afire. When the Turks and Kurds came across the border, they joined in on this orgy of crazed violence. Only the return of the Russians on May 24, 1915 brought respite, with the Turks forced to evacuate and the Iranians hunkering down in their homes for shelter. The Russians had won key victories against the Turks in northern Azerbaijan, and, in pursuing the latter, they re-entered Urmia. With the Russians providing a protective umbrella, the Assyrians used the time to piece together a more organized fighting force of their own. It is not necessary to detail here all of the ensuing events. I shall give only the critical incidents from the chronology of this conflict. Overall command of the Assyrian forces was in the hands of General Agha Petros, and two of his more prominent lieutenants were Malik Khoshaba and David Efendi, one of the Patriarch’s brothers. From 1915 to the flight in 1918, the two sides alternately won or lost in local skirmishes. In June 1917, for example, the Assyrians, accompanied by Russian military officers, re-entered Turkey in a major offensive and pursued their enemies throughout Kurdistan. In spite of a string of significant successes, numbers again told, and the Assyrians had to pull back over the border. At that point, the Russian Revolution resulted in the final departure of Russian forces from the area and ended expectations of any further assistance from that quarter.

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With Assyrians and Armenians once again left alone, the local Iranians took this opportunity to go after the minorities yet again. Iranians around Urmia joined with Iranian Kurds in what they were sure would be an easy victory. But the Turkish army was not yet on the scene and the Assyrians were now militarily more able than they had been previously, so they defeated this alliance and accepted its surrender. Pictures of this surrender have survived, graphically depicting Muslim humiliation as they are paraded through the streets of Urmia city to surrender to the Assyrian commanders. Following this defeat, Simkoo, the leader of the Iranian Kurds, sent word to the Patriarch, Mar Benyamin Shimun, that he wanted to have a conference to discuss ways to preserve the peace and avoid further hostilities. It was a pretext. When Mar Shimun and his hundred-man guard arrived at the designated meeting place on March 3, 1918, they rode into an ambush and most were killed, including the Patriarch. This story of treachery lived in the minds and hearts of all of my parents’ generation, and Simkoo remains for the Assyrians as the arch villain of that war. His name is always uttered with disgust and hatred. A debate as to whether or not the Patriarch should have gone to this meeting went on for years after the event. My father subscribed to the interpretation that Mar Shimun, for all of his redeeming qualities, showed incredibly poor judgment and even greater stubbornness in accepting the invitation against the advice of most of his counselors and military men. As Pop related the version of the story to which he subscribed, he narrated the scene so dramatically that a picture of it has remained vividly in my mind, even though I was a child when he told it and am now years and miles away from the event. I can almost believe that I was there myself. In the version that Pop and most Assyrians accepted and retold, Agha Petros was pictured as kneeling in front of Mar Shimun’s horse, pleading with his leader to not accept this invitation. The Patriarch was supposed to reply that if there was any chance of peace, he should make the attempt. The Patriarch is described as sitting on his white horse. Behind him are arrayed his mountaineer bodyguard. We had seen pictures of the Assyrian mountain warriors and their appearances fully support the reputation they had as fierce fighters. With ammunition bandoliers criss-crossed on their chests, rifles at the ready, with fierce-looking beards, one might have felt some sympathy for their enemies had not pictures of the Kurds showed us that they looked fully as formidable as did the Assyrians. Indeed, if the pictures we saw were not captioned, it would have been impossible to tell the Assyrians from the Kurds. So the Patriarch went off to his martyrdom and Simkoo to damnation.

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When word of the assassination spread, the Assyrians, unquestionably enraged by this act of betrayal and cowardice, their determination fueled by the murder of their Patriarch, attacked Simkoo’s forces with ferocity. But, even though they succeeded in chasing the Kurds toward the Turkish border, it was at that moment, in April 1918, that the Turkish Fifth and Sixth Divisions crossed into Iran once again. The Assyrians joined forces with the more numerous Armenian troops, under their General Andranik, to face this new threat, and their initial successes are remarkable considering that they were facing now not just Kurdish irregulars, but professional soldiers, and were greatly outnumbered. In spite of these formidable odds, the Assyro-Armenian combination defeated the Turkish regulars in fourteen successive running battles. Four definable reasons explain these Christian victories. The Turks, even though professionally trained and officered, were the products of a decadent society. The Ottoman Empire had been given the accurate appellation of “sick man of Europe” for over a century. Given the steadily increasing corruption and decadence of the central government, this was an accurate description. This decay at the top trickled down through the society including the army, resulting in an erosion of the quality of the armed forces. Second, the Christians were motivated to fight ferociously, because they knew what would happen to their people if their army lost, an awareness sharpened by memories of what the local Muslims had done whenever they were victorious. There was no margin for error, so there could be no holding back. As a result, the Christians fought with enormous determination and energy that compensated for their deficiencies in numbers and materiel. Not surprisingly, in such circumstances, there were many instances of personal heroism, many accounts of which we later heard. I remember one anecdote in particular, a story that my father often told, always with tears in his eyes. During one of the battles, the Assyrians were conducting a strategic retreat that took them across a small bridge suspended over a mountain pass. It was necessary for the bridge to be held to give the Assyrians time to complete their retreat and form new lines. Volunteers were called for. As the story goes, one older mountaineer said to his five sons, “Come on, boys,” and the six of them re-crossed the bridge and held off the Turkish soldiers for a time sufficient to assist the main force. All six in this family, father and sons, were killed in this action. Whether or not this incident took place, we have to believe that there were numerous similar incidents since only that kind of courage and self-sacrifice would explain the Christians’ successes. Such stories also provided a

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welcome, though sad, counterpoint to the accounts of the massacres. They helped to give to a young Assyrian boy, a generation later, an enormous feeling of pride in his community. Third, the Turks were out-generaled: Agha Petros, David Efendi, Malik Khoshaba, and the Armenian generals proved to be the more able strategists. They made best use of what little supplies they had, and they overcame the numbers disadvantage by better placement of their forces. The story of their valiant attempt to ward off the inevitable final defeat must be ranked alongside the stories of Belgian resistance in 1914 and the heroism of the Finns against the Russians in 1941. Fourth, and finally, the Assyrians had received word that a British relief force was on its way north from Baghdad to relieve the Christians and to resupply them. This expectation encouraged them to maintain their resistance, even as they began to experience reversals. Word of the British force was carried to the combatants by a British officer, Captain Gracey, who was in Urmia in December 1917. A subsequent visit in July 1918 was made by a Captain Pennington. How he arrived and brought word of British reinforcements is told in various versions. A dramatic and commonly related one was retold by Joel Werda: Face to face with such gloomy prospects, and bewildered as to what had happened to the promised British expedition that would bring them both assistance and the much needed supply of war material, they were surprised one day by the whirling sounds that descended from the sky. It was a clear and bright summer day. To be accurate, it was on the 25th day of June, when they saw a hornet-like object soaring high in the dazzling firmament that hung over the ancient city of Media. It came lower and lower. First it was fired upon as an enemy observation aeroplane. Then the British flag was sighted! And an overjoyous Christian population thought of the festal reception to be accorded to the approaching British soldiers. The friendly flyer alighted and landed near the camp of the bravest troops that had ever defended the name and the honor of the British Empire. The captain rose up from his seat, surrounded by the Assyrian officers. He was escorted to the presence of Mar Paulus Shimun [successor to the assassinated Mar Binyamin

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Shimun], and there he told his story in the hearing of Agha Petros, other 26 Assyrian generals and the Assyrian clergy.

The story goes on to tell of Pennington’s promises of British aid. It has never been made clear what promises were made by Gracey and what ones by Pennington. There is no doubt, however, that the purpose of the visits was to encourage the Christians to sustain combat operations against the Turks, although it is also clear that, whether or not they had a choice previously, they certainly didn’t by this time. Furthermore, Pennington reported that British troops and supplies were on the way, so the Assyrians should send an expedition southward to meet the arriving British. That last is accurate; as a result of the British officers’ visits, Agha Petros took about one thousand of his troops to meet the relief force allegedly marching north toward Urmia. Unfortunately, but understandably, most of the Assyrians perceived this departure as a retreat, and panic began to set in. While Werda’s narrative is perhaps overly dramatic, a more historically accurate account of Gracey’s visit has been written by J. F. Coakley: The Syrians [Assyrians] were retained in the war by the British. A staff officer attached to the Russian command in Tiflis, Captain G. F. Gracey, came to Urmia at the end of the year and, according to Surma [the Patriarch’s sister], ‘the fact of his coming was a great encouragement to us all. Still more valuable to us was the speech that he made in Urmi in the presence of the American consul, of the American missionary Dr. Shedd, and the representatives of the Red Cross in Persia.’ It was remembered among the Syrians that in this speech he promised that in exchange for the Syrians’ continued participation in the war on the Allied side, Britain would afterwards reinstate them in their homeland under their own autonomous government. In any case the Syrians maintained their small front of resistance to the Turkish army 27 around Urmia.

Even if a historical record of this incident had not been available, we could attribute credibility to this story by recollecting that the British gave similar promises to other Middle Eastern peoples during the War. They promised the Arabs that an independent Arab nation would be formed

26 27

Werda (1924) page 174. Coakley (1992) page 339.

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from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, as evident from the Husayn-MacMahon correspondence, if they would rise up against the Turks. In exchange for support from the Jewish community in the United Kingdom, the British government declared itself in favor of the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, announced in the famous, or infamous, Balfour Declaration. Similar promises to the Assyrians would fit in nicely with this pattern of negotiation and promise. The events of the immediate post–World War I period in the Middle East is a history of the Western countries systematically and cynically breaking all of these promises. The record makes it unarguable, therefore, that the European powers never intended to honor these agreements. The lack of supplies, the sheer weight of numbers of the attacking Turkish forces, the renewal of attacks by the Muslims in their midst, the absence of both Russian or British military forces, and the growing panic at their isolation, finally eroded the Assyrian capability and will to continue their fight. The Christians found themselves again at the mercy of their enemies, so the desire to flee overcame the willingness to fight. Fear overwhelmed all else. The acts of their enemies fueled this fear. Thousands of Assyrians were killed in heinous acts of wholesale butchery. Hundreds of women were carried off. In the village of Geog Tapa, the Muslims entered both of the orphanages there and slaughtered not only the caregivers but all of the children as well. In the village of Julpashan, a band of Turks and Iranians took fifty men from their homes to the local graveyard where they were executed while their womenfolk were raped. This kind of brutality was repeated in village after village. The death toll would have even been higher had it not been for the American, English, and French missionaries. Assyrian villagers fled their homes and found temporary refuge in these missionary compounds. The American missionary, William Ambrose Shedd, was even able to gather enough money to ransom a few Assyrians who had been captured rather than murdered. Another American, Dr. David Packard, set up emergency medical facilities to handle an unmanageably large group of survivors. The French Lazarist mission set up similar medical arrangements. Seeing Agha Petros and his men go south pushed everyone over the edge. Apprehension among the Christians, already at high levels, now overflowed into panic. During a pause in the killing, the Assyrians, in a move that was more spontaneous than it was planned, began their flight toward the safety of the British lines around Baghdad. There is no record of anyone giving an order. Instead, most of the Assyrians and Armenians in Urmia gathered in the city with what belongings they could carry and the flight

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southward began. Their departure began on July 31, 1918, when the long line of what were now refugees left the city, crossed the Baranduz River in the southern part of the plain, and took the southern road. Paul Green described how it began: The natural sounds of the night fled, all but the occasional whispering of the river, and for a moment there was silence. From the ground above the river, beyond where the moon lit the road, broke a quick, stifled noise. A child’s cry. A kettle’s clatter on rocks. A horse’s whinny. In the dark, darkness moved, and trespassing down the luminous slope came a horse and rider. Crowding behind them was a carriage, and then a wagon, and then other people and animals walking. Ox-carts, heaped with bedding and misshapen bundles. Shawled women. Children whimpering in their sleep on wagon beds. Sheep. Troikas. Old men with bowed heads. Goats, donkeys, horses, oxen, cows, mules. Men stumbling as they turned to look back. And so, in the moonlight, did the refugees of Urmia cross the river, 28 the Baranduz, on a summer’s night in 1918.

It was a harrowing and headlong attempt to escape the looting, rape, capture, and massacre. Most people had to flee on foot, the majority taking along with them only what they could carry, although a few had wagons enabling them to take more of their household goods. A few had donkeys or horses to carry goods. Rev. Shedd felt that it was imperative that he accompany “his people” on this dangerous flight. He had been born in Urmia in 1865, to missionary parents, and, after education in the United States, had returned to Urmia, the place to which he referred as home. There was never any doubt that Shedd would feel a personal obligation and compulsion to accompany and assist this frightened and stricken horde. He was part of the 84-year tradition of American Protestant cooperation with the Assyrian people. Shedd went with the Assyrians to help, to supervise, to provide whatever support an American presence could lend. When the Muslims followed and attacked the rear of the refugee column, Shedd formed and commanded a rear guard to protect the flight. He would not survive the trip.

Mary L. Shedd (1922) The Measure of a Man: The Life of William Ambrose Shedd, Missionary in Persia. New York City: George H. Doran Company, page 264. 28

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Of the approximately 150,000 Assyrians at the start of this Great War, several thousand (it is impossible to determine accurate figures) had survived to 1918 and were in this fleeing column. What figures we have are estimates made by missionaries and Western consular officials on the scene. At the end of the conflict, when these fleeing refugees met up with British forces in Mesopotamia, and others who fled north reached the safety of Tiflis, only about 70,000 Urmizhnayi and durayi remained alive. This scenario of refugees in headlong flight is especially familiar to those of us who have lived through the latter half of the twentieth century because of the visual images we have received and continue to receive. By the media of film, television, and still photographs, we have been made witnesses to scenes of these genocidal tragedies. There weren’t any journalists among the Assyrians, and only a few photographs have come down to us, so we know the details of this particular example of our twentieth century terror from oral tradition and from a few journals and letters written by the missionaries and the refugees. Even without the visual evidence, we are able to imagine how the Assyrian flight, in all aspects, had the same characteristics as those other tragedies. The details were essentially the same in the Assyrian incident as in the experiences of the victims of other genocides and ethnic cleansings. Possessions were left behind; families found themselves separated, sometimes permanently; stragglers were murdered by the enemy; orphaned children and infants were often left by the roadside; elders, unable to keep up, just sat down on the road, resigned to their fate. One particular story, told by Mary Shedd, who accompanied her husband, exemplifies all of this horror: One of my schoolgirls told me afterwards that when she reached the river at this place, pursued by those demons and unable to carry both her children, she held one child over her head and waded through the river. Looking back she saw that it was too late to return for the other one and he was left sitting there on the opposite bank. The memory of 29 her deserted baby haunted her day and night.

We heard many stories like this one, anecdotes about the rakuta, (the running away). Pop’s sister, Catherine, who was ten years old in 1918, told

29

Shedd, Ibid. page 271.

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me that her grandmother never let go her hand during the whole of the flight. Even as they slept, the grandmother’s hand held that of her grandchild. That is how Aunt Catherine and Pop were cared for and protected on this tragic journey. Their father was in the United States and their mother had died of disease during the first years of the conflict. There had been much illness in the war years, especially when the mountaineers had been forced to settle in Urmia without adequate housing and health facilities. So my great-grandmother took charge of the two youngsters on this journey. My father did not tell much about this part of his wartime experiences, except that he confirmed his sister’s story of her grandmother holding tightly to her hand day and night. Pop, I guess, was aware that he was the man of the house at this time and felt a heavy sense of responsibility, while at the same time acknowledging his grandmother’s wisdom and authority. During all of this dislocation and flight, my grandfather and the other Assyrians in the United States had no way of knowing the fate of their families back home. Communication between America and the Middle Eastern hinterlands was slow in the best of times, and non-existent during the War. Only when such agencies as Near East Relief and the International Red Cross published lists of survivors, and when the American missionaries could make their reports, did the people in America learn the fate of their relatives. For the fortunate ones who had surviving family members, the process of reuniting the family, initiated before the outbreak of the war, could now continue. Others would not know whether their family members were killed or captured, or died on the escape route—they only knew that they were missing. There was a heavy toll taken before such reunions could take place. Because I remember my father as a gentle and warm man with a calm and assuring demeanor, who conveyed serenity and reassurance, it is remarkably disconcerting to look at a picture of him taken soon after his entering the US. In this picture, taken just a year after his arrival in the United States, an unsmiling and intense young man stares out at me, whose eyes searingly convey the intensity of those wartime experiences. I see in those eyes not the gentleness I was used to seeing in Pop, but the heightened alertness, fear, caution, and apprehension that were residuals of the time of flight and suffering. It is as difficult for me to write about these events as it was to hear about them. That is to be expected. But my sadness about these events has increased of late. As I write this, I have the pleasure and privilege of the company of two wonderful grandchildren. In recounting these events, my mind keeps making comparisons between those long-ago children and my

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grandchildren, Mollie Agnes Slomiak and Max Eprim Slomiak, and I see their faces in the faces of the children of the rakuta. Those children in 1918 were no less innocent, no less wide-eyed, no less vulnerable than my grandchildren. They must have wondered why the adults couldn’t stop the horror, the suffering, and the fear. How could these little ones know that they were only the most recent victims of this recurring trait of bestiality that is a part of the human condition? Mollie and Max, with an Assyrian mother and a Jewish father, carry in them the history of two of these twentieth century holocausts. The ethnic memories of these two little Americans contain two dramatic examples of the fragility of that overlay of civilization that lightly camouflages humans’ capacity for violent behavior. The amount of evil, committed then and now under the rubrics of ethnicity and religion, is profound in its enormity. As the refugees neared the Iranian town of Sain Kala, where they were to meet a British relief column, William Ambrose Shedd came down with cholera and his work among the Assyrians was finished. Paul Green describes the last day of Shedd’s life, as, stricken with disease, he was being conveyed in a wagon: There could be no rest nor staying because the enemy was striking all along the column. The cart on which Shedd lay jolted on through the night. The light of the eighth day revealed the signs of approaching death on the face of William Shedd. The sound of fighting was in the rear, and the jolting of the cart over unkind earth was under the wheel. In this movement, to this accompaniment of the sorrows of his people, the missionary died. A little farther on, with a small adz and fingers, his friends dug a shallow grave, and with the canvas from the cart for a shroud they laid him there. On the rock beside the grave they cut a cross. The grief stricken faces of the people of Urmia cried: ‘What shall we do? Our father is gone, our back is broken.’ They stumbled and jolted on past his 30 grave.

The survivors finally reached the British and were all moved to the refugee camp at Ba’qubah, north of Baghdad. This led to a whole new genre of stories that were passed on to us that began, “In Ba’qubah...” The Assyrians remained in this camp for several months. Many men and boys

30

Narrative by Paul Green, quoted in Shedd Ibid. page 271.

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soldiered with the British who recruited them for the pacification of what would become the British mandate of Iraq. Assyrian soldiers, called levies, officered by British personnel, moved north from Baghdad toward Mosul and beyond, defeating bands of Arabs and Kurds who opposed the British hegemony. That is how my father came to serve as a messenger for the British army. Some Assyrians believed, then and now, that they had been promised, as compensation for this military service, to be permitted to return to their homes in Kurdistan and Urmia. Because the British did not support such a return, in spite of earlier promises that they would do so, and may, in fact, have prevented it, the opinion of those who believed that the British betrayed the Assyrians is reinforced. Whether or not the British had such intentions is not at all clear; there is some evidence on both sides of the argument. It is unlikely, given so many other more pressing concerns, that the British would have tried to force the Turks, under the new post-war government of Mustapha Kemal Pasha, to readmit the Assyrians and Armenians. With the coming to power of a communist government in Russia that bordered Turkey on the north, the British and French were not about to put any pressure on the Kemalists. In regard to Iran, Great Britain’s primary concern was to retain influence so as to assure access to the oil. The fate of a tiny minority, even one that was Christian and had been a devoted ally in the War, fell far down on the hierarchy of priorities at the top of which were British and French national interests. In addition, there was too much war exhaustion for any additional military activity except in extremely serious situations such as maintaining Britain’s essential interests in the Middle East—oil, the Suez Canal, access to the Persian Gulf, clear routes to India. Consequently, these commitments as well as the demands from throughout the Empire on British resources precluded any significant attention being paid to this tiny 31 group of refugees. Any assistance from the United States was impossible. Americans after the War had, in effect, gone into hiding in regard to world affairs. Even the long association with American Protestantism was insufficient to move the United States to accept significant responsibility in the area. President

31 One of the better discussions of European colonial duplicity is David Fromkin (1989) A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. New York City: Henry Holt and Company.

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Wilson was sympathetic to Armenian and Assyrian needs and aspirations, but did not have the political capital to press for any significant American involvement. The Powers, including America, did receive Assyrian representatives to the Versailles Conference and listened to their presentations. Half-hearted suggestions about resettlement of the Assyrians in South America or Africa were very briefly discussed, but none of it was seriously intended. By 1920, Western imperial machinations in the Middle East were in full cry. The defunct Ottoman Empire had been cut up without giving the Arabs their promised state. The French grabbed Syria. The Italians tried to pick off a part of Turkey while the Greeks tried occupying parts of the country along the Adriatic Sea. The British were committed to hold on to Palestine and Iraq, and maintain close relations with the new government in Iran that had overthrown the old dynasty. The Iranian government, for its part, was anxious to pacify the population of Azerbaijan, a process in which the Assyrians would create an unwanted complication. Concern for the fate of the Assyrians was simply washed away by all of these cross currents. When the Assyrian levies returned to Ba’qubah, therefore, they faced alternatives that did not include returning to their homes. Many found their way back to Urmia in spite of official prohibitions, but most of the Ba’qubah refugees opted for emigration, the largest contingent opting for the United States, the country of the missionaries.32 Their routes to this country were not direct. I never understood how or why it came about in the way it did, but my father, his grandmother, and sister were among a large group of Assyrians who were first taken by ship to Bombay, where they stayed a few months. Then they were shipped via the Suez Canal to Marseilles where a very large Assyrian community had congregated awaiting transshipment to the United States. The stay in France was usually five or six months until the documentation was completed, allowing entry to the U.S. Rebecca, Catherine, and Eprim Ameer entered at Providence, Rhode Island, in 1922. My father’s joy at arriving in this

32 As to the argument that the British reneged on their promise to let the Assyrians return to their homes, it has been put forward by many Assyrian commentators. The most notable versions are probably those by Yusef Malik (1935) and Joel Werda (1924). I have seen both of these books in most Assyrian homes, including that of my parents.

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country was boundless and, if anything, increased year by year throughout his life. In Barry Levinson’s brilliant and moving film, Avalon (1990), a wonderful evocation of the immigrant experience in America, the story opens and closes with the lead character, Sam Krichinsky, describing his arrival in the United States: “I came to America in 1914. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.” Pop spoke in almost identical words about 33 coming to America. A smaller number of Assyrians had not fled south in the rakuta, but had taken a different escape route, going north into Russia. Many of these had previous contacts in the Caucasus and so naturally fled in that direction. My mother’s family was one of these. Her mother’s father, who was from the village of Ardishai, had gone to Russia for work in the building trades, along with many other Assyrian craftsmen. He had succeeded quite well in this work and had become an independent contractor, hiring other Assyrians to build houses in the Tiflis (Tbilisi) area. Consequently, when they fled from Urmia in 1916, my mother, who was three years old, with her older brother, Roland, and her parents and other relatives joined those Assyrians who took this northern escape route. My mother’s sister, Nadine, was born during this flight. Instead of reprieve in Russia, safe from the disasters in Iran, they found themselves right in the middle of the civil war between the Red and White forces who were struggling to define the structure of post-Revolution Russia. Food and medicine were scarce and violence was again a constant companion. My grandmother died of disease just a few years after their arrival in Tiflis. My mother’s father, Abraham Yaure, finally obtained a minor position with a German Lutheran food relief agency in the area. He was fluent in German because he and his brother Lazar had been sent to Germany before the War for preparatory school (gymnasium) and university. Their father, Rev. Yaure Abraham, had established close ties with a Lutheran mission among the Assyrians, one result of which was the facilitation of his sons’ education in German schools. My grandfather attributed the position with the relief agency as the reason his family avoided starvation in those years. The German connection resulted in a tragic consequence as well. In the panic that pervaded Urmia in 1918, Rev. Lazar Yaure, my grandfather’s

33

Columbia (1990) Avalon. Produced, directed and written by Barry Levinson.

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younger brother, was accused by the Assyrians of his village of being a spy for Germany and was forced to flee for his life to avoid a lynch mob situation. The need for a hasty departure meant that he had to leave his wife and daughter behind, so that he became another statistic among Assyrians separated from family. As a result, Lazar’s wife and his daughter Marna were trapped among the enemy in Urmia. Just how horrible this could be is reflected in one story Marna told about those years. She and another child, desperate for food, took to sucking the olive presses to get whatever nourishment they could extract from the little olive oil that had been left behind by the pressers. Even with my grandfather’s job, the family in Tiflis did only a little better; Nadine contracted rickets from the malnutrition. Mother and Roland, being older, managed to avoid that disease but are seen in a photograph of the time looking exceedingly thin. Somehow, they were finally able to extricate themselves from Russia, traveling across Europe to the Assyrian enclave in Marseilles. Mother and Nadine were left in Marseilles at a Lutheran boarding facility, while grandfather and Roland went on to the United States. What was to be a temporary solution became a ten-year stay in Marseilles for the sisters. They finally disembarked at New York City in 1934 to reunite with their family, who had settled among the Assyrian community in Philadelphia. As with many Assyrian families, reunification came only after their arrival in this country. All the surviving members of the Yaure family had gathered in Philadelphia, including those who had gone through Russia and those who had been in the southern exodus to Ba’qubah. This story of the Assyrian exile constitutes for my generation the defining moment of our heritage. The oral tradition of the community passed this narrative on to us with great power and emotion, so that it was irrevocably integrated into our lives. Even though we were not participants in the events, we became participants in the aftermath. On June 29, 1958, the Assyrian Presbyterian Church of Yonkers, New York, held a non-denominational service dedicated to the memory of those Assyrians who lost their lives in the flight from Urmia in 1918. I was honored to be one of the speakers at this dedication. I recently read over my remarks on that occasion. The words lack the sophistication necessary for that occasion, which is not surprising for something written by a college sophomore. Yet, they do, perhaps, reflect to an appreciable degree of accuracy what all of these events meant to the Assyrians of my generation. It is especially fitting during this commemoration for those of us who have not participated in these events but who are involved in them through those close to us, to ponder their relevance and meaning for us.

CHAPTER 2: FLIGHT It is hard to conceive of someone who had not an heritage, that is, a tie with some major movement of the past. He would be most like a man in a boat in the middle of a great sea with no means of power to reach any of the huge land masses on either side; he could only drift aimlessly forever. Such would be the man who denied any connection with the past, who, in fact, denied his heritage. His life could only be an aimless drifting, for it seems to me that it is the very nature of man to be rooted in what has preceded him. It would indeed be presumptuous of one to believe he had appeared on the world scene as a new order in himself. For even the very new is built on the foundations of the old. Make no mistake, we could have no greater privilege than to be citizens of this greatest of all nations; and the unequaled heritage of freedom in America is ours. Yet we have, as members of the Assyrian community, another link, one of a Christian as well as of a political nature. Though much of that to which we now give remembrance is filled with sadness and perhaps even bitterness, there is in it a good deal upon which we can build. Many of us, I’m sure, have frequently been found to feel a certain amount of disappointment in conversation with others since we lack a country of origin. We might even have joked about it and been quick to brush it aside. Yet the recent history of our people, especially during the years of the First World War, is one of which we can be more than justly proud. It may seem incredible to be proud of defeat, of flight, of disappointment. Yet it is not a pride of conquest or even of political or military victory; but instead it is a pride in having chosen the honorable course of right in the face of defeat; of having retained an unflinching faith in God in spite of the most severe persecutions. Both of these decisions were fateful to the future of the Assyrians, and in such we have a guidepost for our own future. In the first place the decision to stand with the Allies took the most extreme courage. For though there was common cause, the Assyrians were isolated from any help; they were untrained in both political and military affairs. The enemy was vastly superior in men and arms. It was truly an instance of David going out against Goliath. Though there were some victories at first, the end inevitably was defeat. Yet in this defeat there was glory, which even the large nations of Europe noticed and admired. For the defeat becomes unimportant in the face of the initial decision to stand for the right. Though we may never be called upon to lay down our lives in such a manner, may this example be as a precept for us that to stand for the right is a decision that cannot be compromised by consideration of the results. But instead, the very nature of the right is such that we must stand to defend it without the smallest consideration of cost.

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ASSYRIANS IN YONKERS In the second place their stand for faith was as difficult. The surrounding situation was again as dangerous. The Assyrians were but a small Christian island in a great sea of hostility. Their history was one of persecution after persecution. Yet the way to safety was not difficult, for it would have taken but a denial of their faith to save life and property. But as with the early Church’s martyrs, these people chose adversity and ultimately death rather than deny their belief. As Christ spoke, ‘For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall save it.’ Can we not hold up our heads and proudly say, ‘These people are my people, and this faith is my faith.’ And so that which we commemorate today is not something that is past and done with, but something which can live on in each one of us, as our heritage of honor, of right, and of a firm faith in the hope and life offered by Jesus Christ. We do not commemorate today a ‘flickering light in Asia,’ but rather we pay tribute to a very bright light that burns as a beacon to guide the path of those of us upon whom the important 34 decisions of the future lie.

Although the rhetorical flourishes in my talk may be overstated, the theme I conveyed did capture the gist of how we felt about our Assyrian history. We had a good bit of awe and a great deal of admiration for the generation that had fled the Middle East. Inevitably, this admiration was accompanied by feelings of gratitude and affection for this country which took in the Assyrian refugees and provided them with opportunities and freedoms they had never been allowed in their villages. Another aspect of this reality is that the experience with the western missionaries and the holocaust of the Great War actually, in different ways, smoothed the Assyrians’ transition to western countries. The eighty-year collaboration with the missionaries was one of those instances in history, rare and wonderful, of genuine intercultural cooperation. By means of this cooperative endeavor, the Assyrians learned how to cross cultural lines while retaining their own cultural identities. They were not forced to devalue the Assyrian experience in order to value the western connection. This was the major contribution to the Assyrians’ capacity to own bicultural

34 John Pierre Ameer (1957) “Address to the congregation of the Assyrian Presbyterian Church, Yonkers, New York.” Reprinted in The Assyrian Star. Vol II/Nos. 6 and 7, June-July 1958.

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identities in America, a dichotomy that was complementary rather than adversarial. Assimilation for them, thus, could be a positive experience. The second influence, that of the War, enabled the Assyrians to shed the shackles of parochial nationalism. They had not had a country of origin to which to give some allegiance, if only an emotional one, as did ItalianAmericans, Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans, and others. Our people’s allegiance to the past was to a religion, a culture, a history, and a communal life, not to a bordered country. The Assyrians had, in fact, become what sociologists label a “transnational people.” They were free to transfer their political allegiance to the country to which they emigrated without conflicts of dual attachments. Their “nationalism” became not the type common to the twentieth century, but one whose attachment was primarily to their religion and their history. This is an enormously freeing condition. So, my first reality, as an Assyrian-American living in the United States is a profoundly positive one. At the same time, I find myself buffeted between this reality and a second one. The first is the truth that this country provided my people a haven of safety, renewal, freedom, and opportunity. Yes, the Assyrians ran into some prejudices because they were not Anglo-Saxon, but these were only annoyances. In the end we were admitted into the white hegemony. Even though I am darker than many blacks and Latinos, and some of my Assyrian compatriots are much darker than I am, we were admitted into the privileged status that is white America. Jobs, college scholarships, access to any housing we could afford—all were available to us, maybe not right at first, but certainly by the time my generation reached adulthood. That positive experience is one of my realities. The other reality, however, is quite different. It is the reality that millions of my fellow Americans—blacks, Latinos, Indians, and East Asians—were not afforded the same access that we had. They were not admitted into the privilege of membership in white America, but, in a work still in process, gained their rights through difficult and even life-threatening struggles. I remember my mother often puzzling as to why these oppressed minorities should have so much less opportunity than we had even though they were the long-time residents, and we were the newcomers. Her empathy in this matter was shared by many other Assyrians, but, unfortunately, it was not the prevailing attitude. I did not notice her empathic response to be especially common among Assyrians. No amount of understanding of the condition of minorities in this country would have erased for immigrants like the Assyrians the positive experience of salvation which America was for them, nor should it have. Nevertheless,

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remembrance of the terrible oppression through which they lived in the Middle East should have, it seems to me, given them deeper understanding of the condition of these marginalized minorities. Too often, instead, the assimilated immigrants of all nationalities, assumed, as many still do, a critical stance toward minorities, repeating that absurd mantric question, “We did it; why can’t they?” This question ignores too much about the immigrants’ own difficulties in their first years here and dismisses too much of the history of racism in this country. Thus, the convening of a meaningful dialogue on this matter, between immigrants admitted as whites on the one hand and minorities categorized as not white on the other hand, is extraordinarily difficult. A metaphorical chasm of immense proportions exists that can be spanned only if both groups free themselves from the grips of their divergent realities, and seek to create convergent dialogues of reconciliation. Assyrians and similar immigrant groups need to understand the Others’ different history in America and need to remember the histories of their own oppressions. For their part, America’s marginalized minorities need to understand that the deep devotion that these immigrants have for this country is grounded in a legitimate and profound gratitude. The establishment of such a dialogue is a daunting task, made no easier by these differing agendas, by selfaggrandizing politicians, and by the uncertainties resulting from economic competition. Overtures, nevertheless, need to be made by the first, second, and third generations descended from the immigrants. Perhaps the Assyrian contribution to such a dialogue can be advanced by our holding always in memory why it was that we came to be born in Yonkers, Philadelphia, Chicago, Turlock, Gary, New Britain, Elizabeth, and Flint instead of in Hakkari, Tiyari, Gawar, Qudchanes, Tergawar, Ada, Charbush, Tasmalui, Ardishai, Titrush, Javilan, Salmas, Dejala, Siri, Sutlui, Geog Tapa, Julpashan, Cherijooshi, and Shemshajian.

CHAPTER 3: CHURCH “If it wasn’t church, we didn’t do it.” Darius Baba, Jr. (2000)

Of my many remembrances of church (umra), the music stands out most vividly. Wherever I am when I hear one of the old hymns—at a music store where they are issuing from the speakers or while driving with the car radio on—I find myself transported back in memory to our small, brick and stucco church on Jackson Street. I also experience this time travel while viewing one of these 1940s movies about clergymen that feature the traditional hymns—films like One Foot in Heaven (1941), Stars in My Crown (1950), and I’d Climb the Highest Mountain (1951).35 Sometimes I intentionally breathe life into that memory by putting on a CD of traditional Protestant hymns—Andy Griffith’s Precious Memories comes as close to any for recovering time and sound. I cannot count the number of times I have played that CD as I write this memoir. The warmth of those memories passes over me; inevitably I shed a few tears reflecting the feeling of loss of that community. “He Leadeth Me,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (my mother’s favorite), “Amazing Grace,” “O Happy Day,” and the rest were the staples of our congregational singing.36

Warner Bros. (1941) One Foot in Heaven. Produced by Robert Lord and Irving Rapper. Directed by Rapper. Written by Casey Robinson. MGM (1950) Stars in My Crown. Produced by William H. Wright. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Written by Margaret Fitts. 20th Century-Fox (1951) I’d Climb the Highest Mountain. Produced and written by Lamar Trotti, directed by Henry King. 36 The Sparrow Corporation (1995) Andy Griffith: Precious Memories. Produced by Steve Tyrell. 35

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In the spell of the music, I find myself seated one more time in the last pew on the left side of the church, my regular Sunday services seat. My parents are on either side of me, Pop next to the aisle. Next to my mother are my brother and sister, who were four years old in 1946. Surprisingly, for someone that young, Eleanor hardly ever squirmed. Franklin, on the other hand, hardly ever did not squirm. The main reason we sat back there was that Pop had the responsibility for putting out the hymnbooks prior to the service and for handing one to each person who arrived after the service started. Since many Assyrians were on “Middle East time,” there were always a substantial number of latecomers. He was also one of the two men who took up the collection. This seat facilitated both tasks. The collectors, usually deacons or elders, started the offering ritual by processing from the rear of the church up to the altar. Actually, given Presbyterian minimalism, the church did not have an altar, but a table at the front draped with a burgundy cloth on which a brass cross and the two collection plates sat. Qasha Meeshayel (called most often simply, Qasha, a generic Syriac term for priest or minister) gave the offertory prayer after which he gave the plates to Pop and Nathaniel Baba, known to all by his nickname, “Tom.” They started with the front pews and worked back toward the last pews. After these two well-dressed, serious pillars of the community finished the collection, they waited at the back for the offertory hymn to be completed. When they received the signal from Qasha to come forward, at a time when Uncle Tom had no opportunity to retaliate, my father would reach over to Tom’s plate and grab as much of the paper money as he could and add that to his own plate. That made it appear that the people on Pop’s side had been more generous than those on Tom’s side. In addition, this quick transfer gave Uncle Tom a lot of difficulty in keeping from laughing out loud. While he could manage this, try as he might, he couldn’t keep his body from shaking with quiet laughter. This scene, no matter how many times it was replayed, was thoroughly enjoyed by the congregation. Our minister, however, was not amused. Instead, a look of resignation came over his face, probably containing within it the thought, “Why me, O God?” One Sunday, while Pop was collecting on the “women’s side” of the church, he had the opportunity to vent his humor in a new direction. Generally, women sat on the right side and men on the left, although this custom, left over from their time in Iran, was already disappearing during these years with more families sitting all together. Whenever a male or female came alone to church, however, their natural tendency was to follow the older custom and yield to this gender separation. On this particular

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occasion, Esther Sayed, whose husband Jack was out of town, was sitting alone on the women’s side. As the plate passed her, she accidentally tipped it over so that the prayerful attitude evoked by the soft piano offertory music was shattered first by the sound of bouncing coins, then by the subdued but persistent snickering of the congregation. Of course, the amount and volume of laughter was ratcheted up by Pop’s audible retort to Esther, “Dipshu,” an epithet borrowed into Syriac that is roughly translated as, “dummy.” Pop was not serious of course. The Sayeds were among my parents’ closest friends. He just couldn’t resist this opportunity. Mrs. Sayed herself took several minutes before she could bring her silent and shaking laughter under control. This offertory byplay between Pop and Uncle Tom illustrates the characteristics of informality and friendliness with which our community was imbued and that carried over even to church services. Our minister, Reverend Marshall Yacoe, would have much rather seen them illustrated in some other venue. I believe this friendliness, indeed camaraderie, derived from the comfort these people had in their church and with each other. I missed that when I attended Anglo churches, although, happily, one of several cultural impacts that emerged from the 1960s was a greater informality in American churches as well. Anyone entering our church could not help but be immediately struck by that spirit of mutuality. Congregants chatted with each other in the pews, catching up on news, telling stories, inquiring about health. A guest or two from one of the other Assyrian communities brought news from their towns to be exchanged for the latest information from Yonkers. These conversations were a happy and lively pre-service ritual. Given that the context was umra, the exchanges were never loud. On the street outside, that was a different story. Nor was any of this a sign of disrespect for worship—these people just enjoyed each other’s company so very much. In any case, it came out all right since the congregation ended the conversations and entered into a worshipful attitude immediately upon the playing of the first notes of the prelude by Jane Davidson, our choir director. The last pew had a distinct and sweet advantage for me. I could choose either to observe the congregation, or I could read one of my books unobserved. That freedom from observation was interrupted only once each year when we in the Sunday School had to give our “recitations” and receive our good attendance pins. This annual June ritual, in front of the congregation, had a pleasant aspect for some but a tortuous one for most. The happier part for all was when, recitations completed, we went back to

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the front to receive the pins from Qasha himself. The one for the first year was a round, cloisonné pin. For every year thereafter, each pin was in the shape of a broad V with attached loops so that each pin could be linked to the one of the previous year, forming a ladder-like set of medals. The longer the chain, the more the bragging rights. I have noticed that many of my contemporaries still have those awards. In contrast to the pleasure at receiving these commendations was the unnerving preliminary, the oral recitations. Practicing for our moment in the spotlight in the weeks preceding and then reciting the passage was bad enough. Having those judgmental eyes focused on us simply exacerbated the pain. For a few like myself who enjoyed memorization (and enjoyed the approbation of adults as well), this was a time to show off. For many others, however, this chore could get downright embarrassing. Imagine the discomfort in the child when he or she missed a line under the scrutiny of the staring congregation. We knew that our parents would be kidded by their friends when we made mistakes. My brother invariably flubbed his lines. It didn’t help him that he had to stand up there with his twin sister, who never made an error. Frank would react to his flub with a giggle. While I realize that his reaction was partly due to nervousness, I can now understand that it also originated in his bemusement at this whole performance activity. I am now able to admire his honesty. The purpose for these recitations was unquestionably rooted in the best of intentions. From the child’s perspective, on the other hand, it was seen as more than a little sadistic. My hiding place in the last pew ended abruptly and dramatically when I was drafted into the choir at age 15. I use the term “drafted” advisedly. In one jump, I found myself transported from the least to the most conspicuous spot in the sanctuary in one painful moment. Even the minister at the left front could catch a breather from the constant observation of the congregation. He had the pulpit directly in front of his chair that acted as a shield from public scrutiny. For the choir, by contrast, at the right front, on a raised platform, there was no respite from scrutiny. Notable among the watchmen were our parents who were guarding our and their reputations by keeping spotlighted eyes on us. It is nothing short of amazing how, in spite of being in that fishbowl, we managed to engage in subversive activity. We developed various strategies, ranging from the ingenious to the silly, to accomplish this. Our need for relief and distraction was not because the service was in Syriac; we all had a working knowledge of the language and followed easily what was going on. We engaged in our subversion even when the service was in

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English, as it was from time to time when a visiting clergyman was not Assyrian. Nor were we rebelling at religion or at having to be there. Rather we were reacting to our exposed situation in those choir pews. Imagine teenagers compelled to sit quietly, reverently, and obediently under the full and consequent view of their parents and their parents’ friends. I am reminded of those prisoners who are under a 24-hour watch in their cells. How I envied, and still do, those church structures where the choir, even when in the front of the church, has seats recessed so as to place them out of sight so that they are exposed only when they stand to sing. Naturally, none of us wanted to be caught in a disrespectful attitude, so the trick for the perpetrator was to get one of his companions to fall into this trap while appearing innocent and “devout” oneself. The preferred method for achieving this was to pass notes that were intended to get the recipient to give in to laughter, albeit subdued. When that ploy succeeded, the perpetrator’s determination to convey an air of sanctimony and attentiveness found new energy, even while his victim went through contortions to avoid even smiling. These little contests of wills generated some pretty clever improvisations on notepaper or, in the absence of paper, on the inside covers of the hymnbooks. Because the recipient was constantly on guard to preserve a façade of piety, the skill of the note writer in developing an innocuous introduction leading up to the punch-line was put to the test. What must subsequent users of these books made of all this peculiar graffiti? Darius Baba came up with a foolproof method of breaking us up no matter how often he used it, and he accomplished this without resorting to notes. He would first simulate a motion that his leg and foot had gone to sleep, affecting an attitude of genuine surprise at such a revolting development. The charade continued with Darius shaking his leg and foot back and forth to show that they were coming awake. This awakening was marked by a relentless, spasm-mimicking shaking of the leg. To end this, Darius “shot” the leg into stillness by pointing his right hand at it and “pulling the trigger.” Why such a simple ploy never failed to get a rise out of us, no matter how often he did it, shows how starved we were for relief from the tension of uninterrupted scrutiny. Of course, Darius had a back up should he be found out. He had the best singing voice among the males and his piano skills enabled him to fill in for Mrs. Davidson when she was away. That did not prevent a good deal of tsk-tsking from his mother, but it did seem to lessen the scolding. Norman David, on the other hand, who had a pretty good bass voice himself, tended to give in to quiet giggling sooner than the rest of us. This

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usually resulted in his receiving post-service chastisement from his mother. Of course, after finishing with Norman, she would let us have it for leading her son astray. Darius, in addition to a quieter but nonetheless pointed scolding from his mother, received an unspoken criticism in the form of sighs of weary resignation. Dan, the moral conscience for our quartet, also let Norm know that it was pretty weak to give in to his brother’s shooting incidents. Most of the younger set was drafted into the choir as I was since the ability to actually sing was not only not a requirement, it was irrelevant. I cannot sing at all. I am as monotonic as they come. To paraphrase the old song title, I am Johnny No-Note. Musical capability, however, was not a prerequisite for choir membership; being a living, breathing person was. The congregation’s objective was to have a choir that made a substantial presence which was difficult to achieve with so small a congregation. As long as non-singers like me let the real singers take the load, church services were blessed with the best of both goals—a respectably sized choir and a respectable sound. How did I make a contribution? I simply developed an excellent capacity to lip-synch the words. If ever called upon to provide evidence of the lack of rebellious tendencies in those years, I need only point to that choir where I dutifully sat every Sunday, except in August, until I left for college. That commitment applied to my friends as well. Only illness or being out of town kept us from attending services. Our submissive bent was notable even for those quiet and conforming 1950s. The reality around that choir obligation was just a bit more complicated than a simple matter of acquiescence. Growing up in an Assyrian community prompted us to know our Church’s difficult history and understand the struggle of our people to avoid extermination. In the old country, attending services was often fraught with danger. Being conspicuous as Christians was no light matter; their Christian identity left them open sometimes to full-scale persecution or, more often, to annoying and humiliating harassment. This could take form as ridicule or it might escalate to random and irrational beatings. Affirming their Christianity was obviously a great deal more than deciding whether or not to attend Sunday services or sit in the choir pews. It was a courageous statement of belief uttered in a context of imminent danger. As privileged youngsters, free from that unpredictable and dangerous context, we should not be disrespectful to this heritage by engaging in adversarial behavior in regard to church. That makes clear why we seldom made an issue of church attendance. A further incentive was our recognition of the critical role that

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the Assyrian churches provided in the old country and the new of keeping the Assyrian community intact. The joy I have from remembering the music, however, does not come from nostalgia about choral shenanigans or my musical ineptitude. It flows from the memory of our congregation in song. Our people always sang with volume and enthusiasm, most of the adults singing in Syriac, all the younger folk and a few older ones in English. Our church had two hymnals, the standard Presbyterian one and another with the same hymns in Syriac. The latter version had no musical staff on the pages, only the lyrics, but since these people had heard and sang these hymns since childhood, the tunes were well imprinted in each person’s repertory. Most often the singing was accompanied by Jane Davidson’s piano playing. “Mrs. D” was a member of the Dayspring Presbyterian Church, with which our church had close ties, and was employed by our congregation as accompanist and choral director. Her magnificent soprano voice could be easily heard over the congregation. Occasionally, in place of the anthem offered by the whole choir, Mrs. D would sing a wonderful and moving solo. Whether she was reaching the crescendos of the “Hallelujah Chorus” or the pianissimos of a gentle lullaby, she evoked powerful emotions of joy and spiritual uplift in all of us. More than once I wondered why, after the state of worshipful joy that her anthems brought about in us, we needed the words of sermon or scripture. At times when Mrs. D was on vacation and Darius was not available, the congregation sang a capella. At those times, Elisha Yohannan would start the singing. It seemed even to my inadequate ear that he invariably started on key. That is why the congregation always deferred to him as the starter. Whether the congregants ended on key was another matter. Our people sang with joy and power. Their singing was triumphant. This came from the congregation’s deeply felt and lived Christianity that had been watered for 1500 years by the blood of all those who had died for their faith and was now fed by the pleasure and relief they felt at having survived the terrible crimes, finding themselves in safety and freedom in this country. Their voices were lifted by this awareness of how sustaining and supportive that faith had been and continued to be for them. The power flowed from this sense of new security and from their common identity that was continually being reinforced by their shared community. Our church services in general, and the hymn singing in particular, was a metaphor for the role religion has always had in our Assyrian community as the essence of our identity and the spirit that sustained it. Only by virtue of their membership in the Church of the East did the Assyrians survive as

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a distinct ethnic group. If, under pressure from the recurring persecutions, they had given up their faith—a reaction wholly understandable and not difficult to justify—Assyrians would have rapidly disappeared, submerged into the numerically superior groups among whom they lived. In a remarkable demonstration of the power of faith, the persecutions, in fact, brought about the opposite result: while the violence diminished their numbers, the brutality strengthened the survivors’ determination to remain loyal and committed to their faith. In their survival, Assyrians retained their distinct faith, their language, and their culture well into the twentieth century, passing these on to my generation. None should be surprised, therefore, that in the United States, in 1946, so far in time and distance from the persecutions, the church continued to be the community’s center. This was true even though, from the middle of the nineteenth century, “the Church” had become in fact two churches. The Church of the East had divided into two communions—the historical church and a newer, Reformed Nestorian Church with connections to American Presbyterianism and Congregationalism. This development did not alter the commitment to Christianity in either group even as it caused some ill feeling. It did result in the presence of at least two Assyrian congregations in their communities in this country. This split came about as a result of the work but not the intention of the American missionaries. Many Assyrians, including a majority of the Urmia group, left the historical church to join reformed Protestantism. The decision to leave the Church of the East was simply a matter of choice, as someone today might choose a church from among several available in his town. Because of the close relationship between church and national identity, the Assyrians’ choice had serious implications. To leave the government-recognized millet was to enter a limbo of great uncertainty and danger, so it was not a decision to be taken lightly. Assyrians, like those in other millets, relied on membership to identify themselves within the Ottoman and Iranian polities. That is why traditionalists criticized the defectors for putting not only themselves but also the entire group in harm’s way. In the first place, closer connection with Western churches raised red flags among government officials. Second, reduction in the numbers of the millet threatened its continued existence. Inevitably, given these factors, both sides became both defensive and critical in explaining their choices—to remain or to leave. Traditionalists accused the reformed of endangering the mother church by their desertions, while the reformed accused those who remained with antiquarianism. I believe that both sides are right and both sides are

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wrong. Traditionalists are correct in recognizing and emphasizing the centrality of Christianity to the Assyrian identity, and are correct as well in their historical memory. The mother church carried and sustained that identity through the centuries. Until the coming of the Americans, the only membership options for the Assyrians in Urmia and Kurdistan who wished to remain Christian were the Church of the East or the Roman Catholic Church. From the middle of the sixteenth century, Roman Catholic priests from France had been present among the Nestorians, especially in the area of northern Mesopotamia. A critically important consequence of affiliating with Rome was to stimulate even more suspicion among the Muslim governments about the Assyrians’ political loyalties. This danger was there from the time of the first Middle Eastern converts to Catholicism, since Christianity, being identified as a “Western” religion, and caused its adherents to be perennially suspected. Several Nestorians did take this route in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but most of those eventually returned to the mother church. The ones who maintained allegiance to Rome were dubbed “Chaldeans” by the Pope and were organized as a Uniate church, that is, a communion that is unified with Rome, accepts the supremacy of the Pope, but retains many of its forms, rituals, and structures. On the other side, the traditionalists were and are unnecessarily intransigent in not recognizing the changes in the denominational context in the modern period. In this time of greater intercultural and interreligious contacts, the refusal to adapt seems intentionally stubborn. Why should Assyrians be limited to a single option in regard to church membership? One result from the relationship with the American missionaries was that many Assyrians found the Reformed tradition to be more dynamic and spiritually satisfying than that of the historic church, and they opt for this while remaining within Christianity. Furthermore, the Assyrians were able to do this without losing affiliation with the millet. Missionaries had been able to bring diplomatic pressure on the Iranian government to grant official recognition to the new Reformed Nestorian Church. Iran was beset at least as much as the Ottomans by pressures from Western powers, so its government was not inclined to oppose the Americans. The realities of international politics worked in favor of the breakaway group as they had earlier for Armenians who received from the Ottoman government recognition for a reformed Armenian church. As a consequence, Assyrians gained political as well as religious viability in exercising choice. Many traditionalists have used this reality as the basis for questioning to what degree the choice to leave the mother

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church was an honest one. More than a few argue that people opted for the reformed congregation for material benefit and a gain in status. The jab they direct at the reformed group is that they crossed over “for a bowl of porridge.” What this barb means is that the Americans purchased this crossover of Assyrians by providing material resources, sort of a bribe. The Americans indeed provided a bevy of hitherto unavailable material assets, including employment, school materials, a printing press, medical help, and the like. But the history of the origin and development of the reformed group is much too complicated for such a simple explanation to be sustained. First, the reformed Assyrians were right to insist that they had never left Christianity. That is the crucial point, after all. Their response to the critics is that they elected a branch of this universal church that they found to be spiritually and liturgically more satisfying. Ample documentation exists that those Nestorians who started joining reformed Protestantism in the 1850s did so because they felt a greater uplift in those worship services than in the liturgies of the traditional church. Second, in reading the journals of the Americans, one is struck by how adamant the missionaries were about not wanting to disrupt the traditional church. Their journal entries are filled with accounts of how anguished the missionaries became upon seeing Assyrians leaving their own church. Actually, between 1834 and 1850, the missionaries refused to establish a reformed Nestorian congregation or even to recognize that development as a possibility. Americans wrote about their going so far as to bar Assyrians from joining the private worship services that missionaries held in their own homes. Even those Nestorian clergy who worked closely with the mission, with whom the Americans felt deep attachments, were denied this access. Were it not for those journal entries and some letters written home, we could too easily assume the Americans were motivated in this decision by feelings of cultural exclusion and by preconceived notions of cultural superiority. Missionaries, instead, wrote about their fears, that turned out to be accurate, that Nestorians might find mission services preferable to their own traditional ones. That would lead, unavoidably, to dissension and illwill among Assyrians. While an uncomfortable degree of cultural superiority is in evidence in the journal entries of a few of the Americans, it does not appear in reference to attendance at the private worship services. Most notable, in contrast, is the abiding concern among the mission people that they must avoid any decision that might put obstacles in the way of their primary task of assisting the indigenous church to improve its condition. They believed

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that an irrevocable part of this commitment was the preservation of the church’s unity. Thus it was that only after prolonged and insistent appeals from the Assyrians did the reluctant Americans agree to open their worship services and, eventually, to acquiesce to the formation of a Reformed Nestorian congregation. The Americans were won over by an increasing and certain confidence in the sincerity and genuineness of the petitioners’ request. Admittedly, in the absence of documents from Assyrian sources, we must rely on the missionary reports and journals. Yet even with this limitation, we have access to telling indicators that support this analysis of what occurred and why it did. In almost every letter from Rev. Rufus Anderson, senior executive of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, he included forceful reminders to missionaries to avoid actions that might alter the cultural or liturgical forms associated with the indigenous churches. Anderson was scrupulous about this and assumed that, upon completion of their work of revitalization, the Americans would either return to the United States or move on to new mission fields. He and his fellow commissioners were most anxious for their missionaries to avoid leaving behind them any seeds of discord. Second, we have the evidence of the aforementioned journal entries including several references to the decision to refuse permission for Assyrians, including those working with the mission, to substitute attendance at mission services in the place of those at the Nestorian churches. While the Assyrian Presbyterians are correct to explain the formation of reformed Nestorianism as an honest and perhaps inevitable development, they are not justified in arguing that this new church was a truer representation of Christian faith than the Church of the East. Those who remained with the traditional church were as sincere and as legitimate in their decision to do so as were their reformed brethren in their choice to form a new denomination. Not only had the traditional church succored the people through so much history, but it had also initiated and sustained a major Christian missionary effort in South and East Asia. The Church of the East's chronicles include a long list of heroes and martyrs in this enormous evangelistic enterprise. Nestorians should not be faulted for wishing to remain faithful to their predecessors. In fact, it would be sad if all Assyrians, of all denominations, failed to celebrate the achievements of this missionary activity. We should, indeed, express excitement and a great deal of pride in this aspect of our history. While those who remain in the Church obviously have the same right to beliefs and spiritual satisfaction as do those who leave for other denominations, both groups, and the

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Chaldeans as well, must be sure to find joy and meaning in their collective history. The good news for those of us in the Assyrian communities in this country was that the debate between the two communions was seldom an activist one. Only a very few hard-liners on either side chose to convert this issue into a cause, while the majority of Assyrians avoided obscure and unproductive theological disputes. The choice to remain in the old church or move over to the new one was based on feeling comfortable with the forms and procedures of the one or the other, and not on theological nuances that have characterized other splits throughout Christian history. Even as each group remained adamant about the rightness of its choice, they were able and determined to transcend religious differences for the benefit of their social relationships and on behalf of ethnic solidarity. Thankfully, in the context of personal and social intercourse, Assyrians are Assyrians. By contrast, in the Middle East, tragically, the animosity among Christian denominations can often become virulent. We see with great sorrow that even in the context of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, Chaldeans and Nestorians could still indulge their mutual antagonisms. We should have been able to confidently expect that all Christians in Iraq would be celebrating the removal of the detested regime with its coteries of rapists, torturers, and murderers. But prior to the American invasion there was evidence that the removal of Saddam Hussein would not, unfortunately, encourage the Christian factions to come together. Journalist Charles Glass’ account of the Iraqi Opposition Conference in London, in December 2002, includes the following: When an Assyrian Christian addresses the conference, the Chaldean Christians walk out. Their dispute dates to A. D. 1550, when the Chaldeans went with Rome and the Assyrians remained with the Orthodox Church. They tend to hate each other more than they do the Muslims.37

In the American context, two points need to be made about the religious affiliations—one having to do with the relationship between the

Charles Glass (2003) “Chronicle of a War Foretold: Unembedded in Iraq”. Harper’s Magazine. Vol. 307/No. 1838, July 2003, pages 57-67. 37

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Assyrians’ religious background and their assimilation into American society. The second is in regard to how this fragmentation played out differently in the two contexts, religious and social. As to the first, because of their almost 100-year experience with both American and English missionaries, especially in the several schools opened by Westerners, the Assyrians had become familiar with cultural and political norms associated with both England and America. This contact proved singularly important in the Assyrians’ (and the Armenians’) relatively smooth adjustment to the Western polity and its accompanying institutions. Simply put, the Assyrians, Nestorian traditionalists as well as Reformed Nestorians, had been in contact in these schools with the same materials, principles, and objectives that characterized the curriculum in Western schools. As a consequence, the components of Western democracy, including its religious and philosophical roots, had entered the experience of the Assyrians prior to their emigration to America. As with all education, much of the transfer of this information and ideology is subtle albeit powerful. Just how powerful an influence this had is seen in the ease with which Assyrians, and other Eastern Christians as well, all of whom had experienced this intimate contact with the West, adopted the obligations and attitudes of American citizenship. The move to the United States from the Middle East, without this prior relationship with the missionaries, would have been more difficult. The immigrants would have known only the political authoritarianism and hierarchical structures of Muslim societies. Instead, they had absorbed the system of democratic institutions by close and sustained contact with democratic peoples. I cannot emphasize enough the salutary result that this provided Assyrians and Armenians as they made the transition from the old country to the United States. As to the second point, the fragmentation of the religious community: While members of each communion rarely worshiped at the other’s services, they gladly attended weddings, funerals, christenings, and social activities at each other’s churches. Most important, they socialized in their homes across the religious divide without any hesitation. I encountered this ethnic solidarity in those shopping trips that I describe in the Chapter 1. Pop stopped to chat with any Assyrian we met, Nestorian, Presbyterian, or Catholic, with the same degree of pleasure. That was true not just of my father. Social exchanges among the community were enthusiastic and prolonged, irrespective of the speaker’s religious affiliation. It could not be otherwise, since the shared history, worldview, social practices, and cultural homogeneity of the Assyrians was greater glue in social intercourse than the

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religious split was a barrier. We were spared the bitter squabbles that interfere with solidarity such as those exemplified in the Iraqi example. There was, however, one aspect of our social intercourse that belies this description of community solidarity. It was an important component of social arrangements and it did often cause unnecessary unhappiness. This occurred in the matter of selecting marriage partners. Because this process could even result in bitterness and rancor, I am surprised that I can now be amused by recollections of the “marriage problem.” Apparently this is proof yet again of how time and age can heal. It didn’t seem so benign or inconsequential during my high school and college years. In those days, I found, as I am sure did most of my contemporaries, that the restrictions and preferences in regard to marriage, defined by the religious divide, were downright frustrating. They seemed so casuistic and prescribed and were perceived by us as contrary to the otherwise good feelings sustained by ethnic solidarity. How large a part all of this played in our social lives is obvious by the clarity with which I can, these many years later, reconstruct all the elements of these social arrangements. It seems that the disputatious and trivial arguments usually associated with religion were transferred to marital taboos. This meant that the acceptability of marriage partners was determined within the context of an elaborately prescribed hierarchy of descending order of choices from very acceptable to unacceptable. The hierarchy differed to greater or lesser degree depending on the religious affiliations of the families of the potential partners. Take, for example, the preferences of the Assyrian Presbyterians. Their descending order of choice was as follows. At the apex was marriage to a member of the same religious and ethnic group, an Assyrian Presbyterian. Coming home with such a welcome announcement was the best news that parents could receive. For a population as tiny as the Assyrians, there is no surprise that maintaining our numbers was a constant concern. The group’s perceived need to survive gave special importance to the choice of marriage partners, a critical decision in all cases but even more so for us because of this survivalist worry. Living within a society as diverse as America’s meant constant contact with other ethnicities with the attending threat to maintaining the group’s numbers. Therefore, marriage out of the Presbyterian fold would still be acceptable as long as the partner was Assyrian. The preference then was for a Nestorian, but an Assyrian from one of the other Syriac churches, such as Syrian Orthodox, would do almost as well. A Nestorian partner, then, was the next preference in the descending order, with a Jacobite spouse following that. (“Jacobite” is the nickname for adherents of Syrian Ortho-

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doxy.) Could there be a more telling demonstration of how ethnicity trumped religion: a Nestorian or Jacobite was preferable even to a Presbyterian if the latter was not Assyrian. Many Jacobites identify themselves as Assyrian; others reject this identification, considering themselves to be a different ethnicity. My Assyrians, the Urmizhnayi and durayi, consider the Jacobites as ethnic “cousins,” assuming the Syrian Orthodox Church and Church of the East to be two branches of Syriac Christianity within the larger Assyrian ethnicity. The actual ethnography of the Middle East is much more complex than is addressed in either of these reductionist assumptions. As a result, those who feel compelled to affirm and assert one or other assumption end up crashing into the wall of argument and even anger. Given the precarious position that Christians occupy in the Middle East, we might assume that they would put aside these ethnographic arguments in favor of religious solidity. Currently the Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox Church are engaged in serious ecumenical conversations, but, in the end, each remains committed to affirming its distinct polity. There is one disturbing exception to the preference for ethnic solidarity that demonstrates how divisive religion can be. Because the Assyrian Catholics, the Chaldeans, were in union with Rome, marriage with members of that community was seriously, and usually effectively, opposed, in spite of ethnic kinship. Both Presbyterians and Nestorians remembered the history of Catholic contact with the Church of the East as an unrelenting attempt to end the independence of our church and fold it into the Roman communion. Because of the antipathy and suspicion that this fueled in regard to the Church of Rome, marriage with a Catholic, even an Assyrian Catholic, fell outside the accepted hierarchy. To more fully understand the antipathy among Assyrian Presbyterians to Catholicism, one needs to know a little about the schism that occurred in the Nestorian Church that led to the formation of Chaldean separatism. The reader is invited, therefore, to take a very brief journey through Nestorian history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In spite of the cataclysmic split between eastern and western Christianity that had taken place in the fifth century, the Vatican never gave up its desire to reunify the separate Christian divisions. Whenever other issues were not too pressing on the Catholic hierarchy, they gave attention and some resources to persuading eastern denominations to unite with Rome. There was a continuing, if fitful, strategy to accomplish this by sending emissaries to the Middle East’s Christian communities. They achieved some notable successes, union with the Maronite Church of Lebanon as the most

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dramatic example of the success of these efforts. That branch of Syriac Christianity, in its entirety, re-established communion with Rome and allegiance to the Papacy in the sixteenth century. Union with some Assyrians, dubbed as Chaldeans, was another success for Rome. The three reasons why this particular group of Assyrians formed a Uniate communion are perfectly understandable in this context. First, there was a geographic reality. These Assyrians lived in the area that now comprises the northern part of Iraq, in and around Mosul and Kirkuk. This hindered communication with the Nestorian patriarch who had moved into the Kurdistan Mountains. Communication was maintained but it was difficult. Second, the reunification was facilitated by the disarray into which the Nestorian patriarchy had fallen. There were two individuals, representing opposite parties, who claimed the title of Patriarch, a condition similar to the Catholic experience with a Papal schism during the medieval period. To complicate and intensify this feud, one of the claimants decided to join Rome, a move subsequently repudiated by his party, but only after much bitterness and rancor. This conflict between the two contending parties facilitated Catholic missionary activity by distracting what otherwise would be local opposition to the Catholics. Third, some Nestorian clerics and congregants sincerely believed in the theology and supremacy of the Catholic communion and converted from genuine conviction, not from political or geographical motives. An important aspect of their lives did not change with this reunification since Chaldeans were no freer from Muslim depredations than were the Nestorians. Even into the twentieth century, Chaldeans were reminded of their ethnic kinship with the Nestorians: During the war of 1914–1918 the Chaldeans suffered equally with their neighbors from massacre and deportation. Six bishops, a score of priests, and thousands of their people were murdered by the Turks and Kurds, and four dioceses were destroyed.38

The feelings of hostility between Catholics and Nestorians were reinforced by a series of confrontations involving Lazarist missionaries that took place during the first half of the nineteenth century. While American missionaries were working at their objective of revitalizing the Church of

Donald Attwater (1961) The Christian Churches of the East: Volume I, Churches in Communion with Rome. Milwaukee WI: Bruce Publishing Company, pages 191-192. 38

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the East, Catholic missionaries from France arrived in Urmia and made representations to the Nestorians to come over to Rome. A small number of Urmizhnayi responded positively to this invitation, but most, urged by both Nestorian and Protestant clerics to hold fast, decided the Catholic efforts were subversive and had to be rejected. A general fear persisted that the group’s identity would be lost by submersion into the enormous Roman entity, even with the protection of Uniate status. Protestant missionaries shared this Nestorian fear, and, in any case, they already had a negative perspective on Catholicism. They feared that the Lazarists would win over the bulk of the Nestorians before the Americans’ efforts to revitalize the Church reached fruition. To prevent this outcome, the missionaries who, like other Westerners in the region, sought to make use of the controlling influence Western governments had with the indigenous governments, approached Iranian officials seeking assistance. They were aided and abetted in this by British diplomats in the country who had obvious reasons for wanting these Frenchmen out of Iran. These efforts succeeded. The government in Tehran ordered the French Catholics deported, but they returned not too many years later, so from the late nineteenth century through the end of World War I, there was a continuous Lazarist presence in Urmia. The fourth level down in this hierarchy was marriage to an Armenian. That seems on the face of it to be a contradiction since there is little theological or liturgical affinity between Assyrians and Armenians and not any ethnic commonality. There is not even any linguistic kinship; the Armenian language is in the Indo-European group, not the Semitic one. Marriage to an Armenian meant crossing both ethnic and religious borders. Why then would such a union be more acceptable than, say, marriage to a Chaldean? I think that the answer to that has most to do with the comfort level felt by the bride or groom’s family. Armenians were considered to have shared a kinship with Assyrians in important ways. Both were Christian minorities within the Iranian and Ottoman Empires, sharing a similar history as such, including the experience of oppression and massacre. In World War I, Assyrians and Armenians fought side by side against Turks and Kurds. In addition, most Armenians were not Catholic and that, of course, was an asset. Then there are numerous cultural similarities between Assyrians and Armenians formed over the number of years the two groups were in proximity to each other. The foods of the two peoples are virtually identical; Armenian music is the type favored by Assyrians. Until recently we had very little of our own secular music. Only in the last thirty or forty

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years, have Assyrian musicians written, produced, and recorded original Assyrian compositions. At Assyrian weddings or other social functions, the music was predominantly Armenian, with an occasional Kurdish tune thrown in. In addition, we even resemble each other. That is, the Armenians from Turkey and Iran appear to the untutored eye to be indistinguishable from Assyrians. This is less true of the Armenians who lived in that part of Armenia within the Russian Empire. In Urmia, both groups often lived together in the villages, and a number of intermarriages had taken place there. I knew Assyrians and Armenians who spoke both languages. From all of this, the reader can surmise that parents would feel comfortable with Armenian in-laws if the Assyrian option was not there. I assume that this was true for most Armenian families as well. For our Presbyterians, if the marriage partner was an Armenian Presbyterian or Congregationalist, so much the better. The level below that for our group, the fifth level, was marriage to a person whose ethnicity was not Middle Eastern but who was Protestant. Religious compatibility ameliorated some of the pain from crossing ethnic and regional borders. One cause of potential unhappiness was from parents’ assumption that children resulting from the union would very likely have little or no attachment to or interest in the Assyrian identity. This, too, was part of the survivalist anxiety. The evidence, however, indicates that these parents were only partially correct. Many offspring of these unions have demonstrated as much interest in their Assyrian heritage as do children both of whose parents are Assyrian. I have noticed that many of these bi-ethnic young people often have more interest in the Assyrian historical tradition than do some full-blooded Assyrian offspring. This interest in searching roots is notable among many third generation Americans from all ethnicities. Ethnographers have described a consistent pattern of fluctuation with many first generation Americans losing the interest that their parents had in ethnic origins, but a return of that inquisitiveness among their children, the grandchildren of the immigrants. There are so many centrifugal forces operating in our diverse society that it is easy for American-born children of whatever ethnicity to lose interest in ethnic roots when encountering so many competing objects upon which to direct one’s energy. We have a powerful and attractive American culture that is distinct from the separate cultures inside our pluralistic society. There is every reason that young people are eager to participate fully in this mainstream, whatever connections they retain with their ethnic heritages. Consequently, it is more than a little gratifying to see many young people retain an interest in their Assyrian connection.

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For Assyrians, the normal difficulties associated with maintaining a bicultural identity are exacerbated by the lack of a national home of origin. Not Iran, Turkey, Syria, nor Iraq fill that void; they are simply the countries where our parents and ancestors lived; they are not the homelands for which we yearn or in which we feel emotional attachments as members of most other ethnic groups in America. In other words, we do not have a country around which we can focus our cultural and ethnic aspirations. Our references to the “old country” are geographic, not nationalistic. Although we use that phrase, it does not incorporate political, cultural, or historic attachments. We are not Iranians, Turks, Iraqis, Syrians, Jordanians, or Lebanese. As I noted in Chapter 2, this just might be our greatest blessing. Without a homeland that is or was ours, we certainly have more than the usual difficulties in sustaining ethnic solidarity, but we are also freed from those chauvinistic tendencies associated with virulent nationalisms. There is not an “Assyria” to which Assyrian-Americans expect their Congressional representatives to give special attention, as, say, Greek-Americans expect in regard to Greece or Polish-Americans in regard to Poland, and so on. True, there are many Assyrians who are working for some kind of homeland in the northern part of Iraq, since that is the geographical location of the ancient Assyrian Empire. While not in sympathy with this cause, I can understand the Assyrian nationalists’ attachment to it since they continue to suffer under the Arab regimes. Where I prefer the liberation from an attachment to a previous homeland, the nationalists envy the other groups’ ownership of identifiable countries of origin. But this was neither a cause nor an aspiration for the families from Urmia who came here after World War I. They viewed their part of Iran as a home, not a homeland. They simply resided in Iran—they were not of it. What nationalist inspirations that did move Assyrians in 1946 resided almost wholly with some of the durayi. Understandably, they still looked upon their mountain villages not as part of Turkey but as the homeland from which they had been driven. Because the Turkish central government had been unable to assert any serious control over the mountain Assyrians, they, more easily than their Iranian cousins, could come to consider their part of Turkish Kurdistan as a “homeland,” even though it was not a distinct political entity. When I was in elementary school, a feature of the school year’s calendar was Brotherhood Week, held every February. This one-shot, oncea-year attention to recognizing the country’s diversity was the public school’s feeble attempt to address that reality. It was sort of “drive-by

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multiculturalism.” One particularly annoying exercise that was part of the week was the school assembly where some of us were selected (“dragooned” is a better description) to talk about our parents’ countries of origin. All but a few of us in P. S. 19 were children of immigrants, so there were a lot of countries to represent. I was regularly “honored” to participate in this embarrassment, to represent Iran, yet one more lesson on why you should avoid standing out in school. My cousin and classmate, Sonny Ameer, would enjoy my discomfort and sit in the audience smirking at me. I believe that Arnie Eshoo, who, with Dolores Sargis, was my other Assyrian classmates, got picked a few times as well to perform this onerous assignment. If he did get picked, I am sure that I sat smirking at him as well. An important redeeming part of this ceremony, thank goodness, is that we weren’t required to wear native dress. The selected lambs would be herded on stage, arranged in a row, and, in turn, had to step forward to give some fact about our country of origin. “My family comes from Poland where they make ham.” “My family comes from Italy where Da Vinci painted ‘The Last Supper.’” You get the idea. This is what passed for a culturally responsive or culturally diverse curriculum in our public schools in 1946. There was no way for me to enable my teachers to understand that I did not give a damn about Iran, and had no interest whatever in telling anybody about it. Not only was I not an Iranian, but also, at that time in my life, I had been filled with the stories of the brutalities my people had suffered there. Inevitably, I had only contempt for that country, seeing it as a place of murder and pillage. Furthermore, Farsi, the language of the Iranians, wasn’t even our language. I have since calmed down quite a bit, and have come to appreciate the rich literature and art of the country, and have familiarized myself with its fascinating history. As an undergraduate I had come so far in my appreciation of that history that I persuaded the college to let me create a Middle Eastern studies major for myself. It is a mark of the importance that the Middle East has attained in America’s interests that in 2005 there were 35 majors at the college in Middle Eastern studies. There was even a brief period, during my twenties, when I told people who asked after my ethnicity, that I was Iranian. I did that in part because I thought it sounded intriguing to identify myself this way, but, for the most part, I was avoiding the need for those complicated explanations as to how the ancient Mesopotamian empires have survivors into the twentieth century. All of that was long before Ayatollah Khomeini, “America Held Hostage,” and the United States described as “the American Satan.” Back at P.S. 19, in 1946, however, I believed that the only thing Iranian about us

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was that we had once had homes there and had paid taxes to the government. If I had been asked to speak about the Assyrian people, I would probably accept the opportunity gladly, even with the accompanying embarrassment. In fact, I would have very much liked to be able to tell the assembly about our church and its history. I actually tried a few times to explain to my teachers why I was not an Iranian, but without success. “But didn’t your parents come from Iran?” How could I explain the millet system to these teachers who identified themselves or their parents as Irish from Ireland, Italians from Italy, Scots from Scotland, or Germans from Germany? Even the Jewish students whose families came from Poland identified that country as their homeland. In the early 1940s, we had not yet fully comprehended the horrible treatment of Jews by the Poles themselves during the Nazi occupation, the knowledge of which ended such identification by my Jewish peers. But, with no choice in the matter, either Arnold or I went through the motions: “My parents come from Iran where they make rugs.” To return to our hierarchy of marital preferences, then, I have to note with distress that the experience of having been excluded did not preclude practicing exclusion. The marginalization and segregation that Assyrians suffered should have improved our capacity for tolerance but, as with other groups with similar histories, it did not. So we excluded Catholics and Jews as marriage partners. Marriage with a Muslim was also, and obviously, unacceptable, but, if there were Muslims in Yonkers, we were unaware of their presence. Even if they had been in the city, the history of AssyrianMuslim encounters made such a marriage improbable in any case. Marriage to an African-American in those years, by an Assyrian, would have been contemplated only by the most courageous, as was true for other “whites” as well. Those willing to cross that formidable border knew that they would face the worst kind of social isolation and contempt. Besides, having lived through a history of constant oppression would give pause to Assyrians before they would re-enter the world of segregation, humiliation, and social deprivation. Marrying a Jew took one out of Christianity, so that was not acceptable either. Since Assyrians tended to be literal in their interpretation of the Bible, they were caught up in those passages about the Jews taking on responsibility for the Crucifixion, an attribution of guilt to all Jews sustained through the centuries by virtually all Christian denominations. Assyrians participated in fostering this mythology as well. In spite of this acceptance of the deicide accusation, and the marriage ban, the attitude that most

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Assyrians had toward the Jews was a curiously ambivalent one. This resulted, I believe, from an awareness of our shared history, especially in the Middle East under Muslim rule. Of more critical relevance was the relationship at the founding of the Church of the East. When conversions to Christianity began to take place in Mesopotamia in the second and third centuries that led to the formation of our church, most of the earliest converts came from the Jewish communities in that area. That was inevitable. The first people approached by the Jewish-Christian missionaries from Jerusalem were naturally their co-religionists in the Jewish Diaspora. Then, through all the years of Muslim ascendancy and dominance in the Middle East, Jews suffered much of the same oppression, persecution, and marginalization as did Christians, albeit with periods of official tolerance as in the early Ottoman years. There is even a linguistic affinity. Hebrew and Syriac are very close to each other. In the small Jewish community in the city of Urmia, the vernacular language was the same Syriac dialect used by the Nestorians. On one side of this historical relationship, then, are several points of affinity and kinship. On the other looms the Crucifixion story with its element of guilt and damnation. This is one of the innumerable instances of historical legerdemain: the Romans executed Jesus but got a pass on their responsibility for the act. With the official recognition of Christianity by the Roman emperor Constantine, the guilt for Jesus’ execution was taken off the Roman’s shoulders and strapped to the back of the Jews. The New Testament has wording that supports this interpretation in Matthew 27:25, “And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’” Thus was added one more instance in the long-running series in Western history where Jews are offered up as scapegoats, but this charge of deicide was the most destructive of all. Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic, seem finally to be shedding this contrived history, but not yet in strong enough language. The eastern churches seem especially slow in finally ending this destructive nonsense.39 We heard the guilt story in conversations and encountered it in our Sunday School lessons. I remember members of my parents’ generation

39 James Carroll has recently written a comprehensive history of this “Jewhatred” as it has played out in the West: (2001) Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

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quoting the passage from Matthew, and I recall sitting in the parish hall watching the villainous Sadducees and Pharisees leering wickedly at the bound Jesus in DeMille’s notoriously anti-Semitic 1927 film, The King of Kings.40 At the same time, the relationships that Assyrians had with the substantial Jewish community in Yonkers were closer than with any other group except the Scots, their fellow Presbyterians. How did they reconcile this? They didn’t. The theme of Jewish collective guilt was uttered in rote, in a manner that was almost abstract, whereas the relationships with Jewish neighbors and fellow workers were real. It seems not to occur to people until too late that the very people mentioned in rote condemnations are not abstractions but those one greets on a daily basis. That realization usually comes about only after acts of devastation have taken place. Most Jewish parents of course, had similar religious and ethnic concerns and fears about marriage across borders as did the Assyrians. For them, too, were the anxieties about loss of ethnic and religious solidarity. For Anglos, it seemed to us, although this is more conjecture than fact, marriage of their offspring with anyone from the eastern or southern European or Middle Eastern peoples was frowned upon. This distaste was evident in many cases even when the union did not cross religious lines. The melting pot has never been as universally celebrated as Israel Zangwill implies in his 1919 play: Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the Equator, the crescent and the cross—how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall They all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God.41

The reality was considerably less sanguine and beneficent than that passage suggests. This hierarchy of socially accepted statuses was by no means confined to Assyrian Presbyterians; Nestorians and Catholics had their own system of priorities, similar in origin, parameters and intent. Yet I cannot emphasize enough that, aside from the issue of marriage, as important as that was, divisions did not carry over into the other activities of social

40 Pathe (1927) King of Kings. Produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille, written by Jeanie McPherson. 41 Israel Zangwill (1909) The Melting Pot, quoted in Oscar Handlin (1959) Immigration as a Factor in American History. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, page 150.

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intercourse. Assyrian Catholics, Nestorians, and Presbyterians mixed freely and enthusiastically with each other on social occasions. Friends have asked me how these marital parameters and restrictions were conveyed. Were we sat down and the rules told to us? No. These were understandings that one came to absorb by listening to conversations about marriages. The approvals or disapprovals given to various marriages gave us the parameters we needed to know. Second, when dating, even in the most casual of circumstances, the reaction of one’s parents similarly laid out the prescribed borders. No matter how casual the date might be, just a movie and soda fountain evening (most of us were not socially or sexually adventurous in the1940s and ’50s), it could result in some agitation and even confrontation within the family. The older generation seemed to operate from the assumption that any social activity with a member of the opposite gender bore the possibility of permanence. Consequently, the adults believed that care had to be exercised since even casual dating partners were viewed by them, if not by us, as potential mates. This degree of concern was frustrating, if not infuriating. It is the one aspect of the social life of our community that I most resent. It should come as no surprise that many of young Assyrians, in order to avoid the interrogation, warnings, and arguments just cut back their social activities to a schedule considerably limited from what they would have preferred. The well-worn, but accurate cliché warns: “It just wasn’t worth the hassle.” Even understanding the reasons for the wariness and concern that motivated my parents’ generation moves me no closer to forgiveness now than it did at the time. A more serious and often sad consequence was that a number of young people who were very much in love with each other backed off and did not marry to avoid the proverbial “hassle.” I do not want to mislead on this point, however. My friends were reconciled to the fact that our permanent partner would be an Assyrian, and were quite pleased with that prospect. Moving away from the community, to college or to the military or to a job in another city, made this less and less of a surety. It was as if the move away from the community center included a departure from these social norms as well. The further we were from the geographical borders of the community, the greater the possibility of succumbing to the melting pot. The restrictions, hopes, and parameters of the older generation could not compete, finally, with the powerful reality of proximity with America’s diversity. My cohort of four married at different parts of the hierarchical order: Darius’ wife, Barbara. is Syrian Orthodox; Norman’s wife, Alice, a Nestorian; Dan’s former wife, Angel, a Southern Anglo; my first wife Inge is Danish, and my current spouse,

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Margarita, is Puerto Rican whose father is Presbyterian and mother Roman Catholic. Yet all of us, right up to the present (and Norman until his death in 1995), remained firmly dedicated and loyal to our Assyrian identity, history, and culture. Aside from the difficulties that might emerge around the issue of marriage, the formal social activities within all of the Assyrian communities were always great fun and included the whole community. Some were sponsored by the churches, others by the associations. We had a continuous round of social activities. In the largest of the Assyrian communities, Chicago and Turlock, with more than two Assyrian churches and two or more social clubs, the number of these benefits was significantly greater. In Yonkers we had three venues for our community interactions—the Presbyterian and Nestorian churches, and “the Club.” All of the Presbyterian families, my own included, attended the Club’s social activities with enthusiasm, but gave preeminence to those organized by our church. My father’s attitude was typical of this group. On the one hand he was pleased to have an Assyrian association functioning in Yonkers. Indeed, he took pride in that. At the same time, he was convinced that our people’s identity was primarily centered in religion, not in nationalism. So his feelings toward the Club sometimes tended to be ambivalent. My mother’s feelings on the matter were stronger as she would have felt no particular remorse if the Club ceased to exist. For her, and for her closest relatives, being an Assyrian meant, first and last, being an active member of an Assyrian church. The only times when my father’s attitude toward the Club verged toward the negative was when discussions took place about an Assyrian “nation.” There was a minor nationalist movement at that time, only recently raised to the level of a significant cause, especially among the Iraqi Assyrians. Pop looked on Assyrian nationalism, correctly I believe, from his perception that Assyrians emigrated to this country not from a nation but from a church. His people did not leave behind a political citizenship that needed to be regained, but took with them a religious membership that was portable. It is easy, therefore, to see how he and those with similar feelings might be cautious about the social clubs, worrying that they were instrumentalities where the energy and attention of Assyrian people could be channeled away from religious channels into nationalistic ones. There was an inverse correlation between participation in church and Club—the more active in one, the less active in the other. Some people were able to participate at very active levels in both organizations and did so

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successfully, but most chose to emphasize the one or the other as the focus of their Assyrianism. I do not want to overstate this dual pull on loyalties. For my parents and others, the matter of Assyrian nationalism was not a cause, one way or another. They felt that their expulsion from Iran and Turkey had rendered the issue moot. They were made refugees and, in that ambiguous condition, were welcomed into membership in this country. Why not just accept this happy turn of events for what it was, and look upon the United States as their country? Why not accept the reality that the future of the Assyrian émigrés to this country was intertwined now with the future of the country itself? Discussing an ephemeral nationalist cause seemed to them an exercise in futility. Mom and Pop were happy and even enthusiastic about supporting the Club’s social and cultural activities and attended most of them. They were also committed to assisting the educational efforts of the national association to fund the education of Assyrian youngsters in the Middle East. The association’s political agenda, on the other hand, was less than compelling. It is important to note as well that those Assyrians who were affiliated with the Presbyterian and Congregational churches had, by virtue of this membership, close association with two of America’s mainstream Protestant denominations. This proximity, and the familiarity that resulted, accelerated Assyrians assimilation into American political associations and attitudes. It is not surprising, therefore, that those most active in association activities nationally and locally were usually from the Nestorian communions. Membership in the traditional church led more naturally to whatever nationalist feelings Assyrians could muster. The work and the needs of the Jackson Street church ranked along with family and relatives at the top of Mom and Pop’s ordering of priorities. The church was the central venue of my family’s social as well as religious life. Their closest friends in the community, as well as my own, came from the church. Most of the social visits we made and most of the visitors to our house were from the church, as were most of the friends with whom we picnicked in the summers. As Darius Baba noted in his pithily profound observation that I quoted at the beginning of this chapter, it is difficult to recall many social activities that were not associated with the church and its members. The location for most of these events was the parish hall, in reality the basement under the church sanctuary. That large room, not unlike hundreds of other parish halls in this country became, in effect, an extension of each of our homes and apartments. Youth group meetings,

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choir rehearsals, congregational dinners, visiting lecturers, plays, films, Sunday School classes, dramatic offerings, all were held in the parish hall. Our annual congregational meetings were also held there. Those meetings began with a dinner prepared by the women of the congregation. At every Assyrian function where there is eating, the food is always magnificent. It was an article of faith among us that the women of the Assyrian Presbyterian Church were better cooks than the women of the Church of the East. I have no doubt that the Nestorians had an identical article of faith with the relative merits reversed. The criterion on which most of this judgment rested was the quality of the Assyrian pastry known as chada, a delicious round pastry best accompanied by a glass of tea. The buzz in the community was that the Presbyterians made the best chada, and, probably, the best dolma, rice, khurush, et cetera. I have no evidence that Presbyterianism confers any more culinary expertise than does Nestorianism, but the always-favorable assessment of the food at our church rendered the claim unarguable, at least among the Presbyterians. Prior to the chada dessert, the menu usually included khurush, rice, chicken, and, sometimes, a salad. After dinner, the meeting began with a communal reciting of the Lord’s Prayer led by Qasha or by one of the elders. Then there was the reading of the minutes by Darius Baba, Sr. He was the church’s secretary for all the years that I remember; his fluency in Syriac and English made him a clear choice for that position. Mr. Baba, like other Assyrians, was rarely referred to by his last name. Adults’ surnames were seldom used when referring to individuals. Instead, people added the individual’s occupation or the village in Urmia or Kurdistan from which he came, to his first name. Thus, Mr. Baba, a Yonkers police officer, was identified as “Darius Policeman.” Since he came from the village of Cherijooshi, he might also be referred to as “Darius, bne Cherijooshi,” as my father would be known as either “Eprim Painter,” or “Eprim bne Shemshajian.” Since there were at least two other Eprims who were painters, Pop’s village identification was the more commonly used. A good friend of Pop’s, David Shimon, the auto mechanic who had opened the Gulf station on Riverdale Avenue was always referred to as “Dave Mechanic.” When Darius Policeman read the minutes and noted corrections and additions, the process did not differ from procedures in American congregational meetings, except for the language used. But the next item on the agenda was definitely a departure from the practice in most American churches. He read the name of each church member with the amount of annual contribution made by that person (or by that person’s parents in the

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name of the child), a practice that I have not witnessed in American churches. It was fun to note the whispered (stage whispers, that is) “Ohs,” “Ahas,” and “Ums” that greeted the reading of each contribution. I tried to decipher what each whisper signified. My conclusions were that the “Ohs” meant that the contributor had given more than was expected; the “Ums” were neutral, acknowledging someone who met expectations, while the “Ahas” were judgment calls on those who failed to rise to their peers’ assumptions. For the adults, this communal sharing of financial information was neither unusual nor uncomfortable, except maybe for those who came up short, but the youngsters’ reaction was different. I was certainly curious and listened carefully to hear what amount was contributed by the families considered most well off in the congregation. At the same time I had imbibed enough of that Yankee paranoia about privacy to be made more than a little uncomfortable by this practice. Over the years, like most people whose names are on myriad mailing lists, I have seen dozens of donor lists. The contributors’ names usually appear within categories of giving, unless, of course, someone makes a huge contribution. Specific amounts are rarely identified for most contributors. Yet on reflection I am able to see how the procedure at our congregational meetings fitted in with people for whom community was of such paramount importance. One of the pillars of a community such as ours was shared information. Seen in that light, reading the contributions list aloud was consistent. The congregation then went on to the election of elders and deacons. Since the same men occupied these positions year after year, that was an exercise in redundancy, but that never diminished my father’s pride in his being re-elected as elder, nor that of any other of the elect. The elections of officers for the other groups, the young people’s group and the Women’s Missionary Society (sometimes referred to as The Sewing Circle), took place at meetings of those groups and the results were announced at the congregational meetings. In 1946, women were not eligible for election either to deacon or elder. That changed during the 1960s in our Assyrian Presbyterian Church as it did in all Presbyterian congregations. Another cultural icon from the Middle East was tumbled. The practice of excluding women from these offices was not a matter of agitation in our church in the 1940s and ’50s; women did not express frustration at being excluded from some offices. Our congregation wholly subscribed to the Pauline injunction that wives should keep their place and not assume husbands’ roles. Why the apostle took this tack in spite of the enormous role that women had in

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spreading Christianity during those earliest years of the Christian faith is mystifying. But it was accepted unquestioningly among Assyrians. That makes it all the more surprising that when the barriers came down in the 1960s, most women in our congregation accepted the change with as much equanimity as they had previously abided by the restrictions. My mother was one of the first women in the congregation to be selected as deacon and then, later, also as elder. I assume that her accommodations and those of her friends can be attributed in part to the cumulative forces associated with the assimilation process. In 1946, the most important person at these meetings, and indeed at all formal functions, was our pastor, Rev. Marshall Yacoe. The custom of looking to the clergy as the leaders of our communities migrated from the Middle East along with the people. With scholarship assistance from the Presbyterians, Qasha had left Urmia as a young man to prepare himself for ordination. He graduated Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with a bachelor’s degree and then moved to Louisville Theological Seminary in Kentucky for his divinity degree. He was called to the Jackson Street church in 1935, and remained as pastor of our congregation until his retirement in 1970. Qasha was the paragon of dignified dress, bearing, and demeanor. From Labor Day through the Fourth of July, he was seen in a dark gray, usually pinstriped, three-piece suit, white shirt, conservative tie, steelrimmed glasses, gray wool Republican coat, and gray homburg. Examples of this Presbyterian uniform can be seen in photographs of President Eisenhower and his cabinet. Qasha would have been indistinguishable from the other notables in those photographs. Those who did not know Qasha would take him for a diplomat, banker, or partner in a prestigious law firm. He was a perfect representation of that famous mainstream American propriety of the 1950s. Only during July and August did he unbend to the extent of substituting a sport coat for his suits and, on the warmest days, even condescending to a sports shirt without tie. He was near six feet tall and always sat and stood as straight as the proverbial ramrod. But he was not a stiff personality. He enjoyed a lively sense of humor and very much enjoyed the myriad anecdotes that were sprinkled throughout most Assyrian conversations. Most important, Qasha had a remarkable capacity for empathy. He was non-judgmental in his counseling, seeking only to assist persons in distress. He was firm in his beliefs and had a very deep faith, but did not, as so many others in contemporary American Protestantism, use it to bludgeon people. Rather, his faith provided the anchor and strength from

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which he was able to counsel his congregation. He knew how far he could go and thus knew when to back off when people he was counseling were not receptive to solutions. But he always tried. Assisting Assyrians was the raison d’etre of his life. Qasha Yacoe, or, as he was usually called, Qasha Meeshayel, came from the village of Sarahlan in Urmia. There is no Syriac equivalent for Marshall, so they took the name Michael (Meekhayel in Syriac) and softened the middle kh to sh, thus approximating Marshall. Following his seminary studies, he was called to the Yonkers church by the Westchester Presbytery. Only after his retirement, when he lived at the Presbyterian home for clergy in southern California, did he reveal to me that he had originally intended to continue his studies toward becoming a professor of theology. He had a scholarly bent and a curiosity that would undoubtedly have made him a successful and productive theologian. But the Jackson Street church needed someone to help heal a breech within the congregation. Qasha did not hesitate; the needs of his people pre-empted his own ambitions. His main task initially was to reunify the congregation. The church had just gone through a bruising and divisive argument over Qasha’s predecessor. The details are mostly sketchy because my parents’ generation was reluctant to revisit and discuss that controversy, but the conflict seems to have arisen between two groups in the congregation, each of which had put forward their own candidate for pastor. Most of the reformed Assyrian congregations in this country experienced similar battles around their ministers. Given the importance of the clergymen’s position in Assyrian communities, it is not surprising that conflicts arose. Even though such conflicts are not uncommon in churches, they were exacerbated among Assyrians as a result of the interlocking networks of kinship and village membership. When a clergyman comes under attack, his relatives and fellow villagers feel compelled to come to his defense. The actual substance of the issue is secondary; the main consideration is to support one’s kinsman. If the clergyman is ultimately forced to leave, then his supporters feel it necessary to affirm their allegiance by walking out in a demonstration of solidarity. Similarly, upon the opening of a slot in a pulpit, the kinfolk and fellow villagers will rally around a candidate if he happens to be of their family and/or village. It is interesting to note that people expected this and, regardless of which side they supported, they would have been surprised and critical if the relevant people had not supported their kinsman or fellow villager. The most persistent and destructive of these internal disputes happened in the 1950s in St. John’s Assyrian Presbyterian Church in

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Turlock. Tempers reached boiling points, people shouted at each other even inside the church building, and fists were actually raised in anger. As a result, the church suffered a debilitating break that took a very long time to heal. Some members never did return, electing to join the Nestorian congregation or the Assyrian Evangelical Church. The troubles in Yonkers were not of that magnitude, so Qasha Meeshayel was able to restore amity and reconciliation in a relatively short time, at least with the majority of the congregants. A few defectors never did return, but most, as a result of Qasha’s efforts, returned, with many of them even becoming stalwarts of the church. Most of the children of those families that left had become attached to their new churches and did not come back with their parents, a loss that we youngsters keenly felt. Qasha’s balance, calm, and utter impartiality, together with his skills as a preacher, contributed to this happy result. He had an outlook of complete fairness and a judicious disposition. He refused to take sides in disputes, a strategy that enhanced his ability to serve as counselor rather than referee. He was able to discern sycophancy and handle it gently, just as he was able to recognize antagonism and had a measured response to that attitude as well. He was certainly not everyone’s pastor; no one can be that. Nor was he the genial and saintly clergyman so beloved of Hollywood’s filmmakers. Fortunately his natural reserve prevented his trying to assume that artificial persona. He was a scrupulously honest and genuinely caring human being who earned his position as one of our community’s important leaders. The best evidence for this is his 35-year, conflict-free tenure at the Yonkers church. Since our congregation was small and composed mostly of working people, he could not have received much compensation. For all the time he was in Yonkers, he lived with his sister, Shalem Badal (Khat Shalem), a widow, in a small but neat one-bedroom apartment on Post Street. We often visited that apartment, usually with other members of the congregation. I went there for several afternoons when I turned twelve in order to study catechism with Qasha in preparation for membership in the church. The religious topics that we covered in those sessions interested me a good deal, and the snacks of homemade jam that Khat Shalem made sure I ate before leaving were no less enjoyable. The adults who sat in that apartment with their tea and conversations turned out to be among my most important and valuable teachers. Subjects ranged from church affairs to recent Assyrian history, to current events, to the happy and the sad happenings in the lives of our people. The greatest lesson that I came away with from those and other conversations in our

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community was that ideas are important. The people in that continuous conversation in Qasha’s apartment looked seriously on politics, ethics, religion, history, economics, and the everyday lives of friends and relatives. The compliment that I most treasure about my own teaching came from a former student, some ten years after he graduated from high school. He was surprised that I was not as pleased with my teaching career as he thought I should be. He confronted me with a surprised, “Don’t you know what you did? You made ideas important and you gave validity to the discussion of ideas.” The Yonkers Assyrians taught me that, and I was pleased that I had been able to pass it on. How can a child possibly come to understand the importance of ideas unless he or she hears them being discussed, debated, cherished, and manipulated? How, indeed, can a child learn the manner in which ideas are communicated, and the thrill of the exchange of ideas except as he or she sees this modeled by adults? We also had the benefit of hearing Syriac. As was usual in these gatherings, the conversations were mostly in Syriac, with English often and a combination of the two very common. When an older member of the congregation was there, who had only a rudimentary knowledge of English, the entire conversation was in Syriac. That was important to me since, following my great-grandmother’s death, I lost my most consistent conversational partner in Syriac. My parents preferred to speak only English to their children. Qasha was an articulate man both in conversation and in his preaching, exceptionally fluent in Syriac and English, a truly bilingual and bicultural man. He read both languages aloud with clarity and had a prodigious vocabulary in both languages. I really enjoyed listening to his stimulating use of words and his erudition in both languages. I have no doubt that he would have been the productive and successful scholar that he had intended to become. Qasha indulged himself in one recreational respite that caused more than a little head-shaking and hand-wringing among some congregants—he enjoyed going to the movies. I was reminded of the humorous possibilities of that harmless activity recently while watching one of the old movies on cable, One Foot in Heaven, the film adaptation of Hartzell Spence’s biography of his Methodist minister father. The movie was very popular at its release and even received an Academy Award nomination as one of the year’s best movies. Frederic March, giving one of his many superior performances, plays Reverend Spence, laboring in small Midwestern towns. When he learns that teen-aged Hartzell has been going to the cinema, he decides that the best way to break the boy of this habit is to attend a movie with him

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and use the film’s contents to demonstrate why watching movies is unacceptable. As it turns out, the silent movie that he sees with his son is a William S. Hart western, Hell’s Hinges. As with all of Hart’s westerns, it is a morality play in which good triumphs over evil in the end. In a wonderfully acted turnabout, Reverend Spence, feeling very heartened by this message, actually praises the movie and encourages his son’s attending the cinema. Qasha came to mind while I was watching this classic because of a scene where Reverend Spence is at the theater booth purchasing tickets. Some of his congregation pass by at that moment and are aghast that their pastor is entering this den of iniquity. Their minister, in intentional contradiction of his parishioners’ regular attendance at the movies, was expected to uphold the community’s righteous standing by refusing to go to the movies. In that way, the ethical norms of the congregation would be upheld, even if only symbolically. Qasha Yacoe was the subject of just such gossip. People who regularly went to the movies nevertheless deemed it unseemly that the minister should do so. I noted at that time that the Nestorians seemed especially happy to distribute stories of Qasha’s movie attendance. Fortunately, for both Qasha and the peace of the community, this gossip never caused any difficulties. Qasha’s behavior was so far above reproach that his movie attendance never grew beyond the category of insignificant peccadillo. What would Qasha and his congregants think of the Hollywood products of the last 30 to 40 years? There is another aspect of Qasha that I recall with a lot of amusement. He was one of the “light” Assyrians. It is unlikely that he would ever have been taken as a Middle Easterner. His complexion was European-white and he had light colored eyes. Assyrians’ eye colors go the full spectrum, from black to the lightest blue. Into what category would Qasha have been relegated when, following the bombing of the Alfred E. Murah Office Building in Oklahoma City, all broadcast journalists reported that “Middle Eastern-looking people were seen leaving the scene of the bombing?” How will the strident advocates of racial profiling deal with these “light” Middle Easterners? The closest contact that my friends and I had with Qasha came in our high school years when we took catechism classes with him in the parish hall. The classes were held just before the worship service, yet he was relaxed with us nevertheless. Obviously, he had taken good care of writing and editing his sermons prior to Sunday. These were always well constructed, reflecting the care and time he had given to preparing them, as would be expected of someone with his scholarly bent. Qasha’s sermons

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were never targeted against anyone, emphasizing instead how Biblical religion was a guide to right living. How should we conduct ourselves in everyday circumstances? What kind of responsibilities does a Christian calling demand of its adherents? He carried those same questions into our classes and was a patient, knowledgeable, and good-humored teacher. Because those weekly classes, and all our other church-related activities were in the parish hall, I can recall, these many years later, every detail of that place, from the unfinished wooden floor, to the tiny stage, the narrow kitchen, and the decorations on the wall. Since the building was owned by the Hungarian congregation and we were only tenants, the items on the walls had been put up by the Hungarians. In all the years that I was there, the only item that changed on the walls was the calendar; everything else remained in undusted permanence. There was a poster-sized lithograph of a battle, presumably one that was critical in Hungarian history. While the combatants in the scene rage at each other, a huge cross descends from the skies in the midst of the battle, the arrival of which, I assume, tilted the conflict in favor of the Hungarians. This theme of divine intervention in military conflicts seems to have been common throughout Europe. For example, the Dannebrog, the Danish flag, is believed to have been sent down by God to the Danes during a critical moment in battle, giving them victory and subsequent independence. Apparently Christians too have difficulty transcending the need to believe in a tribal god in preference to worshipping a universal god, about whom they nevertheless preach. My guess is that the battle pictured on this particular lithograph was in 1683, outside Vienna, when Poles, Hungarians, and Germans defeated the Ottoman Turks and stopped finally the expansion of Ottoman power into Europe. Next to the lithograph were two portraits of modern Hungarian political figures—no doubt Lajos Kossuth and Count Istvan Szechenyi, leaders of nineteenth century reform movements. National identity was clearly as important to these Hungarian Presbyterians as was their religious one. This was reinforced in the sanctuary as well, where, in addition to the flags of the United States and of the National Council of Churches that were in nearly all American Protestant churches, there stood the Hungarian national flag. That bothered me just as much as the nationalistic materials in the parish hall. I have never been able to reconcile myself to the idea of a national deity. How can Christians worship a universal and eternal God and simultaneously assume that deity to have favorites among nations? The idea that God could favor any side in a political struggle may very well be

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blasphemous. People seem to come dangerously close to institutionalizing this blasphemy in the midst of a crisis. The contradiction seemed obvious to me even as early as my elementary school years, so I found both the United States and Hungarian flags distractions to worship. Second, the sufferings experienced by the Assyrians are lively proof of the dangers that come from melding nationalism and religion. If we had not sufficient proof of this before, the recent events in the Balkans, Pakistan, Israel, Northern Ireland, and Nigeria provide more than enough evidence. Assyrians were liberated from this unhealthy and dangerous symbiosis. Our community’s belief in a just and universal God, together with our lack of a homeland or nation, discouraged us from assuming that the deity takes sides in national conflicts, although as a result of World War II and the Cold War, Assyrians have bought into the idea of God’s special relationship with the United States. If Assyrians seriously and reflectively evaluated the concept of God playing favorites, then the evidence from the twentieth century’s horrible genocides would press them to conclude that Assyrians, Armenians, and Jews must be right up there among those he does not favor. So we did not have nationalistic accoutrements in the church, either free standing or on the walls. In fact, unless you noted the Syriac hymnals and Bibles in the cabinets, you would not know that an Assyrian congregation used the church. Another reason for the absence of hangings or icons is that, following the Nestorian tradition, only the cross was acceptable as a religious accoutrement. Unlike the Roman or Orthodox communities, Nestorians rejected iconography. When the Americans arrived among the Nestorians, they were struck immediately by the absence of the religious images and icons they expected to see in Eastern churches. Even the crosses in Nestorian churches were, with few exceptions, of the simple design, rather than the crucifix. This contrast with the other Eastern churches, so surprising from what they expected, led the Americans to refer to the Nestorians in their reports as the “Protestants of Asia.” Growing up in that tradition fixed my attitude in the direction of a preference for Reformed simplicity. I continue to have difficulty worshipping in any context that includes iconography, incense, or other aspects of orthodox worship. I find the white New England church, with its simple cross, wooden pews, and clear lines of sight directed at the pulpit, closest to what we had in the Jackson Street church and the most powerful setting for worship. I realize this arrangement lacks the drama evoked in Catholic and Orthodox settings, but I believe that the power of the word is much more demanding on the individual.

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The other pictures on the parish hall walls had religious content. One was the portrait of the light-skinned, flaxen-haired, European-featured, blue-eyed Christ gazing beatifically upwards that is so prevalent in churches. That image contradicts a Middle Eastern Jesus. It was and continues to be intended to de-emphasize the Eastern origins of Jesus, and it also conveys both an emotional colorlessness and an irrelevance to real life problems and concerns. It lacks therefore the forcefulness that would be compelling in a physically realistic portrait. Next to this hung a lithograph of the Crucifixion, remarkable for its fancifulness. The Jews are gathered around the execution, uniformed Roman soldiers stand off to the side, and the cross is lying on the ground with the body of Christ still nailed on to it. Since two of the soldiers are leaning on axes, we infer that they had chopped down the cross. In the place where the actual cross stood, a large spirit cross with the risen Christ on it with arms outstretched stands triumphantly. I was preoccupied with that lithograph for years. Where was the historical evidence to support such a depiction? Why were the Roman soldiers so relaxed and diffident in the presence of this awesome sight above them? Why was this picture, so obviously in contradiction to the Gospel narratives, hanging in a Presbyterian church? Why was I unable to shed my preoccupation with historical accuracy and simply accept the work for its metaphorical and symbolic message? Most important, why did I care so much? It is possible that I obsessed over it because religion was such a powerful constant in our lives. It certainly had something to do with my having been programmed by my family, especially my mother, to enter the ministry. There had been Nestorian priests in my mother’s family going as far back as anyone can remember. Western readers need to understand that the office of priest has significantly different characteristics in the Nestorian and other Eastern churches. Priests were permitted to marry and have families. In Mom’s family, it had been traditional for generations that the eldest son would enter the priesthood. My great-grandfather, Qasha Abraham of Geog Tapa, was a young priest of 18 when the first American missionaries arrived at the city of Tabriz to prepare for setting up the mission in Urmia. They recruited him and a Nestorian bishop, Mar Yohannan, to instruct them in Syriac. Because it was my mother’s fondest wish that I follow in this tradition, and enter the clergy, I may be excused an inordinate preoccupation with that peculiar lithograph. Or, maybe it was just that I was a strange kid. The portraits and lithographs and a window were on the west wall; the stage with two small anterooms, one on each side, made up the north wall;

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a door leading to the corridor and stairs up to the sanctuary, a service window to the kitchen, and a door leading to the furnace room made up the east wall; and the exit into an alleyway, with windows on either side, made up the south wall. Whatever the season or time of day, that musty odor endemic to most parish halls pervaded the room. In spite of that, our ugly, low-ceilinged, colorless parish hall provided an encompassing feeling of security, familiarity and comfort to all of us. It was our primary social center. We even used the hall as a staging base prior to going off on picnics. We converged there, distributed passengers, food, and other equipment among the available cars, and launched off to our recreation destinations. It should be no surprise, therefore, that our church is inextricably linked in my reflections with our social life and camaraderie. As to the specific religious beliefs of our Assyrian Presbyterians, describing and explaining them in a Western context is difficult. We naturally subscribed to Presbyterian doctrine, but some aspects of our Middle Eastern background were mixed in. The congregation, for example, believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible, accepting it as an unerring description of God’s activities in history. Normally, that defines a denomination as fundamentalist, a characterization not associated with mainline Presbyterianism. To the extent that the Assyrians accepted an infallible scriptural record, they could indeed be identified as fundamentalists. The limitation with this categorization, however, is that characteristics common to American Protestant fundamentalism do not appear among to Assyrian Presbyterians. We do not, for example, use a fundamental belief in scripture as a weapon with which to criticize other Christians. In complement to this, we rarely waste time or energy arguing for the primacy of Nestorian or Presbyterian doctrine over that of other denominations. The importance and primacy of the Bible for Assyrians is that it is the fundamental manual for instructing people as to how they should live their lives and how they should relate to each other. Having arguments over theological niceties or Biblical interpretations did not seem to further this objective. Most Assyrians, my parents included, were able to quote easily and accurately from the Bible. Whenever he noted how impressed I was with how much of the Bible text he had committed to memory, Pop reminded me of the place that the Bible had in the village schools of Urmia. It was the primary textbook, used not only for teaching religion, but also as a tool for teaching reading, writing, and grammar. It was also used for memorization exercises and it served as a history text and literary anthology as well.

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The proper relationship of children to parents and vice versa, appropriate and inappropriate business dealings, how to worship God, attitudes toward homosexuality, proper roles for husbands and wives: all of these were found in Biblical references. I would not argue that these proscriptions and prescriptions were adhered to strictly by everyone; that would be a naïve assumption. On the other hand, familiarity with this material was so widespread that anyone who crossed the lines had to know that he or she faced the disapproval of the group. Some proceeded to do so anyway, but most hesitated or demurred when faced with social ostracism. Besides, this manual appeared to be functionally effective for promoting and advancing family and community solidarity, and for defining interpersonal relationships in sensible ways, so what would be the point in opposing it? Much of our cultural life reinforced this religiosity. There are, for example, no swear words as such in the vernacular Syriac. The profanities one occasionally hears in our language are translations from English, copies as it were (“Brun’t chelba,” is a literal translation of “son-of-a-bitch”). The Biblical injunctions against swearing were taken quite literally, so that we heard very little even of these borrowed profanities. Those few who used them regularly were considered to be crude and uncouth. The crunch in regard to accepted behavior came for Assyrians, as it did for all immigrant groups, in contradictions between behaviors learned in the home country and contrary versions that prevailed in this country. As with other immigrant parents, Assyrians had to decide, pretty much on an ad hoc basis, which of these contradictions were worth having a conflict over and which were not worth fighting over, leaving the children to make their own choices in the latter cases. In other words, what rules of behavior were so essential as to be insisted on regardless of competing versions, and which ones could be given up, albeit not always happily. Parents who were willing and able to negotiate this divide had much happier relationships with their children than did those who were adamant on all counts. Unfortunately, even though the social intercourse within the community provided forums where these negotiations could be discussed as a way of assisting parents and children, each family was left to work out this cultural divide for itself. Discussions of these matters did take place among friends and relatives, but these were random. No systematic attempt, by the community as a community, to address such matters took place. A few practices in our repertoire of important cultural matters did grate on me. I found most objectionable, and still do, that tenet that came more from the cultural context of the Middle East than it did from

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Christian doctrine. The expression of this doctrine is usually the Arabic term, in sha Allah, “If God wills.” Although usually linked to Islamic belief, this concept of vulnerability and powerlessness in the face of God’s intentions is just as active among Middle Eastern Christians as it is among Muslims. Apparently, it has a firm hold on American fundamentalists as well. The extent to which this belief had a hold on Assyrians seemed to be in direct correlation with their time in the Middle East. My mother, who lived in a European context from age 8 through age 20, and in America thereafter, had very little patience with it and could get quite angry in her quiet and subdued manner whenever anyone attributed an event to this fatalism. As a Presbyterian after her marriage, and a Lutheran prior to that, she subscribed unquestioningly to a belief in a sovereign God. She did, however, give equal allegiance to the reformed Protestant idea of a life of active work, the belief that individuals need to exert maximum effort for their own salvation and that of their communities. My father, having lived always within an Assyrian context, was more in tune with the concept of in sha Allah, although his time in America had modified his allegiance to it. With Pop at least, as with most of the younger Assyrian émigrés, the full impact of that fatalism had been modified by contact with America’s mainstream culture of optimism and its accompanying idea of progress. His sister, however, was in thrall to it. This world view can generate a sense of powerlessness, a neutralization of ambition, as can its equally debilitating corollary that we should not celebrate good things too much since that could very quickly become hubris (shuhara) and bring on bad things as a counterbalance. Given their tragic history, I cannot fault Assyrians for harboring skeptical attitudes toward the future. When their experience of oppression in the Middle East culminated in the terrible holocaust of 1914-1918, they were clearly entitled to be cautious about how long a run the good times would have. One has to be careful, however, in attributing cultural ascriptions. By no means is this fatalism limited to Middle Easterners. The recent film, Gods and Generals (2003) focuses especially on the life of General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and makes clear how totally this southern military man subscribed to a fatalistic belief in a fearful and, indeed, vengeful God. After the death of his first wife, Jackson is determined to avoid being overly joyous about the birth of a child to his young second wife. He is certain that if he expresses too much happiness over this event, God will take retribution by bringing about the death of the child. Jackson, and other nineteenth century American fundamentalists (and not a few twenty-first

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century ones) would feel comfortable among Middle Eastern religious communities.42 A few other cultural and religious practices that derived from our Middle Eastern context bothered me equally as much. The belief in the power of an “evil eye” topped the list and was an inevitable accompaniment to the aforementioned fatalism. This perverse and primitive notion has appeared in diverse cultures throughout the world. It made its malevolent appearance in this country in the seventeenth century witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. It seems, therefore, to be as ubiquitous as it is insidious. According to the New Encyclopedia Brittanica: Belief in the evil eye is ancient and ubiquitous; it occurred in ancient Greece and Rome; is found in Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindi traditions and in folk cultures and preliterate societies; and has persisted throughout the world into modern times…it is considered unlucky to be praised or to have one’s possessions praised, so that some qualifying phrase such as “insha Allah” or “God bless it” is commonly used.43

I was amused to note in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)44 that the older Greeks spit on a youngster’s head after someone complimented the child. The Anglo son-in-law-to-be in the film, seeing his fiancée’s mother spit on the head of her grandson who has just been complimented, asks, “Did she just spit on him?” He is told that the grandmother did this in order to ward off the devil. While Assyrians believed in the need to ward off the evil eye, at least they accomplished that without spitting. It is easy now, so many years away from those events, to be amused. When I was a teenager and young adult, however, the practice annoyed and angered me, primarily because it emphasized the distance we had yet to go to fully amalgamate with a modern, more rationalist society. Aunt Catherine was a true believer when it came to the evil eye. Even though she left the old country as a very young girl, and graduated from Yonkers’ High School of Commerce, she tended more than most of her

Ted Turner Pictures (2003) Gods and Generals. Produced, directed and written by Ronald F. Maxwell. 43 The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th Edition (1994) Chicago IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Vol. 4, page 622. 44 IFC Films (2002) My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Produced by Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman, and Rita Wilson. Directed by Joel Zwick. Written by Nia Vardalos. 42

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friends to accept and follow the older practices. Mom attributed that to Catherine’s spending most of her time with the older generation, and very little with people her own age. One day, in 1955, I was sitting at the kitchen table in Aunt Catherine’s house in Turlock. In 1953, she married a third cousin, Yonan Alexander, from the village of Seir (her mother’s village), and moved to his farm in California. Uncle Yonan had emigrated to the United States in 1912, at age twelve, and settled first in Chicago where he learned the tailor’s trade, and then moved to Turlock in the 1940s to take up farming, his real love. He was an excellent farmer, raising peaches, walnuts, and grapes in that exceptionally fertile San Joaquin Valley. I was on leave from Yale that spring semester and was reading a magazine at the kitchen table. I was suddenly aware that Aunt Catherine was hovering over me, uttering some incantation. Because of a minor illness, I had taken time off from college and was having an absolutely wonderful experience working on the farm. My aunt was convinced that the illness could only have resulted from the evil eye, since I had graduated from high school with honors and awards and received scholarship assistance from college. Someone must have given me too much praise thereby marking me as a target for the evil eye. Who, where, or when was unknown and unknowable, so she was performing a universal cleansing ritual or exorcism. Her right fist, circling my head, was filled with salt, and she was uttering some Biblical verses in Syriac. I was so taken aback that I could not make up my mind to be angry or to burst into laughter. I probably vacillated between both reactions. In any case, by the time I had settled on objecting to this mumbo-jumbo, she was satisfied that the exorcism was completed. She just laughed off my protests. She had done what was necessary. It disconcerts me and my commitment to rationalism that I harbor the suspicion that she might have succeeded. From that time until 1984, the most serious illness I had was the occasional common cold or headache. In spite of an attachment to some of these powerful cultural norms, Assyrians for the most part gave in to prevailing American norms retaining only what they considered essential religious proscriptions and preferences. In most matters they had the wisdom to understand our need to blend American practices with our own. Due to that accommodation, the religion in which we were raised was more enlightened than it was fundamentalist. Our Sunday School materials, for example, were always the newest to come from Westminster Press, the Presbyterian Church’s printing house. We were encouraged to be open to these new materials, we were enrolled in

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Presbyterian summer church camp (Camp Sharparoon and Denton Lake in upstate New York), and we participated in citywide ecumenical services. In 1946 and the years immediately preceding, religious observance had a general revival among Americans, affecting both active and casual church members. The Second World War provided a compelling incentive to church attendance in particular and religious observance in general. Even though in 1946 the War was already over for a year, the momentum of this religiosity and spiritual concern continued to exert a powerful attraction. During the War itself, all aspects of religious observance—church and synagogue attendance, private prayer and meditation, ecumenical services— seemed to take on deeper meanings and evoked more personal commitments. With so many young men and women in harm’s way, Americans naturally, and typically, gravitated toward their denominations for support and encouragement. The attachment between religion and nationalism, a historical constant in American history, intensified during World War II. This same intensity has been notable following the September 11, 2001 attack on New York City. Americans entered the Second World War with a combination of righteous anger, nationalistic pride, and a religious crusading zeal. General Dwight Eisenhower titled his memoir of the War Crusade in Europe (1949), and a subsequent documentary series on the defeat of Japan was titled Crusade in the Pacific (1951). I note, with more than a little apprehension, the reappearance of this term, much too quickly and easily than necessary, in the last three years. The Assyrian community in Yonkers had its share of men in the service. As with young men from all the ethnic groups in the city, Assyrians lined up at recruiting offices in the days immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack. Many ended up serving in the battle areas. Ben Lazar was with the engineers in Normandy where he received a back injury that plagued him the rest of his life. His brother Joe was with the Signal Corps. James Abraham served with the infantry in Europe; Joe Eshoo was a medic in the paratroops; Rudy Eshoo was a Ranger and his brother Artie was on the destroyer Robinson. Bill Sargis and Sonny Badal were in the navy. My mother’s brother, Roland, was with a military police detachment. Most enlisted right after graduation from high school, some even before. Bill Kambar was in the Merchant Marine. I always wondered why he chose such a dangerous branch of the service. Right up to the last two years of the War, Atlantic convoys were relatively easy targets for the U-Boats. I learned only recently how and why Bill selected that branch. His explanation says a great deal about how most young Americans felt during

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that War. Bill wore eyeglasses that prevented him from making it through the physicals for the regular services. Later in the War, when manpower needs increased, these physical demands were somewhat relaxed. Bill had a high school friend who also did not make through the physicals. Both had tried to enlist right after their graduation from Commerce High School in 1943. When they were turned away, Bill said to his friend, “Well, we have to do something for our country.” That sentence speaks volumes about the attitudes and beliefs of young Americans in the 1940s. So Bill applied for and was accepted into the Merchant Marine service and made a number of ocean crossings. Most of his duty was on ships carrying our most precious cargo, troops. Following Germany’s surrender, he continued service in the Pacific Theater. An incident involving Bill’s military service evokes memories of an important aspect of families, servicemen, and the home front. A convoy that included the ship on which Bill was a crewmember took heavy losses from U-Boat attacks, and this was widely reported in this country. To calm his parent’s fears, Bill sent a telegram from England letting them know he had come through all right. As his mother Emma told it to us, she and her husband Yonan passed it back and forth, neither one wanting to open the telegram. They were sure it was one of the War Department’s, “We regret to inform you…” messages. It is not without significance that Emma told that story to my parents in the back of our church as they were getting ready for the start of a Sunday service. Even Pop had tears in his eyes listening to this report. My neighbor Alex Nweeia was drafted out of his senior year at Saunders Trade and Technical High School and went into the submarine service. Because he had an excellent record as an electronics major at Saunders, he was selected to be part of a special assignment team to design the more accurate torpedoes that the Navy needed. The older contact torpedoes included too many duds. Alex and his special unit went to Hawaii to complete their work and produced the more effective electronically detonated torpedoes to replace their less reliable predecessors. Probably the most dramatic incident involving an Assyrian serviceman from Yonkers, at least to my knowledge, happened to Bob Ameer, who is a cousin to both me and Alex. Bob enlisted in the navy as soon as he was eligible, during his junior year at Saunders. He was still only 16. That choice had significance in Bob’s life apart from what he experienced in the War. He had been a prime pitching prospect in high school, and had even had a call from the New York Giants’ Carl Hubbell to schedule a tryout. Whether or not he would have made it in the majors we can never know since the

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War cut off that career possibility. Instead of reporting to baseball training camp, Bobby found himself a crewmember on the battleship Tennessee, resurrected from the shelling it had received at Pearl Harbor. He was assigned to one of its five-inch gun turrets. The Tennessee had been involved in the defense of the Hawaiian Islands in 1942, on Aleutian Islands patrols, and in amphibious attacks in the Central Pacific. Bob Ameer’s remarkable brush with death occurred during the invasion of Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas Islands in June 1944. While the battleship was working close offshore, neutralizing flank fire that would have harassed the landing area, three Japanese six-inch guns fired salvos at the ship. The first salvo was over, the second was short, but the third found its target. Alert U.S. spotters saw the flashes, and before another salvo could be fired, the Japanese guns were silenced forever. But one shell of the third Japanese salvo had pierced a five-inch mount in Tennessee. Many were seriously injured, and in the darkness that night, eight men were committed to the deep somewhere off Saipan.45

In a letter of commendation form James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, this action by the battleship received special attention: …the U.S.S. TENNESSEE methodically reduced enemy defenses prior to the time of the landings, provided a tremendous volume of concentrated fire directly covering amphibious assaults and furnished controlled fire supporting the movement of troops ashore after the invasions, making possible the advance of our forces through the Central Pacific without a prohibitive loss of life. Withstanding repeated blows from enemy shore batteries…her courageous crew skillfully effected emergency repairs that kept her in action during extended periods of tension, strain and extreme peril.46

The five-inch mount that the Japanese shell pierced, killing eight Americans, was the one to which Bob was attached. The dead were his crewmates. While at battle stations, if a turret crew needed something, they could detach one, and only one, member to get what they needed. At the

45 United States Navy Department (undated) United States Battleships. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, page 217. 46 James Forrestal (1945) Letter of Commendation. Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of the Navy.

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time the shell hit, Bob was below, having been designated to get coffee for his turret-mates. He rarely spoke about this, but he did spend some time just before he died in 1999 filling me in on the details and lending me copies of the ship’s report of the incident and the citation. He told the incident in a matter-of-fact manner with just a hint of reflection on the vagaries of fate. What this near miss from death meant deep inside of his being, I could only guess at. I have to believe that, to some appreciable extent, that aspect of Assyrian religiosity that emphasized fate and divine agency had to play a significant and healing part in how Bob was able to accommodate to this close encounter. The only Assyrian from Yonkers killed in the War was Peter Hatam Jr., who served in the navy. The veterans named their organization in Yonkers after him: Assyrian American War Veterans, Peter Hatam Jr. Post. In Bob Ameer’s incident on the Tennessee, and in so many other similar ones, the elements of the unknown and of the individual’s basic helplessness were magnified. Inevitably, that fosters an appreciable increase in the attention given to religious reflection and observance. In a community such as ours, where religion was already at the center of life, our religious activities during the War were even more constant than usual. In addition to the regular worship calendar, we had periodic evening services devoted to praying for those serving in the armed forces and to beseeching God for a quick end to the War. This religious fervor accompanied by our patriotic support of America’s role in the War tended naturally to emphasize our belief in the righteousness of America’s cause. This was a mixed blessing. On the one hand it contributed to national solidarity toward the war effort, but on the other, it fueled and solidified a tendency to assume that policies that the United States pursued, especially in foreign affairs, were right because they were American. I recently had a friendly argument with some young friends, a doctoral candidate completing studies in art history, and her husband, a high school history teacher. We were debating the various crises in central Africa and the Middle East and the role the United Stated might play in helping to resolve them. I advocated an active Western military and administrative intervention with the objective of imposing democratic solutions. This position is usually characterized and justified as “humanitarian intervention,” and was the justification put forward for our intervention in the Balkans during the Clinton administration as well as for the invasion of Iraq led, in 2003, by the Bush administration. My friends’ opposition to this seemingly beneficent doctrine is founded on a certainty that the United States lacks the moral standing and

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historical precedents to assume such a role. Like so many in their generation, they are skeptical about this country’s capability for undertaking projects with such large and altruistic purposes. I learned a good deal about historical context during that conversation. What came home to me more forcefully than before, due in part to the fact that this conversation occurred while I was in the midst of completing this memoir, was the yawning generational gap around this subject. My generation was molded definitively by the experience of World War II, my friends’ by the Vietnam War. Given the enormous chasm between these two experiences of war, a meeting of the minds about this country’s involvement in foreign interventions is difficult at best, impossible at worst. Tom Brokaw has grasped this essential point and captured the feeling that we who were youngsters in 1946 had and have about the war and our role in it. In his 1998 book, The Greatest Generation, he writes: As I walked the [Normandy] beaches with the American veterans who had landed there and now returned for this anniversary…and listened to their stories in cafés and inns, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done. I realized that I had failed to appreciate what they had been through and what they had accomplished…They answered the call to help save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs.47

Many people assume the recent military action in Afghanistan and the two Iraqi wars will diminish the skepticism of my friends and their generation, and return us to a greater confidence in the efficacy of large purposes. Only time and the outcomes of these wars will tell. In 1946, with the experience of world-wide success in the War, we had no difficulty in subscribing to such grand designs. While the association of religious observance and the War was endemic in our society, it had a particular association for Assyrians with their own history. For a people already imbued with a deep sense of religion, the way the War ended and the part Americans played in the victory could only intensify their belief in an active and benevolent deity. Assyrians had survived their own holocaust during the First World War and

Tom Brokaw (1998) The Greatest Generation. New York: Random House, pages xviii-xix. 47

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had been brought to a promised land. That land, in turn, had just been carried safely through its own baptism of fire. How else for religiously inclined people to explain these important occurrences than by reference to the unfolding of a divine plan?

CHAPTER 4: CHAI Rare was there a household that did not include a respected elder, a grandmother or grandfather, occasionally a single aunt or uncle, or perhaps a friend or relative who had no one. All were respected and included in the warmth and bonding of a large family circle and the children grew feeling a deep sense of purpose, of belonging, again of having roots. Assyrian Mother’s Cookbook: Our Heritage (1995)48

I so very much enjoy recalling the conversations. Among the many delightful and important characteristics of our Assyrian community, the conversations especially stand out. There was an endless number of them and how wonderful they were! Our people loved to converse with each other—to exchange gossip, to reminisce, to hear news, to talk about politics, to tell stories, to make fun of upstarts and fools, to commiserate and express sympathy, to arrange marriage partners. Although I tend to associate laughter as the constant of these conversations, a common failing when meandering through nostalgia, that could not have been true in the actual situations. Many of the conversations, in fact, were about economic difficulties, ruptured friendships, illnesses, and deaths. But those that were on happier topics are the ones most easily and preferably retrieved. The laughter was of the genuine, body-encompassing, head-thrown-back, deepthroated type. That was not surprising—these people had pleasure in each other’s company and they relished the rhythms and nuances of the spoken word. Watching and listening to Assyrians speaking is like watching someone enjoying a delicious meal. Each word, as if it were a morsel, is savored as it

Norma S. George, Editor (1995) Assyrian Mothers Cookbook: Our Heritage. Chicago IL: Assyrian Universal Alliance Foundation, page 3. 48

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is spoken. The voices might be considered by some to be too loud—many Anglos would certainly think so; our language does not lend itself to soft tones in the first place. In the second place, the volume rose in direct proportion to the engagement and enjoyment. I find Syriac vocabulary to be rich in tone and meaning and wonderfully adaptable for putting across the sarcasm of the double entendre. Our conversations were the overt manifestation of the sense of well being and security that came with the group identity. They helped to sustain and reassure the group by the means of sharing concerns and repeating our understanding of our historical embeddedness. For us, this concentration on ethnic identity is not so as to use it as a weapon against others outside the community, but as grounding, a safe place from which to expand and roam across ethnic boundaries. Conversations affirmed security and identity—the group in communication with itself, connecting and reconnecting with all its parts. Even when a member of the community was in a difficult period, he or she could find respite, support, comfort, and even some laughter in these informal and genial get-togethers. Here was affirmation, understanding, and the assurance of continued membership in this supportive community. The settings were invariably casual and comfortable. Sometimes people got together by prearrangement, but most often people just came by without the ceremony of invitation. Friends and neighbors visited with each other during weekday afternoons, on Sundays after the meal that followed church service, and in the evenings after dinner. In the 1940s and 1950s, people actually had the time for this leisurely practice of visiting and conversing. The person visited would stop whatever he or she was doing and sit with the visitor for conversation. If this occurred during a weekday afternoon, the visit would be brief—the time of two or three glasses of tea—unless the visitor stayed for dinner. In the evenings, as a rule, the stay would be longer—the length of four or more glasses of tea. If the visitor came in late afternoon, he or she would be invited to stay for dinner. That invitation was not pro forma. This ritual was not a charade in which both parties, invited and inviter, merely engaged in a courtesy for its own benefit. The offers were genuine and sincere, at least in the great majority of such invitations. In any case, most of the time there was enough food for guests. If not, more was added to accommodate the additional person or persons. I was constantly amazed then, as I am now, to observe how quickly Assyrian women supplemented a delicious and complete meal, or created one from scratch at the last minute.

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Actually, the capacity to put a full meal on the table with remarkable dispatch was true in most households in our community—not just in those of the Assyrians. The welcome mat in most of these homes made that skill essential. The exception to this pattern, or, more accurately, the mythological or stereotypical exception, seems to have been ascribed to those families whom we label alternately as “WASPS,” “Americans,” or “Anglos.” Comedian Jackie Mason tells about growing up in the Bronx, in a neighborhood not unlike Caroline Avenue, and noting the constant reappearance of roaches in the apartments in spite of determined strategies to be rid of them. Actual roach infestations alternated with the fear of them. Consequently, families were on a constant roach alert. Mason observed, however, that the Anglo families rarely if ever complained about roaches, Jewish families, like his own, as well as those of his Italian, Syrian, Puerto Rican, and other “ethnic” friends, were constantly working either at eradicating these pests or keeping an eye out for them. He reports that he finally found out the reason for this difference when he visited the apartments of his Anglo peers—“No food!” Mason announces—an exaggeration, of course, to promote a comic punch line. Still... While Mason used the routine to get a laugh, I choose to single out and retell his shtick in order to have a bit of ethnic “payback.” Yet the first part of the story—that there was always food in abundance in the apartments of the ethnic families—is true for the years about which I am writing. How the shortages of food, for people for whom eating was part of the ritual of hospitality, must have compounded the misery of the Depression years! It was bad enough that they lacked sufficient food for their own families. It had to have been embarrassing to the point of humiliation of being burdened with the distress of lacking enough to share with the treasured visitors. In the better times of the 1940s and ’50s, visitors would understand if there initially was not enough food prepared for unanticipated company. Because the shortages of money and food of the Depression Years had gone, they could correctly assume that adjustments would be made in the quantity without undue hardship on the hosts. By contrast, in the Depression Years, as we were constantly reminded, no such assumption would be made. All of those working class people understood that the hosts simply could not afford the preferred hospitality and so criticism would be suspended. But, in the more plentiful times during and after World War II, if the hostess made no effort to increase the supply, or, worse yet, didn’t proffer the expected dinner invitation, she was not easily forgotten or forgiven. Being characterized as a poor hostess was to be avoided at all

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costs, literally. I know that this socially unacceptable gaffe did happen occasionally—we heard about it through the gossip circuit. Its rarity is underscored for me by the fact that I never encountered it myself. Hospitality was the cultural norm, so instances when it was absent were rare. Who would want the negative label associated with being inhospitable? In our home, as in most others, it was a rare day when the contents of the pot were sufficient only for the family. As with most of my Assyrian friends, I have inherited this habit of cooking too much. It is much better to have other members of my family shop for groceries. If I go to the market alone, I will inevitably overbuy. The expression, “We have to be sure to have enough for company,” is ineradicably tattooed on my psyche. Whether or not food was involved, an indispensable component of conversations with visitors was chai, tea. The word originates, I believe, from one of the languages of India, the country where tea originated. We did not use the term for any special tea; chai was borrowed into Syriac as a generic word for all tea. And there was always tea—gallons of tea, rivers of tea, an unending cascade of tea. Each person in the conversation had a glass of tea either in hand or very close by, and it was refilled as soon as the last drop was finished. The hostess had to be careful in knowing how quickly to pick up the glass for refilling: if too soon, the tea drinker lost the opportunity to read the tea leaves. Being too hesitant on the other hand just might convey the impression that an attempt was being made to economize resources at the guest’s expense. The leaf readings were usually a collective affair, with each person giving an opinion as to what the leaves represented: “That is for sure a woman with a child.” “No, it looks more like some kind of animal.” “I think it is a map and that says that you are going on a trip.” And so on. These people, after all, grew up in a milieu characterized by a spiritualist and sometimes superstitious interpretation of life’s events. Leaves were left in the glasses because the tea was not made from bags; it was brewed from whole leaves. Tea leaves were put into a small pot and boiling water poured over them. This mixture was left to seep for some minutes and then poured into the glasses and boiling water added. The amount of the mixture put into the glass prior to adding the water determined the strength of the tea. People designated their preferences by referring to color—renjana, meaning “highly colored,” signified strong tea, while la renjana, “not colored”, indicated that the drinker wanted weak tea. Some people seemed to prefer little more than boiling water with only a hint of the tea extract. Whatever the strength, the tea was served in small, hourglass shaped tea glasses that sat in small saucers. Some people stirred the sugar cubes in the glass, while others, in the Russian style, put the cube

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in the mouth and drank tea through the sugar. The glasses were grasped with thumb and forefinger and the tea was sipped while still piping hot. A few people had adopted the habit of adding milk, but that was usually done only by children, and some had acquired the habit of adding a slice of lemon. People who were nursing colds often asked for a slice of lemon and for the chai to be renjana. The tea kettle and water pot were on all the time that the people were at home. In fact, in order to ensure the ready availability of chai, even when picnicking outdoors, we packed the makings and glasses with us and loaded up the samovar. Many Assyrian and Armenian families had these samovars, usually Russian made. Some had even been carried along with the few belongings that people could manage during the rakuta. During the warm months, families with yards often set up their samovars outside, on a picnic table, around which hosts and guests sat around sipping tea and engaging in their wonderful conversations. The social attraction of the samovar ritual is in evidence here since it was no difficulty to brew the tea in the kitchen and bring the filled glasses out to the yard. But having the gathering sit around the samovar was a means of recollecting the pleasant aspects of life in the old country. Furthermore, the fascinating metal work, often quite elaborate, and the rococo shapes of the samovars, together with the deft movements of the hostess pouring the tea and water from this remarkable device, generated an emotional warmth that could not be approximated with kettle and pot. It is perhaps fanciful on my part, but I recall a calming and reassuring feeling emanating from those groups sitting in yards, on warm twilight summer evenings, sipping tea, enjoying each other’s conversations. It seems to me that the social stability of the larger society is enhanced in direct proportion to the number of such small gatherings among the people. When we went off picnicking at one of the many county or state parks in southern New York, we were sure to take along the samovar so as to have that same scenario of well-being and warmth that we had in the backyards. As soon as we started unloading picnic material from the car, and a suitable table was found and claimed, the very first order was, “Get some water for the samovar.” The second order of business was to start the charcoals in the barbecue. As soon as the coals were hot enough, a few were put in the samovar’s chimney to get the water boiling. Just as the tea kettle at home was always ready for anyone who stopped, so also at the picnic table was the samovar at work as quickly as possible for the same reason.

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With annoying regularity, not long after the samovar was unpacked and set in its place of prominence on the picnic table, we experienced quizzical looks from passersby followed by the unfunny quip inquiring why we had brought a lamp to a picnic. This tended to amuse our elders who thought these people must be quite ignorant to not recognize a samovar. Those jibes, some friendly, some condescending, were not taken as lightly by my generation. I suppose a samovar does look somewhat like a lamp, but I could tell both from the content and style of the comments which ones originated in a friendly curiosity and which came from an unfriendly view of “foreigners.” While our elders were content to let these comments demonstrate the speaker’s ignorance of the finer things of life, many of us saw them as less benign. We had enough of a backlog of personal experiences to enable us to catalog some comments into the category of prejudice toward immigrants who were not from European countries. Even though this was only a limited and unthreatening form of prejudice, it gave me some insight into the experiences of blacks, Latinos, and East Asians who have to confront this attitude more frequently than we did. Neither the comments nor the attitudes that lay behind them had any impact whatsoever on the relish with which we attacked our chai and chada. Whether at home or outdoors, the tea was frequently accompanied by some kind of pastry, cookie, or candy. The Assyrian pastry chada is our favorite accompaniment to tea, so much so that the two are often spoken of as a single word: chaichada. This is a pastry made with butter, flour, butter, eggs, butter, milk, butter and sesame seeds. It will scandalize every cardiologist, but it is, unfortunately, a very delicious treat especially when accompanied by tea. Affection for chada is an acquired taste since it is not as sweet as most pastry and therefore not very popular for those not raised on it. We were introduced to chada as soon as we had the teeth to chew. Just thinking of chaichada sets off most Assyrian salivary glands. It certainly does that for mine. Chada is sometimes baked in small pieces about the size of a large croissant. Most often, however, it is baked as a round pastry, about the size of a medium pizza, and triangles are cut out as serving pieces. There is an “inside” (javah) that is a mixture of eggs, butter, milk, and flour, cooked on top of the stove until it becomes a golden brown. Then the javah is spread evenly inside the balls of yeasted dough (chundi), also made from eggs, butter, milk, and flour, which are then folded around the javah and the chada rolled out pizza-style. The top is brushed with beaten eggs and sprinkled with sesame seeds, and the whole baked in an oven. Usually the

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cook bakes a dozen or more so that there will be some to give to Assyrian neighbors. Either instead of or in addition to the chada, other delicacies included halvah (molasses candy), a bowl of raisins mixed with shelled walnuts, and jupta, a homemade Assyrian cheese eaten with pita bread. Sometimes pieces of cake, pie, or other pastries were served. Often, all of these choices were laid out. Raisins and walnuts mixed together had been a special treat for visitors for several years. The missionaries referred to this as a delicacy. In their first letters from Iran they wrote about being served raisins and walnuts as a special treat for honored visitors. Our version of halvah, a candy common throughout the Middle East, differed in that it tended to be moister than other varieties. As with chada, the cholesterol count for halvah is not within acceptable medical parameters. My generation of Assyrians has noted the appearance on store shelves of halvah, yogurt (mesta), and pita bread in commercial form. When we were kids, these items were available to us only when our mothers or one of our friend’s mothers made them at home or when we made a trip to the Middle Eastern import stores in New York City. Is the ready availability of these items progress? The answer is a mixed one. It is definitely an improvement to have ready access to them, especially in the absence of our mothers’ supplies. In addition, just seeing these goods on store shelves stimulates pride in our cultural heritage and certifies to a greater acceptance by American society of that tradition. At the same time, we have just a bit of a sense of loss of what had been a “private” pleasure. It was delicious to have these foods to which others did not have access. In any case, that exclusiveness gave way to societal acceptance, a common trade-off in a diverse society. Along with the tea and its accompaniments, a dish of boorzuri, dried, salted squash seeds, frequently appeared on tables. Both the salted shell and the meat inside the seed make this an addictive treat. One gets at the meat by placing the seed between and perpendicular to one’s front teeth, and by very gently biting down, just enough to break this shell without shattering it. The trick is to get at the meat without doing more to the shell than cracking it, so that the meat can be taken out whole. Otherwise the two halves of the meat will cling to each half of the shell and require some extra work to pry them loose. The clicking sound of teeth on shell is quite pronounced—it takes four or five bitings as the seed is moved forward into the mouth, between the teeth, for the shell to be fully opened. Most of us had become so adept at this process that we could place the seed between the teeth and then remove the fingers so that the cracking of the shell and the removal of

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the meat was done entirely with lips, teeth, and tongue. The fingers returned to the mouth only to retrieve the empty shell. As a result of this opening process, the clicking sounds from five or six mouths at the same time provided a percussion accompaniment to our conversations. I think of the Lays Potato Chips ad that said, “Betcha can’t eat just one.” If the product were boorzuri, the warning the ad would have been upgraded to, “Betcha can’t ever stop!” Of course, the thirst from all that salt just made tea all the more desirable. Whatever was served, it is important to reiterate and emphasize that the server enjoyed this hospitality ritual as much as did the visitors in spite of the extra work it entailed. Chai had not always been as readily available to Assyrians as it was during the twentieth century. When Perkins and Grant reached Urmia in 1834, tea was rarely in evidence in Assyrian households. It was too expensive. The only time the Americans were offered tea was at the homes of the local Iranian aristocracy. Somewhere along the way, this obviously changed, probably during the period in the late nineteenth century when there was a significant Russian military presence in northwest Iran. That presence, together with the Assyrians’ increased economic stability and well being as a result of their contacts with the Americans, moved tea drinking from a luxury to a daily ritual. By the time my generation came along, having tea ready was as necessary as turning on the room lights. Even when we didn’t have company, my parents had tea in the evenings. Just before he settled down in front of the radio after dinner, Pop would put the kettle on to boil. Being impatient for his tea, he tended to put a minimum amount of water in the kettle to assure speedier boil. By that strategy, he succeeded in reducing the agonizing amount of waiting time from starting the water to enjoying his chai. When my mother or I filled the kettle, we naturally tended to put in more water that was always accompanied with my father’s complaint, roughly translated from the Syriac as, “Did you have to climb into the kettle?” He considered the extra wait time to be a persecution. We generally brewed coffee only in mornings. The exception to this was Sunday dinner when, in the American style, coffee was served following the meal. Coffee was sometimes offered to Assyrian guests on informal occasions as well, but usually only when specifically requested. The preference was always tea. As the first generation of American-born Assyrians grew up, coffee steadily but surely replaced tea as the preferred hot beverage, another nod in the direction of assimilation. We had an early warning system to let us know when company was on the way. A spoon dropped on the floor alerted us that a woman visitor was

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heading our way, a fork signaled an impending male arrival. I cannot remember what, if anything, a knife symbolized. When a piece of flatware hit the floor, the thud of the object was followed invariably and immediately by at least one person saying, “Company’s coming.” Because someone was sure to utter that exclamation each time flatware hit the floor, it took on the aspect of ritual as if someone had to say it. I have no idea as to the origins of this bit of folklore, but I did notice that it was part of the rituals of other ethnic groups as well and that some people took it at face value as accurate. I must be clear: this was not a danger signal—visitors were more than welcome. When the visitor was a person of high social status, such as the minister, he would be ushered into the living room, but most often, guests went right to the kitchen. This was the Assyrian family’s social center, as it was for most people in South Yonkers, of all ethnicities. In the film, Moonstruck (1987),49 when Loretta Castorini comes home to announce her engagement to Johnny Cammareri, she finds her father Cosmo in the living room listening to music. As soon as she informs him that she has something important to discuss, he says, “Into the kitchen.” That little exchange resonated with every one of us. The proper place for important discussions and for most visitors was the kitchen. Easy access to refreshment, especially chai, was the most important reason for this, but there were other considerations as well. One was warmth. This was a carryover from the times before steam or electrical heat when the kitchen, benefiting from the constant fire in the coal stove, was the warmest room in the apartment. Finally, the kitchen allowed us to carry on the conversation in a more informal manner that was preferable even on serious topics. In 1946, most of the older three and six-family buildings in our neighborhood had been converted to or were in process of being converted to steam heat. I was in my freshman year in college (1954), however, before a centralized steam-heating system was put into our building, the last on the street to have this done. Prior to that, we had a monstrous black iron coal burning stove in the kitchen and, during the winter months, an oil-burning upright heater in the living room. As much of a nuisance as that big, black monster was because we had to bring the coal up from the basement and

(1987) Moonstruck. Produced and directed by Norman Jewison. Written by John Patrick Stanley. 49

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take down the ashes, it more than compensated for that by providing warmth, in both the physical and spiritual sense. I suppose it had the charm of being one of the last holdouts against modernization. Since oil was more expensive than coal, the living room heater was turned on only when we had to be there or on the very coldest days to help the kitchen stove in warming the whole apartment. An additional benefit from these arrangements was sparing wear and tear on the living room furniture. Limited use allowed the chairs and couch to retain their new appearance. Replacement of living room furniture made a hefty dent in the family budget. In whatever room people gathered, conversations began with Assyrian news and gossip. After that, topics randomly ranged across the spectrum to include storytelling, politics, church and Club business, prices at the market, movies, and so on. Stories usually were in the form of anecdotes from the old country, fables from the Iranian tradition, and the early experiences of being immigrants in the United States. We learned, for example, how the first Assyrian immigrants, mostly single males, economized on expenses. Four or five men shared an apartment in order to save money, sleeping alternately in the beds. Half of them worked the daytime shift at the sugar refinery, and slept at night, while the other half worked the night shift and slept in those same beds during the day. I subsequently learned that this was a strategy employed by many other immigrant peoples as well. Stories could be wonderfully embellished if the teller could salt his or her narrative by an ability to mimic the various dialects among Assyrians. My father was unsurpassed in this skill. It still surprises me that a man who avoided any other kind of limelight, who was constitutionally unable to put himself forward in other contexts, was completely in his element as a storyteller. In fact, he had a reputation as an accomplished storyteller, not only in our community, but among Assyrians in other towns as well. Without realizing it at the time, by listening to Pop telling his stories, I was being initiated into the wonder and beauty of the oral tradition. When a child has the opportunity to live within an active oral tradition, his capacity is enhanced for appreciating the power that words have for drawing pictures, for portraying individuals, and for conveying moral lessons, as well as for amusing listeners. Each of us, of course, is able to attain all of this by reading. The advantage of the oral tradition is that this power of words is learned even before the skill of reading is learned. In fact, the child is able to transfer to the task of learning to read this appreciation of and understanding of words through listening to stories.

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Most of Pop’s tales were of the humorous type and were underscored by his dialectical shifts and by his remarkable sense of timing. He intuitively knew timing as well as a stand-up comic. I remember his audience in the room often convulsed into laughter, especially as he shifted dialects. Many of his stories were aimed at deflating those who thought too much of themselves, and most of them, inside the humor, included a moral message as well. Quite a few were directed at deflating the pomposity of officaldom. I recall how one in particular accomplished this purpose quite effectively. Pop told of a man who had some kind of police role in one of the villages of Urmia. There was not a regular police force there, so this individual served in an informal and unofficial capacity in his small village, somewhat like a combination sheriff and justice of the peace. Most who held this informal office realized the minor nature of the position and stayed within limited parameters of activity and stature. A few, on the other hand, overplayed their hands and allowed themselves to become unjustifiably pumped up. In Pop’s story, one of these overzealous and selfimportant “policemen” was called by a family who, upon returning home after a visit to a neighboring village, found a huge hole in one wall through which many of their household possessions had been stolen. When the “policeman” arrived, and my father told this tale standing in the middle of the room simulating the motions and speech of the official, he walked through the hole into the house, then back out again, then through the hole once more, and back out again, at which point, in his most officious and pompous manner, informed the villagers as to his conclusions. “No one can fool me; I have figured it out. I know what happened. Someone made this hole to break into the house to steal goods.” Because the people listening knew the actual person about whom Pop told this story, and because Pop’s ability to mimic the policeman’s dialect was expert, their appreciation of the point of the story and their amusement during and following his narration was evident in the loud and prolonged laughter. Sometimes his stories conveyed slightly more serious messages than that of the pompous official, although they too were couched in humor. During a conversation at our house one evening, one of the women was very upset and shamed about her daughters, a discomfort that was not unusual for those times given the subject matter of her “problem”. Her daughter had gotten pregnant with the man she was planning to marry so that the time for the marriage ceremony had to be brought forward and hastily arranged, without the usual panoply of the large church wedding service and the full-blown reception. In that time and place, and in that community especially, this certainly was reason enough for weeping and

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gnashing of teeth. But this mother went on even more inconsolably than was to be expected. It seemed to me that since the partner in the pregnancy was the man she had planned on marrying anyway, the shame of the premature announcement should have been diminished to some degree. What surprised me most was that this conversation took place when a friend and I were in the room. We were in seventh grade at the time. This kind of topic was reserved for times when no youngsters with inquisitive ears were around, or after the children were excused from the room. I have a feeling, arising no doubt from my retrospection on the event that Pop and Mom thought I could benefit from hearing this conversation. Our presence was not even noticed by the distraught mother as she alternated among denunciations of her new son-in-law, anger and disappointment at her daughter, and protestations about her own embarrassment. If memory serves me right, as a male youngster at the age of freshly exploding hormones, I had an ungenerous and notably immature reaction to the woman’s plight. Her daughter was remarkably attractive, so I thought the prospective son-in-law had probably worked hard at restraining himself as long as he did. The couple’s engagement, common for those times, had extended over several months. In no way, and under no conditions, however, would that thought have ever moved from my mind to my lips, in part because it was an unworthy thought, in part because I was not yet of the age to speak of such things to adults, and in large part because the severity of my punishment would have been historic. Pop, so as not to be too obvious, waited until the conversation had gone on in other directions for a while, and then he told the following story. A mullah (a Muslim teacher) was walking down the road past a cemetery and saw a woman sitting by a gravestone crying desperately and determinedly. She was tearing at her hair and wailing loudly in that manner common to Middle Eastern cultures. The mullah asked, “Khati (my sister) what is the matter? Who is in that grave that you should be in such a condition?” The woman replied that they had just buried her son, a young man only in his middle twenties. She pleaded her son’s innocence by saying that he was a very good boy, a pure soul who had never even contemplated doing something wrong. The mullah consoled her but did add that no one is wholly innocent. The woman countered that her son was different. He never swore, gambled, smoked, drank, or yelled at his parents. He never went out with women and had died as chaste as he was born. The mullah asked, “Is this true? Your son had no vices whatsoever? He spent no time with women, nor did he swear or gamble or drink or smoke?” The mother reconfirmed this at which point the mullah said, “If he was that kind of

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person, Khati, then don’t carry on so. Perhaps he is better off where he is now.” Many of his stories were renditions of fables attributed to the famous Iranian teacher Mullah Nasradin. One of these fables reappeared later in my life in different contexts but with identical details. The table involves two men who are trying to figure out how to hide their gold from robbers who have been seen in the district. They decide to place the gold in a metal box and drop this container into the lake near their town with the intention of retrieving it after the robbers have left or been caught. So they row out a way in the lake and drop the box over the side. One then says, “But how will we know exactly where we dropped it when we come back?” The other, the brighter of the two, says, “Don’t worry about that; I have already thought of something,” and he picks up a can of paint and a brush that he had thoughtfully brought with him and proceeds to paint an X on the side of the rowboat exactly at the point where he had tossed the box overboard. “There, now we will know where our gold is hid.” I heard that story in 1964 in Denmark, with exactly the same details, with the two rowers as residents of the island of Mols, a place that serves as the foil for many such Danish folk tales. Then I heard it one more time, in Dallas, in 1968, when the two rowers were identified as Aggies (students at Texas A & M), who serve as foils as well. This is a wonderful example of the migration of folklore across cultures. At other times, instead of telling a story from the old country, Pop would reconstruct an account of a recent incident in which some person known to all had made a fool of himself. He would embellish it of course and magnify the humorous aspects. Because Pop was such a gentle man, he could take these liberties without conveying any mean-spiritedness or malice whatsoever. In fact, several times the person about whom he was talking was in the room listening, and joined in the laughter no less than the others. Pop was able to tell the tale for the purpose of good fun and not as a means to embarrass the victim, except for pompous individuals like the village policeman whom Pop intended to deflate. Because there was very little modern Assyrian literature at that time and no Syriac-speaking theater outside of the religious plays in church, the conversations and the storytelling served as proxies. Besides providing my generation with excellent examples of the workings of an oral tradition, they gave us our social lessons as well. We were rarely dismissed from the room, or told to “go out and play” unless the topic was deemed unsuitable for our ears. Sometimes we would be dismissed if the adults were unsure of our capacity to keep from spreading the details of the conversation beyond the

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small circle of the particular conversation. At all times, if we had other things to do, we were at liberty to go and do them. But that was our choice; most of the time we could stay and listen as long as we wished to and were permitted to. Naturally, we were expected to refrain from participating. Being seen and not heard was the drill. But, then, why would we want to say anything? By listening, we learned so very much about our people— about their life in Iran and Turkey, about what they most missed of their homeland, of how they escaped, of what life was like for immigrants to the United States in the 1920s, and we learned the clues for correct behavior. We also learned about the world of work from the stories where that formed the context. I have a distinctly negative reaction to dinner parties when the children have been fed before the elders and then put away, or when they are being fed in the kitchen or elsewhere in the house while the adults are eating in the dining room. What a loss for those kids! We were included around the table at meals and, with rare exception, we were welcome to sit in the living room when company was present. Most of the time, people remained at the table long after dinner was over so that the conversations continued. It was all a rich education and a crucial one. Language acquisition specialists stress the point that verbal skills are significantly enhanced by listening to and eventually participating in family conversations. Children learn the clues about how to participate and they internalize the general etiquette of conversation. In fact, a number of sociologists have demonstrated through their research that the social discourse in this country has been diminishing to the point where it could have ominous results. One subject for some of this research has been the amount of time families dine together and the effect this has on children’s social development. Sociologists have even linked these dinner times to student school achievement in inverse proportion. This was not an issue with us, and those opportunities to be present at the table constitute one of the truly great treasures of my early years. Much of what we learned about political affairs, for example, came from these table talks. Not yet inundated by the mindless blather of TV news and radio talk shows that enervates our political discourse today, the adults in 1946 were left to rely for the most part on their own analyses and commentaries. There were radio news broadcasts to be sure, but these were blessedly brief. Pop seldom-missed Gabriel Heatter (“Ah yes, there’s good news tonight”). Elmer Swing and H. V. Kaltenborn were good for fiveminute analyses. Edward R. Murrow’s broadcasts from Europe during the War and those of his staff (“Murrow’s boys”) during and after the War,

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were not to be missed. But the grinding, pervasive, mind-numbing mastication of each event that currently invades but rarely illuminates the public had not yet begun. Adults, instead, tended to rely on each other as summarizers of newspaper reports, as sources of news analysis, and as foils for argumentation. In our community, this usually meant a conservative Republican spin on current events. It seems remarkable at first glance that these working class Assyrians leaned toward the GOP until one recalls that they had been tutored by the American Protestant missionaries. Most of those folk were Republicans, so, for the Assyrians, on becoming American citizens, their identification with that political group was to be expected. In 1946, the Congressman from our district was the Republican Ralph Gwinn, who received almost unanimous support from the Assyrian community. Unless one takes into account the missionary connection, it is difficult to understand how this dry, conservative WASP, who favored the upper economic classes, would have any appeal for our community. Until I met Assyrian Democrats from Flint, Michigan; Gary, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; and Turlock, California; I thought I might be the only Assyrian Democrat around. In those Midwestern and western communities, however, many Assyrians, perhaps even a majority, supported the Democratic Party. It seems to have something to do with the type of work our people did in those areas, industrial in the Midwest and small-scale farming in the San Joaquin Valley, for which they participated in factory unions and farm cooperatives. Yonkers Assyrians, for the most part, even those working in factories, disgusted with the real and purported corruption of the local Democrats, were ripe to absorb the anti-union message of the executive class. We have had two Assyrians elected to the federal House of Representatives, both Democrats: Adam Benjamin served from Indiana’s First Congressional District from 1977 to his untimely death in 1982, and Anna George Eshoo is currently representing California’s Fourteenth District. She was first elected in 1992, has seen an increase in her winning percentages in subsequent elections, and is a leading member of the progressive wing of the House Democrats. Political topics in the conversations served as well as a means for chewing and digesting the political reporting in the newspapers. There were many more dailies then, especially in the New York City metropolitan area, including the Daily News, Daily Mirror, Times, Herald-Tribune, World Telegram and Sun, Journal-American, and Brooklyn Eagle, which had the widest circulation of the dailies. For Yonkersites, there was also the HeraldStatesman. Most people on Caroline Avenue took the Statesman and at least

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one of the New York papers. Pop brought home the Daily News that we exchanged with Margaret Abraham for the Journal-American that she brought home from her commute to the City. Each paper naturally had its champions who claimed greater veracity for their favorites. I believe that the Daily News had the most readers on our block; its appeal was that it was easy to digest the material quickly because of its lower level vocabulary, brief stories, and several photographs. At the same time, I think that many of its readers gave it low marks for accuracy, but that was outweighed by its capacity to entertain. There is something immeasurably critical for a democracy in the processing and interpretation of news by the average citizen, even in an age with extensive communications technology. I do not resent the technological revolution that was well under way in 1946 and has now gone far beyond most people’s wildest imagination. Quite the contrary. During the dispute over the Florida votes in the 2000 Presidential election, I was able to download the critical Supreme Court decision within minutes of its being rendered and took it into my classroom less than an hour later. Yet, as the quantity of information has increased immeasurably with television and the Internet, and the speed of its delivery is breathtaking, the interactions about the information among people seem to have declined. I fully realize the impressionistic nature of that observation, but, since my interpretation of the context of 1946 is also impressionistic, then the comparison has at least the validity of consistency. In 1976, when I was teaching in Los Angeles, the mother of one of my high school students came by our house on a Saturday afternoon to bring assignments that her son had made up after missing school for an extended period due to illness. Her visit became a three-hour conversation around our dining room table, at the end of which she commented on how wonderful the interaction had been. I won’t forget her description: “This was great. This was a real conversation.” I was pleased that she had enjoyed the time with us, but I was startled. Had conversations among family and friends become historical artifacts? What was going on in this woman’s home and that of her peers? She and her husband were highly educated, and her three children were being given good school opportunities. Yet, she had greeted this opportunity for a conversation with the same enthusiasm that she would have displayed on locating a valuable antique. I had confirmation of my suspicions a few months later when my wife and I were invited to dinner at this woman’s home. We had a few minutes with “the kids,” and then they went to their rooms since they had been fed before our arrival. The host and hostess, and three other couples besides us,

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sat down to dinner without the kids! Not only was the children’s dismissal a denial for them of a wonderful opportunity to participate, even if only by listening, but there was also an irrational aspect to the proceedings. It was my connection with one of the children as his teacher that was the basis for our contact with the parents in the first place. I have experienced that scene too often, as a school principal and teacher, to identify it as an isolated example. Furthermore, I have the wonderful contrast of those few times as a dinner guest when the children dined with us and stayed for the conversation afterwards, replays, as it were, of those Yonkers conversations. I have been pleased to see that my generation of Assyrians has, for the most part, continued this inclusive dinner practice with kids present. In 1946, our political conversations were the active encounters by ordinary persons with the news of the day. They argued, agreed, disagreed, changed the subject, made outrageously inaccurate assertions or acutely perceptive ones. The very act of discussing politics honed the skills of political analysis for all but the most stubborn. Yet change was already in the works. Radio had increased in importance as a source for news, but it would be just a prelude to a far more encompassing technological breakthrough. The need for people here at home to keep up with developments of the New Deal and then news from the War had accelerated the rate at which radio was becoming important in people’s lives. Broadcast journalists’ presentation of news had an unprecedented immediacy. A reporter speaking to us directly from the war front carried with him an active propinquity not available in newspaper or magazine accounts, no matter that these are usually more thorough and analytical than the broadcasts. Our family took full advantage of what radio had to offer. We did not miss important events that were broadcast—from the reporting during the War to Joe Louis’ fights. Louis’ fights became national events, as appealing to a general audience then as the Super Bowl is now. We gathered together, usually in the kitchen, for one of the evening news shows. We would move the kitchen portable radio, a Crossley as I remember, from its perch atop the refrigerator, to the center of the kitchen table and huddle around it. For very special events, like a Presidential speech, we convened around the big floor model Philco radio in the living room. I doubt that we missed any of the presidential addresses; they constituted family events, and we listened with an attention bordering on solemnity. And then there was the charismatic presence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR’s clever use of radio, and the mellifluous and aristocratic tone of his voice, coupled with the greater importance the Presidency had

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taken on as a result of the Depression and the War, set a formidable precedent for his successors to follow. Even though his immediate successor had none of this broadcast charisma, we listened to Harry Truman with the same seriousness and concentration. After all, in addition to this increased stature of the Presidency, the rapid pace of the events of those years and the magnitude of their implications insured a wide listening audience even in spite of President Truman’s limitations as a spellbinder. So we huddled around the radios and paid close attention. This attentiveness is not to be confused with agreement, however. Rather it can be attributed to a respect for the office and a realization of its increasing power in both domestic and international affairs. Our collective solemnity often lasted only as long as the final sentence of the Presidential address. That shift in mood tended to confuse me a good deal. If the President was listened to with such close attention and courtesy, then how could that connection be broken so soon after he completed the speech? This disconnect was for me a very peculiar response to an event that had seemed weighted with so much import. I can best convey my confusion by recalling one memorable example. On this particular occasion, the leap from attentiveness to criticism happened so rapidly that it gave me early initiation into the phenomenon of disillusion. It happened during one of Truman’s first speeches as President. We were visiting our cousins in New Britain, the Elia family, with whom my family had and have a very close relationship. We made these very enjoyable and greatly anticipated visits about two or three times a year. The context on this particular Sunday resembled similar Assyrian gettogethers in other homes, at other times, characterized by the large number of people present and by the network of kinship represented. We had moved from the dining room table to the living room of Yuseepus and Hannah Elia’s house on South Main Street. My parents, aunt, brother, sister, and myself were present, as were the hosts with two of their children, Norman and Robert. Yuseepus’ brother Phillip and his wife Miriam, who was Hannah’s sister, and Goselle, Hannah and Miriam’s mother, were on the sofa. Thomas Lazar, a first cousin of the Elias, who lived a few blocks away, and whose wife, Elsie, was the first cousin of my mother’s father, sat in the largest armchair. As the oldest male present, this was the proper place. Finally, there was an elderly couple, friends of the Elias, whose names I cannot recall. Only Elizabeth and Fred, the older Elia offspring, were missing. As in most Assyrian homes, the living room floor had a large Persian rug that served as a wonderful object of concentration for the adults while

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listening to the speech. Every one of them seemed to be staring at the rug during the speech while each of the youngsters stared at the adults, respectfully of course. I suppose we were looking for clues as to how to react, but received none because of the freeze-frame preoccupation they had for the patterns on the rug. The adults were seated in a circle around the walls, the children on the floor, and the large console radio, against the one wall that had no chairs, was tuned in to one of the networks. We had left the table just after finishing dessert because the speech was considered important enough to interrupt the usual post-dinner table conversation. Immediately following the address, of course, all the adults returned to the table for more tea and talk. The importance of the President’s address was underscored by Uncle Phil’s shushing everyone as soon as the announcer introduced Mr. Truman. He further affirmed his authority by keeping order during the speech. One of the youngsters, I recall that it was Robert, said something and was immediately admonished to “Be quiet,” by Uncle Phil. These were unambiguous cues to us about the high priority to be accorded the speech. So, during President Truman’s pauses, one could literally hear the proverbial pin drop. I have no recollection of Mr. Truman’s topic, but, given the time, it most likely had to do with the developing tensions between the West and the Soviet Union. At the end of the talk, just after the radio was turned off and everybody headed back to their seats around the table, the first words that broke the silence were uttered by Uncle Phil who said, “He didn’t say nothing.” This commentary was greeted with much nodding of heads and laughter indicating unmistakably that all agreed. How could this be so? What happened to, “Be quiet?” How could such a serious undertaking that was listened to with such concentration and silence end not with a bang but with a whimper? I could not make any sense of it, because I did not yet understand that it was the attention to political events, not agreement with them, which was important. I guess that if President Truman had been informed of Uncle Phil’s reaction, he would have been convinced, if he needed any more convincing, that his re-election in 1948 was going to be a close thing. To better understand the Assyrian community, one needs only note the kinship at that gathering and the protocol of age within the relationships. Each adult was to be accorded the same respect by his or her peers as any other adult in the company. This crossed kinship lines as well. All the adults were to be respected by all of the children, not only by our addressing them as “uncle” or “aunt,” but also by our recognizing the

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authority of all Assyrian elders over all Assyrian children. While this might seem to have an aspect of authoritarianism about it, the more important reality it demonstrates is that this assumption of responsibility provided us with a wonderful sense of belonging and of security. So the system did not, as might be expected, cause us to feel stifled; rather, it reinforced feelings of comfort and support. In truth, this assumption of responsibility by all adults for all youngsters was replicated on our block, as well as in the other blocks in South Yonkers, where it even transcended ethnic memberships. The adults, most of them at any rate, regardless of ethnicity, took on a responsible attitude for all the kids on the block. It was a system for protection as well as for discipline. What is that oft-repeated expression of the 1990s? “It takes a village...” While these social gatherings strengthened the fabric of the local Assyrian communities in which they took place, they served another function as well. The passing on of news about Assyrians served to maintain the interrelatedness of the several communities throughout the country. These constituted a support network available always to Assyrian travelers. Whether one was traveling alone or with family members, he or they would find shelter, support and fellowship, just as they found in their own local community. Did an Assyrian traveler in those days, when in a city that had families of his ethnic group, ever stay in a hotel? I guess that it must have happened, at least occasionally. But if and when it did, it had to have been a rare event. This had nothing to do with means. Whether the traveler was well-off or not, he would prefer to stay with Assyrian friends or family, and they, in turn, would prefer to have him do so. These communities’ concept of shared concern and communal responsibility included providing lodging, food, and socialization. None of this should be surprising among people with a history of living in hostile contexts in the old country, where they had looked to each other for care and protection. This sense of fraternity had an even more important purpose by making available crucial aid in cases where an Assyrian individual or family might be in distress. Whenever such a person or persons might be in economic danger, the bonds of the community enabled him or them to avoid the extremes of homelessness and destitution. Friends and/or relatives were there to prevent personal and economic catastrophe. When relatives of the distressed person were close by, they helped him. If relatives were not nearby, then members of the person’s village would intervene or fellow members of the individual’s church would do so. There was a powerful and unambiguous sense of responsibility of all for all. How could

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it have been otherwise for a people whose survival had hung by a thread for so many hundreds of years? If a distressed person’s relatives lived in the area but chose not to come forward to help, they would suffer significant ostracism by the group as others would step in to take up the slack. The shame of having others assume responsibility in place of unwilling relatives was even greater than that of the neglect itself. That was rare and the shame was not nearly as important a factor as was the willingness to help out. It might be cumbersome and it certainly had some economic drain, but that was counterbalanced by the satisfaction of helping out members of the community and the affirmation of solidarity that came from these acts. This did not always ensure successful outcomes. In a few cases, the person would refuse the help or would continue his personal decline even while being assisted and sheltered. The community would never fault friends or relatives for unsuccessful outcomes, only for not trying. I remember examples where a person who was in bad straits because of alcohol dependency would go on and off the wagon. Each time he regressed, he would be welcomed back and assisted if and when he returned. It is interesting, but not surprising, that the parable from the New Testament that I heard most often in those conversations that took a religious tack was the one about the Prodigal Son. I remember two sentences in particular that applied in these cases. Whenever someone was complimented for taking care of a relative in some kind of distress, he or she would invariably respond: “What can we do? He is one of ours.” That describes and explains this particular sense of fraternity (shotaputa). The help did not come because the helping people had the means to do so. Some families did, but most were barely making it on their own. They nevertheless shared what they had with others. The idea of community has no greater definition than this willingness to accept responsibility by the members for each other regardless of economic circumstances. This is, by no means, characteristic only of Assyrian communities, but is found in all communities whose members have bonded for one reason or another. It is perhaps the most important of those aspects of community for which people yearn in America today. We hear so often these days about a social “safety net,” and that is exactly what this communal response was, a safety net to guarantee that one of our own was not left without the resources of food and shelter. We must be careful to realize that those of our contemporaries who are seeking to downsize government’s role in sustaining safety nets ignore the fact that such alternatives as I am describing rarely exist today. Those agencies that

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have been organized to deliver social and economic assistance must take up responsibilities once assumed by the family and ethnic connections. In their absence in today’s more mobile and fragmented American society, and in lieu of appropriate alternatives, government resources have become more, not less, necessary. Some of these communal alternatives do survive in smaller towns, but they are harder to come by in most urban centers. Unless there is an ethnic or religious foundation on which a community is formed, or in place of that, a community organized around a small, well defined geographic space, then it is unrealistic to expect communal attachment and a support system to develop. Unless and until conditions such as those that created and sustained our Assyrian and South Yonkers communities are in place, substitute solutions become necessary if we wish to retain those benefits that accrue to people who live in small communities. One may even argue that the preservation of our system of democracy and our attempts to foster equity are at risk when such communities are not in place and functioning. As should be evident from the foregoing discussions, there are four factors that stimulated and sustained this dynamic of mutuality among the Assyrian people. Historical conditioning was the first of these. Survival for an oppressed minority in a non-democratic context is difficult in the best of times. Imagine what the danger is like at times where the oppression is virulent and sanctioned by the government. This context has a profound impact on how social arrangements are determined. If the emphasis in the Assyrian communities of the Middle East had been on the individual rather than on the group, then we would no doubt have become extinct as an identifiable and separate group. Antagonisms and rivalries were as common among the villagers of Urmia and Kurdistan as anywhere else. But, because they lived in a hostile context that could reach life threatening levels, these rivalries or jealousies were subsumed under the need for common defense against the threat. This habit of mutual dependency and support naturally carried over even into times when the danger was muted. A dramatic example of this extreme danger and the Assyrian response occurred in 1917–1918 when the mountain Assyrians were pursued across the border and found refuge among their kinsmen in Urmia. The durayi were taken in and sheltered by the Urmizhnayi, who knew full well that by helping these refugees they were increasing the precariousness and danger of their own position. The welcome to the mountaineers was certainly going to be used by local Iranian Muslims as a pretext to justify attacks on Assyrians. Nevertheless, even though the Urmizhnayi correctly anticipated a violent reaction by the locals, it could not be a consideration. There was no

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question that the plains Assyrians would shelter their mountain kinsmen. As difficult as was survival in that context, it was possible at all only with communal solidarity, and that meant solidarity with and among all Assyrians. Second, the care of relatives was, as we noted above, a dominant cultural value among these people. The majority of Assyrian households, in America as in the old country, were constituted as extended families, where relatives who would otherwise have been living alone, lived with the family instead, sharing expenses where possible and not doing so if the means were not there. In more than a few cases in our community, the person living with the family had the means to contribute to expenses but chose not to do so. He would not be asked to so; the decision was left to the boarder’s conscience. Shipping off elderly mothers, fathers, aunts, or uncles to nursing homes was not done unless and until the person needed the kind of attention that was available only in those settings. This had very little to do with the availability of nursing homes or with the cost involved. It was not deemed an option in part because such action would be judged by the community as callous and the family itself would consider the putting away of a member as a contradiction of the cultural ethos. The primary motivation, however, was the love among the several members of the extended family for each other. Third, families took this responsibility on with a sense of honor that in turn reinforced the family’s support system. The fifth of the Ten Commandments was interpreted at its most literal. Elderly relatives were institutionalized only when they needed medical attention and care beyond the capacity of family members. As one Assyrian reflects: No family members, especially the elders, were ever deposited in a nursing home or sent to other fashionable retirement centers to spend their last days isolated in a private room or apartment. Never! They were cared for and comforted within the circle of the extended family which occasionally included one, two and three generations. The caring was a tradition passed on to each generation, one sustaining the following...50

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I believe that this ethos of familial solidarity and support was among the most important values lessons we learned. While individuals certainly may choose to live in a narcissistic manner, as many indeed do, it is very difficult to go in that direction when one is socialized in the context of an extended family. This cultural ethos benefits the larger society as well because the steps that lead from the value of shared concern within the family go on to the local community and then further on to the larger society. I look back on those interactions that occurred within each Assyrian family and within the ethnic community as a whole, and see a context of cultural value that can model what civic, and civil, society in a democracy can and should be. It is interesting that the extended family has had a revival of sorts in this country in recent years. Statistics reveal that single men and women, in the age bracket of 25 to 35, are returning in record numbers to live with parents. This is primarily due to an economic climate of increased living costs, but that is not the only reason for the trend. Many of these young people are seeking a sense of belonging as well. The economic incentive for “moving back in” correlates with the third reason that supports the extended family model. By merging resources and talents, families increased their economic viability and gained some flexibility as to housing choices and other expenses. Financial support and protection was available to any member of the family who experienced financial difficulties. Being able to fall back on that support gave that member some breathing space and care until job prospects improved. On regaining financial stability, usually with a new job, the member would in turn restart his contributions to family expenses. By sharing in the costs of living, family members took much of the burden off the shoulders of the father, and, because they rarely turned over all their earnings, and because living expenses were shared, younger family members were able to save some part of their earnings for the future. Since they were freed from having to maintain a separate apartment, these younger members could put aside for the future. In some cases, unfortunately, parents took all or most of the wages of the younger family members. Opportunity to save for the future, for the wedding, attending college, and so on, was taken away. These instances were rare in our community. In fact, we knew of many families that went wholly in the other direction, taking no household money from the younger members, who could then save a goodly part of their earnings for their future needs. I am amused while writing this to remember the effectiveness and thoroughness of our chatty network, else how would we know which family went in either direction?

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The fourth reason for the extended family was specific to the unmarried female members of the family and relates to a pattern that I alluded to briefly in the first chapter. The community considered it to be unseemly for a daughter who lived and worked in the same city to live separate from her family. To do so was to unleash criticisms among the community about that family’s carelessness. Why was the father no longer offering the encircling support of the family to his daughter or his sister? Or worse, what was the young woman intending to do by living alone? If the necessity of the job forced a young woman, or young man for that matter, to move to another city, that individual most often was invited to live with relatives in the new city. Because we knew our extended and complex genealogies out to significant distances of relationships and geography, these arrangements were arrived at quickly and with ease whenever there was an Assyrian community in the city to which the person moved. When there were no relatives, Assyrian friends, or fellow village members, then teaming up with a roommate was the next best alternative. Living alone gave off too many undesirable signals on the one hand; on the other, the loner would miss the fellowship and bustle of the extended family, and would not be as connected with the social activities of the community. These patterns of extended communal living, as well as all of the marriage partnering rituals, are pictured wonderfully and with great fun in 2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Anyone who attended a theatrical showing of that film had to notice the especially knowing and loud laughter of Greeks, Assyrians, Syrians, Armenians, Lebanese, and Italians in the audience. What the audiences were celebrating was the family and community solidarity so effectively recreated in the movie. This mutuality was in evidence in everyday life as well, not just in the more dramatic and most critical cases. There was an endless series of such incidents of helping out within the community. I remember one that typifies what I mean. In June 1955, I was returning from a visit to my aunt in Turlock. The plane from San Francisco went to La Guardia airport where my mother, brother, and sister met me. Pop had to be in Philadelphia on that Sunday of my flight, so there was no car to pick me up. Mom had never showed even the slightest interest in learning how to drive. We took the bus from the airport to Grand Central Station where we transferred to the commuter rail to Yonkers. Our intention was to take a cab from Ludlow Station to Caroline Avenue. Coincidentally, Joey Aziz got on the same train and sat with us. He is a few years older than me, and his family attended the Nestorian church. His

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parents were from the village of Ardishai. When we neared Ludlow Station, Joey told us to make sure not to take a cab, but wait for him instead. He then rushed to his house near the station, got the family car, came back for us, and drove us home. That was a gesture that certainly happened even among people not of the same ethnic community. But, at the same time, it was different. In the way that Joey offered his services, got us home, and was evidently pleased to do so, I very much felt that sense of sharing and mutual responsibility of our community. Joey’s offer was not because he thought the cab ride would be a financial or logistic hardship. Rather, by putting himself out for us, he was exemplifying the respect that we all had for each other. Even in that relatively minor act of support, I knew that I was in touch with the mutual affection that was a big part of the glue that kept us together. In addition to the daily visits, the sharing of dinners, and the instances of mutual support such as the help we got from Joey Aziz, the community’s social intercourse was enhanced by some larger and regular events. Picnics were one such setting, entertainments another, and, of course, likely best of all, the Assyrian weddings. The joining together of the bride and groom was almost incidental to the social aspects of this celebration so that weddings became premiere social events. The wedding ceremonies started in the church of course, and there was always a large crowd in attendance. At the reception, however, the crowd was easily twice or three times as large as the one at the church. When questioned, “Did you go to the wedding?” you were being asked whether or not you attended the reception. How were so many working class Assyrians able to afford such large wedding receptions? The community had a wonderful custom to insure that every family was able to provide these celebrations regardless of its financial resources. Guests gave as wedding gifts money rather than purchased items. Most of this money (subukhta) was collected at the wedding reception itself. The rest, from those who could not attend, was mailed directly to the couple. After this revenue was totaled, and the cost of the wedding deducted, the remainder was given to the couple. This often proved to be a substantial sum. If the groom’s family could afford the wedding costs on its own, which was true in a few instances, then all of the money collected was given to the newlyweds. In either case, this money was a nice boost to the resources with which the couple started their life together and, of course, it enabled all newlyweds to have the benefit of the large reception. The counting method was highly amusing, a setting that could serve as a scene in a crime movie. In a small room off the main reception hall, a few men, usually ten or twelve, would gather to count the money. The room

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inevitably was smoke-filled, mostly from cigars. In charge of this operation was an elder male relative or friend of the groom’s family. In contrast to European custom, the wedding was the responsibility of the groom’s family. All that the bride’s family had to do was give away the bride! The person in charge of the reception was called the “Manager.” Among his other responsibilities, he supervised the counting of the subukhta that was collected at the reception. First, the gifted money was counted and a list compiled of givers and the amounts given. Then, the money that people had given to the several dancers was counted. As couples danced in the Middle Eastern manner, guests would put dollar bills into whatever part of the clothing of the dancer that was accessible but not embarrassing. I can’t suppress a laugh every time I recall those backroom countings. They remind me of a bookie joint where bets are being totaled and winnings disbursed. There were always more men in the room than necessary for the counting, some because they liked being on the inside, a few because they preferred that action to the reception itself, but most out of a curiosity to learn how much each family had given. Until recently I assumed that this custom of money gifts was started in the United States as a practical solution to meet the high wedding costs. I learned from the missionary journals, however, that the custom was already in place in the old country. They note that the reason for the custom then, as it was in my time, was to insure that every family had the opportunity for a large wedding complete with food, music, and dancing. These socially uptight Yankee Protestant missionaries, while applauding this communal custom for providing the wherewithal for weddings, were at the same time unhappy with the music and dancing, and downright upset with the wine. On the other hand, they were wise enough to become very partial to the food. This practical and positive custom had migrated to the United States with the Assyrians. The wedding receptions, therefore, could be the elaborate affairs that we enjoyed so much. In addition to the relatives of the marrying couple, an army of friends was invited, including virtually the entire Yonkers Assyrian community. There were only a few large halls in Yonkers that could accommodate such a gathering. The Polish Community Center was a popular choice, but the preferred site was The Ramp, a very large hall off Yonkers Avenue near Tibbets Brook Park that resembled nothing so much as a gym. It may have served that athletic need as well. My memory is a bit unsure on this point, but I seem to recall that there were indeed a couple of baskets that had to be raised up to the ceiling for the receptions. That may just be a fantasy evoked by how much the place did look and feel like a

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basketball gym. This provided two distinct advantages: the room was well lit and the ceilings were very high which was essential given the noise generated by the band, the dancers, and the conversations. This cavernous room had a stage at one end for the necessary Armenian band. These groups played mostly Armenian music, but included Kurdish, Iranian, and Turkish folk music in their repertoire as well. I don’t recall the names of any of these bands, but I do remember that one group, considered by all to be the best, was called, simply, “the Philadelphia band.” The band generally included clarinet, dumbeg (hand drum), and oud (a stringed instrument similar to a lute). If the family could afford a larger group, there might be two clarinets, two ouds, and a fiddle. These young Armenians were in such great demand that they were booked a year or more in advance, just as getting in to The Ramp required long-range planning and booking. Some weddings included an “American” band that alternated with the Armenians to provide contemporary music, while at other affairs a phonograph was used for when the Armenians were on break. On the floor itself was a sizeable area for dancing extending outward from the stage, surrounded on three sides by row after row of long picnicstyle tables, draped in white linen with flowered centerpieces. The wedding feast was a full meal, usually a chicken dinner, with salads, desserts, wines, beers, and sodas. The more determined drinkers could buy a bottle of Rye, Bourbon, or Scotch for the table. There were very few heavy drinkers among the Assyrians of my parents’ generation since the missionaries had done their work well. At some weddings, where the groom’s family was a bit better off, whiskey was provided on the tables along with the beer and wine without charge to the guests. One of the Manager’s responsibilities was to itemize the amount of wine, beer, and, if it was included, whiskey, that went out to the tables. As a fall-back position, determined tipplers could visit The Ramp’s bar on the lower level, under the main room. In the early years of the Assyrian immigration to this country, the wedding food was seldom the boring and monotonous chicken dinners such as those at The Ramp. Instead, the menu included Assyrian dishes cooked by the women of the community. That was the case when my parents were married in January 1936. This was done both out of preference and to save costs: guests much preferred traditional dishes and the cost of caterers took too much out of the subukhta. The other difference in wedding arrangements was an interesting one that was long gone by the time I was old enough to notice. This was the custom of wedding celebrations that lasted for more than one day. These were not,

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however, the four- or five-day affairs that had been common back in Urmia, but two days. My parents’ reception took place over two days. After going home on Saturday night, the guests came back on Sunday afternoon for continued celebration, albeit for a much shorter time than on Saturday. By 1936, the reason for the two-day affair had already started to disappear. My father told me that the second day had been sustained primarily as a way to feed out-of-town guests before they traveled back to their home cities. With improved cars and roads, the ability of people to travel back and forth on the same day was increased. That development, together with adjustments to new customs in a new country, rendered the multiple-day wedding obsolete. The formal part of the reception proceedings opened with an invocation by the clergyman who performed the wedding or, in his absence, one of the deacons or elders of the church. Then, while the dinner was being served, some male member of the family greeted and welcomed the guests on behalf of the newlyweds’ parents. Mostly, these were very short presentations, making sure to especially thank those who had come a distance. In a few cases, however, the speaker relished the spotlight and went on at length. I remember one such occasion when I had almost completely finished my dinner by the time the speaker finally reached the end of his talk. We wouldn’t have been able to hear the latter part of his talk anyway since most people were talking, eating, or both, long before he concluded. There is a limit to courtesy! As soon as this formality was over, the band and the dancing began, usually as dessert was being served. Some of the dances were what we call “solos,” where a woman would dance in a modified undulation with arms raised, accompanied by a male dancing around her, usually waving a large white handkerchief. In the solos, dance was used to tell a story, suggesting a female who was reluctant and demure, and the male an ardent but restrained suitor. By dancing around her, moving steadily closer, he created a more intimate relationship. An additional feature of the solo dances was that guests would go up to the dancers and put money into their collars and belts. This was easier and comfortable to do with the males, but a bit trickier with the formal attire commonly worn by the women at these affairs. It seemed especially problematic among a people with such a high cultural threshold of modesty. This was the money that went into the counting room to be added to the subukhta. Most of the dancing was group or line dancing, some coed, some male only, and some female only. Most people have seen the Israeli hora. Our line dances are similar to that. Some of the tunes are slow, others quite rapid

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with, and others that begin with a slow beat that accelerates in speed as the dance progresses. Inevitably, jackets were shed and ties loosened as the evening wore on. A few people would start by forming a short line with a leader waving a white handkerchief and setting the pace. Throughout the dance the line grew steadily longer and longer with guests entering it in a constant stream, and a few leaving from time to time, as the dancers moved in a circle, all joining hands usually with the little finger. Sometimes the line would be so long that it became two or three concentric circles parallel to each other. On many occasions the line would become so extended that parts broke off and started new circles, all following the same beat and pattern. The most common of the female line dances had a slow, languorous beat with the line moving in one direction, then dipping back in the other direction for one beat, and then continuing in the original direction. The most interesting and quickest of the male line dances was a Kurdish one, the shaykhana, which usually included only five or six dancers. The men held each other’s arms close from shoulder to hand and moved forward and to the side to a rapid beat. They moved as one person, each step and bend of the knee synchronized among all dancers. Pop was excellent at this dance, and he had his cronies with whom he had been dancing the shaykhana since they were young singles. I finally learned it by practicing alone and with Pop, but it was a long time before I would take the risk of joining his group in public. As with most folk dancing, a good deal of energy was expended in our Middle Eastern varieties, with much foot stomping that provided even more tympanic accompaniment. For me the most wonderful aspect of these weddings was the socializing, especially the extended conversations. Since people came from many towns, there was the opportunity to catch up on news, tell stories, and just plain have a lot of fun. The sound decibels naturally increased as the reception proceeded but I loved that loudness. It was the sound of fellowship, celebration, pleasure, and contentment. It was the sound of people who thoroughly enjoyed being with each other. And it was a sound unburdened of affectation; it was so very real. We usually associate security and contentment with softer sounds and quieter moments, but I felt as secure, comfortable, and grounded amid that wonderful cacophony as I ever have. I looked forward as much to those wedding receptions as people do to national holidays. As I circulated among the guests, listening, dancing, conversing, and always observing, I had a clear sense of who I was as an individual and who we were as a people.

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There were other aspects to the wedding celebration that I recall with fondness and not a little amusement. In two weddings that involved our cousins, the bride left from our house, which gave our apartment enhanced prestige on those occasions. In 1947, our cousin Nellie Lazar from New Britain married our neighbor Alex Nweeia. Our apartment was a bustle of activity that weekend. The Elia family came down from New Britain. Elizabeth Elia was one of the bridesmaids in the large bridal party. For the reader to capture the essence of the extended family, he need just go back with me to that night. Norman Elia, myself, and, I think, his older brother Fred, slept on the floor in our living room. Norman’s father slept on one of the easy chairs in the living room, his uncle on the couch, and my father on the second easy chair. Norman’s mother and aunt, and my mother and aunt, had the bedrooms. My brother and sister, ring-bearer and flower girl for the wedding, slept together in one their beds. Elizabeth, I think, shared a bed with my aunt. On Saturday, the day of the wedding, I was ready for a custom for which my father had briefed me. The person who holds the door as the bride leaves the house is given a gratuity by one of her relatives. I stood there, hand out, and got a ten-dollar bill, a 1947. But at that point, the elaborate wedding plans encountered a major glitch. All the limousines had gone ahead to the church with groomsmen, groom, bridesmaids, father and mother of the bride, and parents of the groom. Someone forgot to hold one limousine back for the bride, so the only car available for transporting her was my father’s 1937 Chrysler that he used for storing his paints and tools as well as carrying the family. Whenever a bride went off to her wedding, the neighbors would gather outside to look her over, admire the wedding gown and so forth. This happened to be a beautiful day, so a large group of observers were assembled. When they saw that she was going into my father’s car, there was a collective groan that must have been heard for blocks around, but there was nothing for it. Nellie adjusted to the circumstances by sitting just on the edge of the back seat in order to be in contact with as little of the car as possible. Susan Nweeia, another bridesmaid, who had stayed behind to help and was to go to the church in the bride’s limousine, joined me in the photographer’s beat-up brown Chevrolet that fell in behind Pop’s care. That has to have been the strangest wedding motorcade the neighborhood had ever seen or ever would see. When we got to the First Presbyterian Church in North Yonkers, I noted that my father drove the car up on the sidewalk right in front of the church. The story I heard later is that Nellie asked my father to park just a

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few doors away from the church so she would walk the short distance to the entrance. My father, never one to miss the opportunity to make a point, not only drove right up to the entrance, but also went up on the sidewalk. I think that if he could have, he would have taken that gray car right up the aisle. As Nellie came out of the Chrysler, the collective moan of the group in front of the church rivaled the one from our neighbors. About five years later, our cousin Mary Baba from Chicago also left our house to go to the church for her wedding to Jack Johannan of Yonkers. On this occasion, my holding the door was even more profitable. Two different relatives of the groom, not knowing the other had taken already taken care of me, each gave me twenty dollars. In five years I had graduated from ten to forty dollars in my door guard assignment. Even without the money, the role I played, minor though it was, carried an importance in the developmental process. Youngsters need to have these social rituals so that they can experience positive connections with adults who, in turn, have the opportunities to pass on cultural norms to the next generation. The other large-scale social events were the entertainments and the picnics. The former were mostly given by the clubs, but occasionally by the churches as well, always with food, and, except for the Presbyterians, with music. Assyrian Presbyterians enjoyed music outside of the church, but, partly in deference to the missionaries and partly from just a little bit of hypocrisy (we actually enjoyed music as much as did the Nestorians), we rarely had secular music in our church entertainments. At the Club and events arranged by the Nestorians, however, free from these scruples, there was usually either a live band like the ones who played at weddings or recorded music. Invariably there were raffles and a few short speeches. These functions thus had the same ambience as the wedding receptions, socializing, dancing, and eating, and had a characteristic about which we didn’t know very much at the time, but have subsequently learned a great deal. At the weddings and entertainments, whether at the Club, The Ramp, or “the Polish,” we were inhaling concentrated atmosphere of tobacco smoke from cigars, cigarettes, and pipes. In the confined space of the Club, a perennial cloud of smoke hovered round all of us. How did any of us survive? The picnics also attracted large crowds. By common but not formal agreement, in order to avoid competition for attendees, each community that was within traveling distance of the others had its designated day for big picnic. Our Assyrian Presbyterian Church, for example, had Memorial Day, on each of which we held a picnic at Trevor Park. The July Fourth

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picnic, if I remember correctly, was in New Britain and Labor Day in Elizabeth, or it may have been vice versa. In this way, people from the close communities—Yonkers, Philadelphia, Elizabeth, New Britain, together with Assyrians from other parts of the New York City metropolitan area—could actually attend all of the big picnics. Our Trevor Park affair was typical. There was naturally a great deal of food—lamb shish kebab, hot dogs, hamburgers, lula kebabs, corn-on-thecob, chada, tea, soda, beer, watermelon, and ice cream. Loosening our Presbyterian decorum a bit, we set up a phonograph to play Armenian records. If we were lucky, Jerry Karam came with his oud that he played very well. If his friend Jonathan Baba from Philadelphia came, then he would accompany Jerry on dumbeg. Horseshoes and their stakes were set up “for the men;” we had two or three softball games during the course of the day; backgammon (“nur tekhta,” literally, on the wood) among the men and card games (usually Casino) among the women were continuous. The ritual around our picnic was replicated exactly from year to year. Arrangements began when Norman David and I met Sam the Iceman on Caroline Avenue about 11 am, after the parade on Broadway was over, and we rode with him to Trevor Park. Sam unloaded the ice into tubs and Norman and I guarded it until others arrived and, naturally, we used the time for tossing a baseball back and forth. I could barely sleep through the night in anticipation of the picnic and from fear that rains might come to wash it out. We didn’t have rain dates as back-ups, so a rain out meant waiting a whole year for another Memorial Day picnic. Luckily, there was only one total wash out. On another occasion, the rains came in late afternoon ending the picnic earlier than we wished. From that instance, I distinctly remember a remarkably peculiar scene. While we were all rushing to gather up food and utensils before they could be drenched, I saw Alice Yohannan sitting on the grass with a blanket over her head drinking tea and eating chada. Alice had arrived late and was determined to have her chaichada before having to evacuate. Perhaps that delicacy is an addiction after all. After Norm and me, the first to arrive were my father, mother, Darius and Elizabeth Baba, and Sue Nweeia. Their job was to start the grill fires for the cooking and set up the serving tables. Pop was the shish kebab cook and Mr. Baba peeled the corn and boiled the cobs in a huge tub of water. He usually cooked the hot dogs and hamburgers as well. Mom and Mrs. Baba started the samovars and cut the chada into serving pieces, and Sue, Norm, and I set up the chairs and tables.

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Gradually, other workers began to arrive to assume duties acknowledged as theirs. Tom Baba cut the watermelon. Joe “Ringy” Sargis set up the money table to sell tickets for the food and the raffle. Ringy was a sports writer for UPI in the City and the lead pitcher on the Assyrian War Veterans softball team as well as an elder in our church. Qasha arrived with straw hat, seersucker jacket, white shirt and tie and, after checking out the arrangements and complimenting the workers, found a seat where he could converse with people and that was a safe distance from the card-playing. I wasn’t privy to the arranging of the other picnics but I think I am safe in assuming that they each went through a similar series of rituals. Throughout the day, Assyrians arrived from our city and from the nearby communities. Gossip was exchanged as usual. Some matchmaking went on; more than a few weddings had their origins in those gatherings. Assyrians seldom engaged in full-scale matchmaking as had often been the case in the old country, but parents did connive to have their offspring get the opportunity to meet each other with the hope that matters would proceed along a natural course. They often did. In later years, the national Assyrian American Association’s annual convention on Labor Day weekend became the prime setting for meeting prospective spouses. The Convention would become a much bigger affair from the 1950s on than it was in 1946. I am amused at the response I have gotten many times when I asked an Assyrian couple how the met: “Where do you think—at the Convention.” The picnics ended at dusk when we reluctantly packed up, aware that 364 days would have to pass before we could reassemble for our next Memorial Day picnic. Entertainments were held each year at the Club. This headquarters for Yonkers’ Assyrian-American Association was a small house on Riverdale Avenue that had been converted, just barely, into a meeting and social facility. It had been built as a two-bedroom house, and I am just as astonished to recollect now as I was to see then how many people could be squeezed into that building for special events. The Club must have violated every one of the city’s maximum occupancy regulations. Yonkers, however, had never been noted for having officials efficient enough to discover or even care about such violations. Based on what I heard from more or less reliable sources, I concluded that a little judicious greasing of the regulatory agencies didn’t hurt. Fortunately, the property had an ample yard so that the crowd could flow out of the building in good weather. The yard was as far as we wanted to go since it provided an escape from both our elder’s supervision and the fog of tobacco smoke that permeated every corner of

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the interior. The Club’s custodian was Charlie, from Cherajooshi, who was appropriate for the job since he was at least as disheveled as the building. There was another social activity at the Club that was a source of consternation to the community, especially to the Presbyterians. In between entertainments and Association meetings, the Club maintained a continuous card game that took place in the main room, which had been the living room. A large round table sat in the middle of this room around which sat a cast of mostly the same characters playing poker for hours at a time. I am not sure that they continued through the night as well, but since the players were there first thing in the morning and still going near midnight, it is safe to assume that, with players entering and leaving, the game was a 24-hour affair. I walked in on this scene a few times, and recall one instance in particular. Four of us were sent from Trevor Park to the Club to get a few folding tables for the Memorial Day picnic. We had to pass the card players in the “gambling den” to get the tables that were stored in the back of the building. This meant that we would encounter the irritation of the players who would be seriously annoyed at our interruption, and we would have to negotiate our way through that permanent cloud of smoke. I have a hunch that much of their irritation was due to their being subtly reminded by our mission to get tables that they should have been at the picnic instead of gambling. Since the wives and children of some of the players were at the picnic, our intrusion and seeing which husbands and fathers playing poker had to have increased their discomfort. Besides, they suspected that we would report exactly who was there, and, of course, they were right. Given the great store Assyrians set in hospitality, the players were compelled by custom, though not by choice, to pause for a few moments of conversation with us. It required no particular insight on our parts to note that they were anxious for us to get our task finished and get out of there. I remember taking a perverse but delicious pleasure in extending my time there by having a brief conversation with a cousin who was a habitué of the game. The Calvinist strain in my personality prompted me to relish the opportunity to interrupt this “immoral” activity. It was great fun to note, by surreptitious glances at the other players while talking to my cousin, that these faces conveyed the unspoken sentiment: “We wish you kids would get the hell out of here.” There was no way that I would have even entertained the possibility of my crossing barrier and making a critical comment to these men, telling them that they really should have been at the picnic. I very much wanted to. I had enough of that righteous indignation commonly associated with Presbyterianism to look disapprovingly down on the card players. Giving

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speech to that thought, however, would have been an unacceptable breech of the etiquette that defined relations between youngsters and their elders in our community. The only satisfaction left to me was that of having at least delayed the game for a few minutes. When asked about this card game, Assyrian Presbyterians would have told you that all the players were Nestorians. After all, by accepting the reformed tradition, they had absorbed the Protestant injunctions against worldly vices, including gambling. Since the Nestorians had not joined the reformed tradition, we assumed that they were not inhibited from such participation. I am sure the Nestorians had their own variation on how to judge the card players. Membership at that game, however, was an equal opportunity situation—Presbyterians and Nestorians were almost equally represented. Playing in the game had more to do with marital status than religious affiliation since the number of players who were widowers or bachelors was slightly larger than the married contingent. These men were granted a tacit indulgence for taking advantage of the time to be with other Assyrian men. The married men, on the other hand, were not given this pass. If gambling was indeed sinful, as many believed, then the critics need not have looked too far for the retribution that would fall on the players. There was enough first- and second-hand smoke in that room to fill a hospital ward with patients. A different type of social activity that helped bond the community, while soon to disappear, was still hanging on in 1946. The custom of the Christmas day visit was another of the practices brought over from Urmia and continued in this country. In our community, the major practitioner of this custom was Sargis Ameer. He kept the practice alive long after most others had given it up. Uncle Sargis and one or two other men would visit as many friends and relatives as they could on Christmas Day to convey the holiday greeting from the community. At each apartment, these seasonal visitors would be offered whiskey, wine, or brandy, to toast the host family, and some snacks—raisins, walnuts, dried squash seeds, dates and figs, Turkish powdered jelly candy, and halvah. If the visitors had the time, they could eat some chada as well or have a bowl of hareesa, the traditional morning meal for Christmas and Easter. At these times, the visitors were ushered not as usual into the kitchen but into the living room as befitted the importance of the event. Mom and Aunt Catherine would suspend their cooking to join in the conversation. Following the toasts and brief exchange of news, the visitors moved on to the next destination on their list.

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Anglican missionary F. F. Irving, writing in 1895, tells about this custom in Urmia. He was in the village of Gavilan on Christmas day and noted the Assyrians visiting and greeting each other: For breakfast they gave us bowls of hareesa, a kind of porridge made of pounded wheat, besprinkled with curious little seeds like caraways. It is not a bad concoction, but usually rendered uneatable by a copious supply of hot oil. Wine took the place of tea or coffee, and pipes were of course in requisition. Then all the assembly adjourned to another house where an exactly similar repast was provided; then in turn to two others, where the same dishes, the same speeches, and to a great extent the same guests, reappeared. This somewhat trying ordeal lasted till 2 o’clock, when I ‘struck,’ although running the risk of giving offence to another hospitable householder who wished to do us honour in a like substantial manner…I think I never more disliked the sight of food in my life!51

I am grateful to Rev. Irving for giving us these recollections of life in Urmia in 1895. I am chauvinistic enough, however, to resent his condescension, and I wonder why he didn’t stay in England where he would have found the customs more palatable. In the 1950s, my friends and I noticed with regret that this custom was dwindling away, another victim to assimilation. So, on the Christmas morning during my junior year in high school, by prior arrangement, Dan Baba, Norman David, and I decided to reclaim this custom. We put on suits, ties, and overcoats and made the rounds. There was no need to explain our purpose as each family we visited knew immediately what we were doing and went through the rituals of hospitality, although some of them, noting our age, were a bit reluctant to give us the liquor but did so anyway in the spirit of the occasion. The shots were small and should have had little if any effect on us, except that Norman went into our venture with a heavy cold for which he had taken some cold remedy pills. Of course the toasts had a palpable effect on his sobriety. By the end of our visits, with his red face and watery eyes, he resembled more a drunk on the downside of a binge than he did a Christmas greeter.

F.F. Irving (1998) Christmas in Gavilan. Oxford: The Jericho Press, pages 10 and 11. 51

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Unfortunately, the next day was Sunday, with most congregants, as usual, milling and conversing in front of the church prior to services. The presence of this audience suited Norm’s mother just fine as the venue for a classic lecture to her son about drinking. Naturally, Dan and I came in for some public scolding as well, and she had a few comments to make about those who served us liquor. Sadly, no one seemed to recall or care about our good intentions in giving expression and allegiance to an honored Assyrian tradition. In any case, we did not attempt any further revivals of the Christmas visit. I don’t know if it continued in other Assyrian communities in this country or still does, but our brave attempt at a revival ended the practice in South Yonkers. That was unfortunate because we really did enjoy each stopover and I believe the hosts similarly were pleased with our coming by.52 It should be clear to the reader by now that the social life for most Assyrians was with other Assyrians. Knowledge and practice of the common cultural norms and rituals, together with the common language, certainly made this social segregation understandable. We are, after all, talking about comfort levels. The pattern was true for all ethnic groups in our city, Italians with Italians, Polish with Polish, and so on. On our street, for example, people were friendly with each other across ethnic lines, but that did not carry over to visiting in homes. Conversations on the street and between people on porches with neighbors on the sidewalks were lively and came easily, but the “coming over” across ethnic borders was rare. People just preferred the comfort level provided by common ethnicity. Unfortunately, this segregation prevents people from knowing as much about other groups as they should in a society as diverse as ours. Not surprising, lack of contact feeds disinformation within each group about the actual character, beliefs, history, and aspirations of the other groups. As a result, the tendency toward assuming and accepting the prevailing stereo-

I learned recently from Larry Ballas, whose family had been members of the Hungarian Presbyterian Church, that the Hungarians had a similar custom. A few of the adult males, on the day of Christmas Eve, carrying a small nativity scene, went to each of the congregant’s homes where they conveyed the holiday greetings, sang a few carols, and had the obligatory shot of whiskey. Larry reports that, to no one’s surprise, by the time the group reached the last few homes, they were pretty well sloshed. 52

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types that was attached to each group was strong. Assyrians, like everybody else, engaged in stereotyping of other ethnic groups, but, happily, this did not translate into antagonisms toward any group. For my parents’ generation, then, the melting pot was limited to the workplace and to living proximity. My friends and I, on the other hand, transcended these divisions for the most part, making the melting pot very real. We played together across ethnic lines and freely visited in each other’s homes. The block and the schools were the crucibles in which this melting took place. What about Assyrians attitudes toward the great ethnic divide in America—the color line? I have searched my memory several times in order to reconstruct with as much accuracy as possible what were the prevailing responses by our group toward African Americans. How did Assyrians look out over this great fault line in America’s interracial geography? There were neither African Americans on our block nor Puerto Ricans. In fact, there were not many from either group in South Yonkers at all. I have already described my father’s working relationships with African Americans and with Latino Americans—these were cordial and supportive. But what was the prevailing attitude among my ethnic group toward the American “minorities”? Those sociologists who subscribe to stage theory would most likely place most of us youngsters in Yonkers in 1946 in the “contact stage.” While in that stage, we were certainly aware of black students, played with them in the school playground and at Vark Street Playground, but did not seem to have any clearly formed ideological stance on the matter of racial differences. Our response, in short, toward racial issues was a minimalist one; that is, we did not engage in much social intercourse, but we did not subscribe to segregation or marginalization as public policies. Unquestionably, Assyrians accepted the prevailing hierarchical structure of American society, with Euro-Americans at the top of the ladder and people of color lower down the rungs. In detail, this hierarchy, as perceived and accepted by the majority of Assyrians, had Anglo-Saxons (“Americans”) at the apex, with other Western Europeans next down, then southern and eastern Europeans and Middle Easterners, and, finally, in a conflated group, African-, Asian-, and Latino-Americans. What was the attitude of the older Assyrians, generally, toward this last group? It is as difficult to get a handle on this now as it was then as a ten-year-old. Despite their acquiescence to the prevailing American racial paradigm, Assyrians did not participate in an active, much less a virulent, prejudice, if that matters. One might consider their acceptance of this hierarchy as active bias in another form, but I think that would be simplistic. It would certainly have seemed peculiar to me if Assyrians expended energy on exclusionary

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strategies or negative attitudes while establishing their own legitimacy in this society. I did not realize until later in my life that by not opposing the prevailing racism, one becomes a part of it regardless of one’s disdain for prejudice. I also came to understand that a marginal group such as Americans from the Middle East just might have an effective means of ensuring their own legitimacy by not opposing the reigning hierarchical assumptions. I have been reminded from time to time during my life of the lower position relative to Western and Northern Europeans that we Middle Easterners occupy in this pecking order. Interethnic relationships are greatly improved over what they were in 1946, but not wholly changed. We still receive cues on occasion that are reminders of the persistence of this hierarchy. Just recently, Margarita and I, with granddaughter Mollie, went to Ciao Bella, a wonderful little Italian restaurant in Worcester. It is a small place so that table availability is not always assured. As we entered the restaurant that evening, the tables were full, but we noticed that a couple was about to leave, so we moved toward their table. We intended to stand at the place until the waitress cleared off the remnants of our predecessors’ meal. The diners vacating the table were in their forties, well dressed, and Anglo. They had left the money for the bill on the table, but as we neared the table, the man looked at the money, looked at me, looked at the table again, and then, with obvious hesitancy, decided to leave the situation as it was. About a minute after they left the restaurant, however, while we were still standing awaiting the clean up, the man’s wife reentered the restaurant, went to the table, and picked up the money and bill. I can just imagine the husband foisting this task on to his wife; prejudice always has a cowardly dimension. She looked at us and said, “It’s probably better that I take this up to the cashier.” In my younger days, my mood would have bounced back and forth between anger and embarrassment. But, thanks to the wisdom and serenity of age, I just burst out laughing. This caused the woman’s face to take on a deeper scarlet color than the one she had when she spoke to us. Many will attribute this to over-sensitivity on my part. But those of us on the lower rungs of this hierarchy rely for our cues on experience, not on sensitivity. I can recognize “the look” even as I am considerably less disturbed by it. Margarita and I knew what was happening; she too saw “the look.” But, in the considerably changed climate of 2002, we saw no need to deconstruct the situation for Mollie, as we would have done had this occurred in 1946. She assumed, from her refreshing 10-year-old

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perspective, and not without some justification, that the couple were just being “jerks.” In the 1940s, ensconced in the happy, busy, and supportive milieu of the Assyrian community and the general community of South Yonkers, I was just beginning to understand the dimensions of this hierarchy. But the impact was modified considerably by the love and support we received. We were encouraged, amused, entertained, educated, and succored by the plethora of social comings and goings, by the specialness of the weddings, picnics, and entertainments. We were walking down two streets. We were fed our social cues by the conversations of the older generations and we modeled ourselves by their behaviors. At the same time, by our participation on the block and in the schools we were being assimilated into the American mainstream. In short, we youngsters had the best of opportunities—we were enabled and encouraged to become fully bicultural, invited to be part of two dynamic, valuable, and rich cultures. Some of us were even able to be fluent in two languages. When I read that part of American history that exemplifies the country at its best, I am thrilled to be an American. In the same way, when I read of the history of the Church of the East and of our people’s successful struggle for survival, I am thrilled to be an Assyrian. It is hard to imagine a richer cultural heritage.

CHAPTER 5: THE BLOCK We lost plenty in those years after World War II. People talk about the closeness, the intimacy of the old urban neighborhood. People talk about their friendships found and lost, the adventures of city life, waiting for the old man to come home from work. We knew each other then. We saw our own faces plainly, in the mirror and in each other’s eyes. Ray Suarez, The Old Neighborhood (1999)53

So many memoirists have successfully captured the essence of those old city neighborhoods that I shall try to avoid redundancy and focus on characteristics specific to our South Yonkers context. While most of the our arrangements and activities were identical to these in other old neighborhoods, aspects of them were particularistic enough to our context to endow them with some importance of their own, even within the categories delineated by these dynamic memoirists. Using these familiar and acceptable categories, I shall try to convey some of the accents particular to our Caroline Avenue and South Yonkers settings in 1946. In many, perhaps most respects, these reflections will be recognized by readers of similar reminiscences as well as by those who have lived in analogous settings. At the same time, an appreciable degree of uniqueness may provide additional insight into the attractive interpersonal relationships and the comfortable and comforting environment that surrounded us in the old neighborhoods. An important aspect of this for me, as is clear from the earlier chapters, was the presence of several Assyrian families. This wonderful reality added additional layers to the general atmosphere of support and well-being. Still, even the importance of this ethnic mutuality, and it was

Ray Suarez (1999) The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration: 1966-1999. New York City: The Free Press, page 24. 53

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significantly important, there was a good deal more to the story of the Block and South Yonkers in 1946, much more. For perspective, consider, by way of contrast, the nature of my current residences and their immediate environs. Margarita and I live in a building of condominiums in Worcester during the middle of the week when we are teaching—she at Worcester State College, and I at Clark University. There are fifty-two units in the building and we know the occupants of only two, except that “knowing” in this instance means only saying hello to one occupant, while knowing the other is due not to our proximity within the building but because she teaches in the same department at Clark as I do. We could pass any of the other residents on the street and not recognize them. We know that there is sometimes a toddler visiting in the unit above us because her (or his) running around in the morning serves as our alarm clock when she is in residence. She must be visiting her grandparents, as elderly people constitute a healthy percentage of the residents. But we have never seen her. Our house in Yarmouth Port is on a cul de sac with six other houses. We were able to make at least a casual acquaintance with the residents of the house immediately to our south only because they have twin spaniels whose forays outside for toilet purposes attracted our two grandchildren. I have gone so far as to wave at the woman who lives in the house immediately across from us and at the woman in the house immediately south of that one. As for the other three houses, they might very well be deserted as far as we are concerned; we have no clue as to the residents. Before moving to Yarmouth Port, we had lived for ten years in Arlington, on a street of two-family houses. We knew and spoke often with Al who owned the house immediately to our east. He was 92 when we left in 1999, and had a lot of stories to tell, about growing up Irish in Cambridge, about working as a switchman for the railroad, and, naturally, about how “Arlington had changed.” He is an avid reader and we exchanged books frequently. I had several conversations with his tenant, a computer programmer who lived on the first floor with his mother, also a computer programmer. To our west was a house owned and very beautifully cared for by Tony, an immigrant from the Azores. He and I spoke together frequently, especially in the pre-dinner hour when we were both tending lawns. His passion was lawns and he maintained one of the most beautiful I have seen. His tenants were a young couple—Jack, a faculty member in economics at Harvard and Beth, a physical therapist. We had a good deal of communication with them and even had the benefit of staying two weeks

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in their apartment when ours was empty while we were transferring to Yarmouth Port. They were off to visit family in Kansas so we were invited to use their lodgings while we were “homeless.” That was the kind of reciprocity common to our block in Yonkers. Across the street from us was another immigrant from the Azores and his family. “Johnny,” as he is known (really Joao), is a wonderful neighbor. As well as sharing his prodigious knowledge about house maintenance, he provided some of the most outstanding vegetables we had ever eaten. Certifying that Johnny has a green thumb is to significantly understate his capabilities. It is astonishing to see how much he is able to grow in the backyard of a house in the city: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, kale, lettuce, squash, and a variety of herbs. And, of course, he shares amply what he grows. Two houses to the west of Johnny was his good friend Paul, a retired longshoreman. Several times a week, Paul, Johnny, and I, and sometimes Al, had those far-ranging conversations that covered politics, television programs, the condition of the city, and the lack of rain. Tony rarely joined in as he spent most of his time working his garden or repairing something around the house. We knew none of the many other people on the street. Everyone of course nodded at each other in passing, but that was the extent of the familiarity. By contrast, the residents on Caroline Avenue would have understood the relationships among Johnny, Al, Paul, Tony, Jack, Beth, and ourselves, but they would have been mystified by the lack of connection with the rest of the street and they would have been horrified at the state of neighborliness, or, more properly, lack thereof, in our Worcester and Yarmouth Port neighborhoods. On Caroline Avenue everyone knew the names, occupations, ethnicities, and religions of everyone else for the whole length of the block. It was a street of working people—plumbers, electricians, painters, carpenters, bus drivers, auto mechanics, two firemen, one policeman, factory workers, secretaries, bookkeepers, clerks, and three teachers. There were, besides the Assyrians, immigrants from Poland, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, Lithuania, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Scotland, and England, composing a rich diversity that stimulated us to develop attitudes of tolerance and understanding. What a remarkable experiment upon which America had embarked—mixing a more diverse population than has been attempted by any other society. These groups are held together by a system of law and democracy, not by a regimen of authoritarianism and repression. I need to be careful to not overstate this asset of our country—in 1946, in the United States, those who were identified as “people of color” were only

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grudgingly and minimally included in this mix, and, in some parts of the country, they were actively and, often, violently, excluded. Yet the model that would finally accelerate the inclusion of even these underrepresented groups was in place in 1946, and Caroline Avenue was an example of that work in process. Did the proximity of these disparate ethnic peoples to each other and the inevitable daily interactions that were inevitable on the Block mean that we indeed were a living and breathing melting pot? The popular melting pot metaphor has come under sustained attack recently. Revisionists range from those who discard the metaphor as never having been true to those who assert that the phenomenon needs to be recast in alternative metaphors, “mosaic” and “salad” being the most preferred choices. The assumption is that these variant metaphors sustain the emphasis on distinct ingredients, as is true with the melting pot reference, but they tend to greater accuracy by substituting the mixing metaphor for the melding one. This suggests that Americans are correct to consider themselves a conjoined whole, while, simultaneously, the groups newer to the country are justified in retaining distinct cultural, ethnic, and religious identities. In short, we on the Block were genuinely bicultural— together and separate. Had we become, as well, the melting pot affirmed by the country’s ideological definition for the appropriate objective its diverse population? The answer to this is frustratingly indeterminate—yes and no. On our street we were a melting pot and we were a duality—it depends on the generation on which the observer focuses. Every day, on the street, from the time we left for school until we were called to go in to dinner, we kids were indeed a melting pot. We played together across the ethnicities and, in many games, across gender as well. Being selected first when choosing up sides for stickball had everything to do with one’s talents, something to do with friendships, but nothing whatever to do with ethnicity or religion. Close friendships were formed across those lines. That is the “yes” part of the answer to the melting pot question. The “no” part has to do with our elders. As I indicated in the previous chapter, the relationships across ethnic lines for the older generations were confined to greetings and conversations on the street and did not extend to active socializing. I suppose, therefore, that the salad is the better metaphor for those contacts. This is not to belittle the extent of those conversations—the people on the Block talked freely to one another about their lives. They exchanged information about births, illnesses, marriages, and jobs, exchanged recipes, passed on information about sales and bargains, complained and commiserated about landlords, bragged about children, and even perseverated about spousal behaviors. The only barrier

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to the length and complexity of these conversations were levels of English proficiency. My parents spoke English well so they engaged in many of these conversations. Others, exemplified by Khat Khenna Lazar, had limited knowledge of the language and confined their interchanges to the friendly wave and “Hello.” Too many Americans these days, during those interminable debates about the usefulness or not of bilingual education, speak from a nostalgic and inaccurate recollection about English fluency among the immigrant generations. People whose parents or grandparents were immigrants speak much too casually about how those generations learned their English, so they petulantly and persistently ask, “Why can’t immigrants, adults as well as children, do the same nowadays?” “My parents did it, why can’t they?” “They,” of course, is the code for “the other,” “them,” and so forth. What these much too facile remembrances fail to convey is that the majority of those immigrants learned to be conversationally fluent in English. This is the ability to carry on basic conversations, on a limited range of topics, in faceto-face situations. That level of fluency generally takes about two years to attain. On the other hand, the ability to use English beyond that level, in and out of school, to the extent that tasks requiring more than basic English may be successfully completed, is identified as academic fluency. It normally takes up to seven years to reach this ability to understand and produce complex oral and written language. The level that was attained by most of the immigrants on the Block (except, of course, for those from the British Isles) was that of conversational fluency, and some didn’t even get that far. Most had picked up enough to understand each other in the neighborhood conversations and to negotiate purchases at the local stores. This is not to minimize this achievement; one ought not underestimate its important contribution toward the goal of assimilation. Conversational fluency, even with its limitations, increases opportunities for personal interactions across boundaries. While those of us born here were assimilating into the common American identity with a good deal of eagerness, the immigrants were going down that path as well, but at a considerably slower pace. They were not avoiding the process; they simply maintained a caution about it so as to ease gently into the new and not fall precipitately from their home culture into the culture of the mainstream. They feared losing their home cultures and languages as they adjusted to this country—hence their wariness. Most of these people would not have had access to the term “biculturalism,” but, in spite of not being able to articulate a definition of this condition, maintaining that fascinating duality was (and is) exactly their objective.

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Interestingly, the power of love, more than any other social dynamic, broke down the sharp social separations. As my generation grew up, the incidents of marriage across ethnicities—very few when I was a child, but many more by the time I had reached my thirties—supported the melting pot metaphor. As I noted in Chapter 3, among the white Americans, only the religious and color lines remained almost impenetrable. Very few couples had the courage, and that is what it took, to marry across those two formidable divides. The number who did was statistically insignificant. These racially constructed walls began to give way, albeit very grudgingly, only after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and are still not wholly demolished by any means. The religious walls began to crumble partly as a result of the increased secularism that has characterized American society since those same years. Crossing ethnic divides, on the other hand, was considerably less difficult. As for non-marital assimilation, three aspects of life in 1946 hastened the process for my generation—the Block, the schools, and the media. Unless one wanted to hibernate in an apartment—which was a hateful choice for all of us—one had to play with the kids on the Block and that meant all the kids. Naturally, nobody wanted to stay indoors. Unlike so many of the current crop of youngsters who vegetate in their rooms in front of computer or television screens, we stayed in the house just long enough to change from school to street clothes. Once outside, we delayed going back inside as long as possible, and sometimes even beyond our parents’ wishes. Most often we pushed that envelope until parental anger was spied on the horizon, at which time we furled sails, bade sad goodbyes to friends, and hurried home. Anyone watching us would have thought we were parting for good, not just until the next day’s afternoon. Why shouldn’t we have been reluctant to go inside? Life on the Block was a steady regimen of fun, punctuated only occasionally by the stupid argument or fight, either of which was usually forgotten by the next day. There weren’t gangs in South Yonkers, nor guns or drugs, and only one or two on our street may have smoked cigarettes, although I cannot recall seeing any of the kids smoking. If one kid tried bullying another, then the older kids usually intervened. They constituted an informal playground police force, keeping order and directing games. Thus the street was a constant and animated playground, characterized mostly by fun. Obviously, our preference was to be outside as much as possible, going indoors only under the duress of terrible weather or insistent parents. The whole neighborhood was our playground. There was the Block itself, of course, that served as the center for our activities, but our territory

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included subsidiary sites as well. At the north end, just three houses short of the end of the street, Astor Place branched off east from Caroline and dead-ended at the back of the businesses fronting on Broadway. The south side of Astor contained four houses with three apartments each, and the north side is an empty lot between the Place and Herriot Street, with the half adjoining Astor flat enough for stickball or touch football, and the other half, a jumble of rocks and boulders, descending in a small hill to Herriot. This little hill provided the younger kids with a context where they could give free rein, imagining and fantasizing invasion beaches or Western mesas. Adjoining this empty space, to the east, behind what was the Chrysler agency, is another, smaller lot, probably the property of the agency, that is hilly and rocky with a few trees fascinatingly gnarled by lack of attention and poor soil into weird and grotesque shapes—an ideal site for war games. At the south end of the Block, one turns east from Caroline onto Cedar Place and, at the end of that street, just before the stores that fronted on Broadway, was another empty lot, larger than the one on Astor, but of a similar topography—flat space, hills, and gullies. This was the preferred location for war games. Half way along Cedar Place, coming in from the south, was Cedar Street, which was level for a short distance and then dropped in a significant hill to Highland Avenue. At the point where this street begins to descend was a large property known as the Getty Mansion. The Getty family name is closely associated with much of Yonkers’ history, but which Gettys lived in this house we never did find out. In front of this large house was a drive that circled a lawn big enough for great games of touch football. Behind the house, the property descended to Broadway with yet another marvelous little hill with trees and boulders. No one lived in the house, but an elderly couple came about once or twice a week to check out the house, and, presumably, to clean it out. So, no one disturbed our use of the property. There was something about this deserted but well-kept house that intrigued us—we could see in the windows that the building was expensively furnished and decorated, but for whom? We never knew. Was there someone living secretly inside—maybe locked up in the attic? Why did this couple clean and maintain the house? Were they preparing for some long-lost family member to return? Why was their expensive China laid out on the dining room table, as if dinner was about to be served? What was this very large house—anomalous in our neighborhood—doing here? Had it stood alone at one time? Probably so. We never found out, nor did we try particularly hard to do so—the stories were much more preferable to the

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undoubtedly mundane truth. Most of the property now is part of a new elementary school, which fronts on Broadway and backs on to what was our “football field,” the front lawn of the Getty Mansion. Across the street from this property and slightly north was yet another empty lot. After the dinner hour, this space served as a parking lot for three or four cars—during the day, it was another play area, one more extension of our playground. Cedar Street itself was absolutely perfect for snow sledding in the winter. Given the pitch of the hill, one had to be somewhat courageous to take it all the way down, especially after the first sledders created a packing down that enhanced the slipperiness of the incline. In 1946, Tommy Karras went down at high speed, lost control, crashed into a tree, and got a large sliver of his broken sled in his leg. He was layed up for quite a while, enabling him to have a run as a significant celebrity during his confinement. I still remember the first day, a Saturday, when he was allowed outside—it wasn’t until the spring. His mother brought him out onto their front porch and perched his casted leg on a couch. We immediately stopped our various games and gathered around him to hear about his medical adventures. For a while thereafter, Tommy reigned from his front porch throne as we younger courtiers gathered round. Whenever a formal game was organized on one of our playgrounds— stickball, basketball, ring-a-levio, war, whatever—the older kids took charge of arrangements. Two were the acknowledged leaders who would proceed to choose sides, each leader selecting alternately. If one or both of the usual leaders was not there, the next in line took over. I cannot recall how this hierarchy was determined; it just was. The leaders and those next in line were universally acknowledged, just as if they had been selected and anointed by some higher authority or by election. Age, naturally, had most to do with it, but, since there were many kids the same age, there had to be some other defining characteristics. I have no way of identifying these, except to note that the assumption of leadership by the two was obvious and unarguable, and therefore accepted by all of us. None of us could identify or list what the charismatic factors were; we just recognized them in those who had them. I suppose that is generally true of charisma in all circumstances—“I know it when I see it.” What continues to astonish and please me, even these many years later, is the commitment of these leaders—these older kids—to make sure that everyone who showed up was chosen for a side with no limitations on numbers. The expression that started all the games was, “Let’s choose up sides,” and it took in everyone who was there, except of course for those too little to be able to play. It was as if these leaders were certified play-

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ground supervisors, trained to make certain that every child participated. The two usual leaders on our street in 1946 were Myron Lasher, whose father, a Scot immigrant, delivered coal, and Joe Renner, whose father, a Polish immigrant, owned a local tavern. . Myron or Joe tossed a broomstick to the other, whose challenge it was to grab the stick so far up the end as to prevent the thrower from gaining enough grip to take back the stick. When the receiver was able to grip the thrown stick so as to prevent the thrower to get any kind of grip, then he would get to choose first. Of course, if the thrower could get a grip, then he would choose first. This ritual was not exclusive to our block; it was indigenous in all sections of our area, and, most likely, throughout the country. I wonder who first concocted it, and where and when he did so. The selection process proceeded with each of the leaders selecting a player in turn, until everyone was picked. I was always selected last since. In 1946, I was the smallest kid in the group that was eligible to play. I can still remember either Joe or Myron finishing up the selection by pointing to me, saying, “And I’ll take the little guy.” Even though I have been 5’ 10” and about 240 lbs. for a very long time, my growth spurt did not begin until I was well into junior high school. I still can’t shake off in my mind the sobriquet, “little guy.” But at least I was included—I got to play. I never fail to describe to students in my education classes how this selection process worked. It modeled an excellent example of how kids can be socialized for positions of leadership and responsibility, and for understanding why it is only by organization and mutuality that a community may function productively. If the game was stickball, being picked last meant two things: first, that you batted last, and second, that you played the farthest point in the outfield to be in position to chase after the long balls. No one expected us out there to actually catch a long fly ball, just to be able to run after it and retrieve it. Tennis balls were hard to come by so that there was rarely a spare around. Unfortunately, that retrieval responsibility often included sliding under a parked car to get at the ball. The few instances when we did catch a fly ball brought cheers from the bigger kids that were indescribably delicious. If there were more than nine players on a side, that meant that every one of the “little guys” on each team were crowded together in the “outfield.” Of course each of us hustled like crazy after those balls hoping that our enthusiasm would move us up at least a few rungs in the selection process. But the worst part of being a little guy was not so much the chasing after balls as it was being last in the batting order. That position

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meant getting up to bat only once or, at most, twice, depending on how long the game went. Actually, we seldom reached the ninth inning—it was too hard to get batters and base runners out. Between the facts that most of the kids at bat connected causing our endless chasing of balls, and the time wasted in every game on arguments (“He was out.” “No, he wasn’t; he was safe by a mile.” etc.), we were probably lucky to have even one at-bat per game by the time of the dinner call or, in winter, before it got too dark to see. (Yes, unless there was snow on the ground or the temperature was below freezing, we played stickball even in winter.) We small kids had peripheral roles in the other games as well. In touch football, we were told, “You play the line.” Obviously, we were too small to really block anybody, but, by just standing there, we delayed the defense long enough to allow the quarterbacks—naturally, Joe or Myron—to get off a pass. In basketball, we played guard—“You play outside.” Some games had four of us out there playing guard getting to touch the ball only if it slipped past the older guys playing forward and center. Even then, our only task was to speedily toss the ball back inside to one of our teammates. I cannot recall ever shooting a ball in the organized games. What we shot at was the perennial piece of urban sports equipment—the metal rim from a peach basket—that Joe Renner had nailed to the telephone pole in front of number 55. I was able to shoot only in those instances when the older guys weren’t around, and we little kids played a disorganized version of the game. No matter—we were actually playing with the big kids. What could have been better than that! Sides were chosen for every activity, even snowball fights, and, as I have noted, rules about numbers were happily ignored. When we played basketball, for example, there was no felt need to adhere to the rule about five to a side. Depending on who was out there, we could have three, five, six, or eight to each side. Without realizing it at the time, we smaller kids were learning social and communal behavioral norms from the older kids. They were our models and, on Caroline Avenue, and most other blocks in South Yonkers, these were good role models. Where were the kids who were not good role models? We must have had some. We probably did and I am sure that I have repressed memories of them. But, another reason for forgetting them is that they would never have been granted leadership roles, so either they played by the rules, or they went off by themselves. We had neither time nor patience for destructive behavior. It was not because we were particularly righteous; it was just that there was an unstated but deeply felt realization that chaos would result in the absence of at least a minimal system of organization. Adults, thankfully for us, and for them as well, did

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not supervise us—they had better and more important things to do than watch us play games. These were the days before organized children’s sports—Little League, Pop Warner, and such. We were in charge of our own recreation so rules had to be enforced by the older players, who also were responsible for modifying them in response to physical circumstances, such as a car fender serving as third base, or a tree marking the goal line. While not particularly sophisticated, the rules kept the games going and precluded the chaos that would have canceled games. They also kept the inevitable arguments to a minimum. A second reason, I believe, for this relatively well-organized and functionally successful process for playing our games, came as a consequence of the larger events of our times. I cannot prove this, of course. My contention is a highly speculative one, but, I think, it has support in reason and feeling. We had just come through a devastating economic crisis and a world war. There was a spirit of cooperation in the land that had to have some transference, even to those of us too young to be major players in those two cataclysmic events. Part of that spirit came from the struggles themselves, and part came from the experience each family had in coping with those difficult events. We all were familiar with the examples of this coping by members of the Block’s families. Joe Renner’s brother-in-law, for example, was one of the first soldiers to scale the mountain at Berchtesgaden and enter Hitler’s retreat. The story on the Block was that he was, in fact, the first. There were many others from the Block in the services. Their stories had to give us some sense of higher purpose as well as a reluctance to engage in destructive behavior. Following the horrible events of September 11, 2001, Americans have demonstrated in many venues the same kind of suspension of animosity and exclusion as we did on the Block. Sadly, but not surprisingly, that inclusive impulse has excluded those of us from the Middle East and South Asia. Recent actions by the police and Homeland Security to profile Asian immigrants and communities are a striking reminiscence of the experience suffered by Japanese-Americans in 1942. With this significantly disheartening reminder of Americans’ capacity to discriminate as an exception, the country seems to have experienced again the proverbial “pulling together.” I believe that impulse had particularly great power and influence in 1946. Finally, I think that the kids on the Block saw no purpose in exclusion, since none of us came from ethnicities that were beyond the pale. I often wonder now if we would have been as generous with a black, Asian, or Latino kid. Since we did interact with the few kids from those minority

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groups that attended Number 19, we most likely would have done so on the street as well. I cannot see any of our leaders excluding any kid who showed up to play. But, given the racial boundaries of those days, I have no way of asserting it would have played out that way. There is some evidence, however, to support my supposition. When I was older—from the fifth grade on, I went with friends to Vark Street Park and to Buena Vista Park for pick-up basketball games, and these were always interracial. Both parks were near the few streets with African-American residents, so we always black kids on the basketball courts. What I do recall with certainty is that our main task was to get the games started, so that spending precious minutes excluding people or badgering them would have delayed our starting time and cut our playing time. On our playground and on similar playgrounds throughout South Yonkers, the melting pot was real and active. The further wonder of it is that in some cases, these kids were members of ethnic groups that, in their homelands, were killing each other. In my 40 years in teaching, I have seen the power and wonder of this suspension of old animosities in the American context. I have had as students, in the same classroom: Serbs and Croats, Turks and Armenians, Japanese and Chinese, Indians and Pakistanis, Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, Arabs and Jews. These students came from groups who were and are violently confronting each other in their home countries. But here in the United States they are playing and studying together in our public schools. Those of us who have observed young people in school settings over time, have experienced the pleasure, and, yes, wonder, of this persistent theme of amalgamation and fraternity. That reality, together with the protections written in to the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, are undeniably the two aspects that most define this country as unique and wonderful. An equally persistent reality, however, is that this same society that celebrated diversity at places like our Block, simultaneously, in too many other places, excludes some members from the celebration. How incredibly angering and frustrating it must be to American people of color to witness this amalgamating process among the groups within the dominant white domain, while it is systematically denied to them. Preventing many Americans from enjoying what we had on the Block is a deeply immoral flaw in our country’s history and in its present. Too many whites and a few African-Americans, while accurately noting and emphasizing the improved status of people of color, understate how much more needs to be done to reach full equity. Too many Americans, white and minority alike, have forgotten what a difficult struggle, often a violent one, that journey has

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been. Too many have ignored the uncomfortable truth that what we had on the Block has been denied to so many children in our society. Naturally we didn’t think too much on such profound issues on Caroline Avenue. Yes, there were the occasional “philosophic” bull sessions. I remember with remarkable clarity of one such discussion, on a beautiful summer afternoon, on a stoop at a three-decker on Astor Place. I don’t remember how it started, but we were going on about whether or not the American Indians had been shabbily treated. My hunch is that the discussion got its start from our seeing one of the innumerable Western movies of the time. One side of our cohort argued that the Indians were savage and had to be tamed even if by military force; others argued that the savagery by Indians during the fighting came only from their being put on the defensive by the encroaching and often villainous whites. I recall with not a little astonishment how Myron Lasher brought the discussion to a close by pronouncing that there just was no argument against the fact that the country had “messed over” the Indians and had “stolen their lands.” Most of the group agreed with Myron’s pronouncement so the discussion came to an end. Not a bad insight from a bunch of kids from immigrant families, sitting on a stoop in South Yonkers, on a peaceful summer afternoon on the Block. This discussion also illustrates why we can surmise that the leaders on our Block would not have excluded any kid from our games, regardless of his or her race, ethnicity, or religion. Mostly our objective was quite simple—to get in as much playing time as possible between school and dinner on weekdays and between sun-up and dinner on Saturdays. The weather did not matter. We played in rain and snow as well as on sunny days. In 1946, cars were still in limited numbers on the Block so that very few came through to interrupt play, and there weren’t more than two or three parked on the street at any one time. If one of the parked cars was in just the right place, some part of it served as a base in stickball or as the marker for the goal line in touch football. Actually, a few of the residents proved to be more of a hindrance to our games than were the cars. These cranks came out to their porches to yell that we were making too much noise. The most persistent of these spoilsports was Mrs. Bubaco, who loudly informed us to go away, since our noise was preventing her husband, a night-shift worker, from getting his sleep. Actually, her yelling, that was invariably at a decibel level that could have awakened the dead, must have been more effective in disturbing his sleep than our comparatively pitiful efforts. Fortunately, most of the people recognized that we were better off playing stickball than engaging in some

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other activity, and so they let us alone. Some of the retired men would even take a few minutes to watch our games. The Block was one of the contexts, outside ethnicity and family, in which our identity formation took place. Besides serving us as a playground, it was where we learned to transcend differences and where we were initiated into the socialization of cooperation. As Ray Suarez notes in the quotation cited above, “We knew each other then. We saw our own faces plainly, in the mirror and in each other’s eyes.” We had several other games besides sports—ring-a-levio, hide-andseek (very popular), buck-buck (for the older males), hopscotch, Germany, and tag. From spring through fall, we played a lot of marbles games on the small plots of grass on the sidewalks. Since none of these actually had grass but were dirt plots, they provided us with a number of suitable locations for playing marbles. On any day, a passer-by could see four or five marble games going on in the various dirt plots. Most of us had an appreciable collection of marbles that we risked in the games. Most of the non-sport games were co-ed. We also had catered refreshments. During each day, we had three regular ice cream vendors come by—Eskimo Pie, Good Humor and Frozen Custard. This last was a local outfit, a truck with a cottage-like structure on the truck bed. This “cottage” had a large window with a counter on the street side, at which we lined up for either a frozen custard type of ice cream or hot dogs. The Frozen Custard truck that visited the streets of South Yonkers reached Caroline Avenue between eight and nine at night. The downside of the truck’s arrival was that it marked the end of our outside time since our parents let us stay out just until its arrival. After we ate whatever we bought from the truck, we knew it was time to go in. We ate the hot dogs or the ice cream sitting on the stoops or on the curb, and then went in to our apartments. The arrival of that truck was the benediction for our playtime. The other two ice cream trucks reached our street sometime between the end of school and the beginning of the dinner hour. The second external context that advanced our assimilation was the school. In fact, public schools were set up for exactly this purpose and that expectation is still the primary motivation for American public schooling. This experimental nation, made up from its beginnings with a diverse population, could not have survived much less thrived without a common culture. And where better might this commonality be bred and encouraged than in schools? In their early iterations, during the formative years of the Republic, elementary schools were revealingly called “common schools.”

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For us on the Block and for those from the other blocks in Number 19’s district, the school, like our playtime, provided a common experience. A few kids went to St. Mary’s and fewer still to St. Peter’s. Most of us from Caroline Avenue, however—Catholic as well as Protestant—attended Number 19. Being a neighborhood school, as were all the public schools in the city, it was easy to quickly develop that comfortable sense of belonging. The school building still stands, even though it is boarded up. It is as solid and stolid a building as can be imagined. The frame structure is of massive granite blocks with yellow brick in between, with tall windows in most of the classrooms. The building impresses one as being able to withstand even an earthquake. There was something reassuring about that mass of stone. Inside, reinforcing this impression of strength and endurance, are walls, ceilings, and floors of solid wood, probably oak. Windows in the classrooms and the assembly hall were quite large, so that we could see parts of the Hudson River from several locations in the school. This capacity to look out over the houses, and see the river and the Palisades beyond, just emphasized the sense of the power and high standing of the school within the community. An interesting feature of the school, reflective of the geography of Yonkers, is that the main floor, with a second floor above, opens on Groshon Avenue, while the lower floor opens on Jackson Street, down the hill. This position atop the hill, together with the strength of its structure, represented the school’s paramountcy in our lives and in our assimilation process. I loved Number 19, from day one in Kindergarten (well, probably day two, since I must have been a little homesick on the first day) right through until graduation from sixth grade. My mother took me the first day, when she and the other mothers were able to stay in the Kindergarten classroom for the day. After that, Sue Nweeia took me with her. She and her cousin, and mine, Alice Ameer, George’s daughter, were classmates at Number 19, and remained so through Hawthorne Junior High School and the High School of Commerce. By the time I was in Grade One, I didn’t need the escort and just walked eagerly with the other kids in my age group. There was so much to that school—studies, games, friends, discoveries, films, books—that it would have been unlikely to not want to go each morning. My memories of Number 19 are filled with scenes of laughter, of kids having a good time. Much of that is obviously a reflection of my own experience there, but not entirely. Even the few encounters with bullies pale beside the many more instances of play, conversations, classes, and discoveries. We talked about the movies, especially the serials, and about our radio programs. We knew the daily batting averages of most baseball

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stars, especially those of the Yankees. Neither professional basketball, nor professional football, came within our scope of interest in those days—we focused on professional baseball and college football. Just imagine the powerful appeal that baseball inevitably had for us in and around New York City—we had the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers. This meant that, during my school years, looking just at the center field positions, we had Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Duke Snider. Joe D ended his career in 1951, the year in which both Mantle and Mays debuted. Snider’s first Dodger game was in 1947. Add to those four, other stars—Berra, Mize, Hodges, Reese, Robinson, Campanella, Ford, Raschi, Roe, Newcombe, Woodling, Maris, Dark, and the rest, and you can understand what an exciting time and place this was for Yonkers residents. The college football players we watched at that time played for Notre Dame, Army, and Navy. Army’s Felix “Doc” Blanchard (1945) and Glenn Davis (1946) and Notre Dame’s Johnny Lujack (1947) were Heismann Trophy winners. There were a variety of special events that pleasantly interrupted the regular pattern of school days. A Field Day was scheduled every May, when each of the classes in each grade competed in a range of track and field events. Visiting lecturers brought films made during their travels to exotic places and, in those pre-television days, we all trooped in to the assembly hall with great excitement. It must be virtually impossible for the people who came after us, with all the views on the world that television provides (“Where in the World is Matt Lauer?”), to imagine how thrilling it was for us to have the travelogue assemblies. We did have access in the movie theaters to the various short features on travel—“As we bid a fond farewell to our friends in the coffee fields of Columbia...”—but even those did not have the immediacy of the visiting lecturers. They had been there! They had actually made these films themselves while in the Amazon, or on the Serengeti Plain, or in the mountains of Tibet. Another diversion, and an honor, was being selected in the sixth grade to serve on the safety patrol. Admittedly, because there were fewer cars then, our task of getting the little kids safely across streets was considerably less demanding than it is now for the paid, adult crossing guards. That didn’t diminish our sense of self-importance, however; when we put on our distinctive safety patrol badges and told kids when it was safe to cross the street, we felt the power. If you were assigned, as I was, together with Ken Stanley, to the corner at Herriot and Jackson Streets, out of sight of the school building and beyond the scrutiny of teachers, the duty was even more desirable. Because we were entrusted with manning this outpost of the patrol, we naturally assumed an attitude of superiority. An additional

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serendipity for me was that being far from other patrol members, and beyond the ears of our teachers, I benefited from Ken’s greater acquaintance with the facts of life. He was comfortably emboldened to inform me constantly about how knowledgeable he was about sexual matters. He added enormously, though undoubtedly inaccurately, to the meager store of information I had about sex. Other breaks from the routine included participation in school productions—plays and operettas. One of the operettas that we put on was actually written by one of my classmates, Elaine Swartz, a wonderfully bright and talented student. We also had a small orchestra—not bad for a public school in a working class district. It is distressing to note that music programs in public schools, instead of building upon what we had back in the 1940s, are actually being cut back—part of the idiocy that characterizes so much of educational decision-making in current public school districts. The school provided us with the wonderful annual ritual of the painting exhibits. On one day each spring, in each classroom, a collection of 4” by 6” prints of famous paintings were placed on the chalkboard trays around each classroom. Each painting had an item number. We then went around and jotted this number down on an order form for each painting that we wanted. I think that prints cost from a few cents to a dime each. What a wonderfully simple, inexpensive, yet effective way to encourage art appreciation in children. Since we would not likely get to an art museum, the art works were brought to us. I usually jotted down all but a few of the paintings; my parents never begrudged this expense. When the prints arrived, most of us pasted them in composition books that we carried around with pride and enthusiasm. We were fortunate in those days in having available what are now called extracurricular activities and co-curricular classes. We had required classes in art and music every week, every year, from grades one through six, and even on to our seventh and eighth grades. And we had P.E. classes in the gym almost every day. In fact, the teaching staffs of the city’s elementary schools, including Number 19, included a full or part-time P.E. teacher. It therefore seems beyond belief to those of us in education that now, sixty years later, as with music offerings, schools are cutting down drastically on P.E. classes and on recess time as well. Instead of the current spate of high-stakes testing, we were provided with numerous opportunities to expand our understanding of Western culture while simultaneously improving our skills in the basics of literacy and numeracy. Thus, we were spared the testing hysteria that is currently eroding the best aspects of public education. Most schools are now in the

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process of dropping or have already dropped classes in art, music, and physical education. A large number of elementary schools have also cancelled recess. Imagine elementary age children without morning recess— the kids must be climbing the walls! Consider the absurdity of elementary school children in 1946 having more than those in schools in 2004! Instead of participating in these enriching opportunities, elementary age students today are marched in lock step through the preparation and sitting for these misbegotten tests. How thankful I am that I was at Number 19 in the 1940s. Disciplinary situations in the school consisted of minor infractions, and the only policemen who came by were those who spoke in the assembly about safety rules. Our school, like our streets, was safe. As early as 1800, Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi insisted that the prerequisite for effective education was a safe and nurturing environment. We had that in the Yonkers schools, right from Kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Crime for us was what we heard on the radio in programs like Gangbusters, This is Your FBI, Sam Spade, and Dick Tracy, watched at the movies, or read in the Daily News and Daily Mirror. It was not something we encountered in schools or on the way to them. Most people have heard too often from members of my generation the story with some variation on a common theme. It usually is expressed as, “In our time, when we were disciplined at school, our parents would reinforce that with discipline at home. If I was spanked at school, then, when I got home, my father also spanked me.” I cannot begin to count the number of times that I have heard this. It has very little truth to it. I am sure something like that probably happened on occasion, but not much. In the first place, if one were disciplined at school, why would he go home and tell his parents? Why invite more punishment? In the second place, teachers at Number 19 were not permitted to use physical punishment. In the third place, there was an efficient symbiosis then between home and school— each was assumed to be able to take care of its area of responsibility without interference from the other. The only time that notes about behavior went home was to report a particular student’s pattern of repeat offenses. This unspoken agreement, constituting almost a contract, was that the public schools undertook the education necessary to ensure that the immigrants’ children learned the basics so as to be able to succeed in job or in college, and the parents, in turn, would assume responsibility for raising their children to behave. One consequence of this was that the school felt comfortable in taking responsibility for meting out routine punishment. I

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cannot imagine any parent in those days threatening law suits or raising any other kind of fuss because their child had been disciplined. I do not wish to exaggerate the effectiveness of this symbiosis. Many kids did not do as well as they should have in Number 19, but even these students did not engage in the type of resistance and rebellion we see too often in modern public schools. A kid who acted up in class faced peer displeasure, in the form of ridicule and ostracism, which was at least as effective as punishment from the teachers. As for those who did not act up, but did not do as well as they should in academics, the district’s method of dealing with this was to ghettoize these students within a tracking system. We had A, B, and C tracks, A for the highest performing students, C for those just scraping by academically, and B for the perennial middle of acceptable but undistinguished work. I was in the A track, and I cannot bring to mind any student who was moved into our track from B or C during all of the years from grades one through six. At the same time, I remember a few of the kids in the A track who had much more difficulty than most of us in mastering new material. But none of them were moved “down” to the B track. Obviously, once a student was placed, the administration was little interested in reviewing and revising a placement decision. This suggests, of course, that the system was assumed to be infallible, so that tracking decisions became irrevocable. I believe that there was a particularly compelling reason for the reluctance to move students between tracks: In such a tightly constructed tracking system, being moved from A to B or from B to C, would have been considered a demotion by the students, not dissimilar from being “left back” a grade. Consequently, such a move would be interpreted by the student and his family as a humiliation. Instead, they were relegated to the continuing embarrassment of coming up short regularly in daily lessons. I assume that the results from this academic frustration were deemed, on balance, less debilitating than being moved between tracks. I hope that the fun and games that we so enjoyed modified some of the sting and gave some pleasure to those kids. Educators argue regularly on both sides of the tracking issue, but I know of no teacher who supports the concept of rigid and unchanging tracking placements. The teachers and staff were all of Western European background; I did not encounter a teacher from a Middle Eastern background, either Assyrian or other, until my junior year in college. The absence of such teachers did not constitute a deficiency. I had plenty of Assyrian adults in our community to serve as role models and instructors in educating me about our ethnic heritage. The teachers I did have at Number 19 were an

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unforgettable group whose positive influence on me, and on most of my peers, is immeasurable: Kindergarten, Mrs. Napoliello; First Grade, Miss Cauley (from Caroline Avenue); Second Grade, Miss Broderick; Third Grade, Mrs. Halpin (who lived in the Riverview Gardens); Fourth Grade, Mrs. Sullivan; Fifth Grade, Miss Lally (whose brother was the city’s Fire Chief); Sixth Grade, Miss Bartlett (a quintessential Boston Yankee). The principal was Miss Whelan, a charismatic woman who dressed immaculately, walked rapidly and purposefully through the halls in what we would now describe as a “power walk,” who was obviously in charge, and who was not someone any of us wanted to cross. What these women gave to us youngsters is beyond measure; what the ethnic communities gave them in turn was their profound respect. I remember the adults joking about politicians (always), lawyers (mostly), clergy (often), and doctors (seldom), but about teachers, rarely, and about the better known and long serving teachers—never. While we kids often imitated or parodied some of the teachers, our elders did not. They honored the work that these women did and were grateful for it. How different from the orgiastic bashing of public school teachers during the last forty years in this country! By thus supporting the work of teachers, therefore, the families significantly increased the probabilities of successful academic achievement by their children. Most of us went to school with messages from our families that we should do as well as we could, that school success was important, and that we should give to our teachers the same attention as we gave to our parents. For most of us, this mutuality resulted in productive outcomes— access to college or to good-paying jobs in commerce, trades, and factories. Getting successfully through high school with a diploma was a passport to economic self-sufficiency and comfortable living arrangements. What a remarkable quid pro quo—get through your schooling and the society will virtually guarantee that you will have middle class status. For those of us growing up in cities like Yonkers in the 1940s and ’50s, and who were white, this was recognized as a promise, having almost the sanctity of a contract. For members of minority groups, this possibility was there as well, but was intentionally limited. Opportunity for those kids was hindered by a number of qualifiers and obstacles that held back and even discouraged many members of those groups, especially the young males. My goal, right from the beginning, was to go to college. My parents had imbued that early on and impressed on me the need to do well in school. It was not a burden to live with, however, since I always enjoyed reading and studying. Number 19 provided many of the resources I needed

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for these activities. One of the more impressive of these was the school’s library, a large, two-story room immediately on the left as one entered from Groshon Avenue. The library was not open at all times; teachers took classes there by prearrangement and monitored their classes during this time. There must have been either a part-time librarian or a teacher who had care of the library as one of her duties—I cannot recall the exact arrangement. My first visit came in the spring of my first grade year. Miss Cauley had signed us up to spend an hour in the library. I couldn’t wait. I had glimpsed the room on a few occasions when the door was open. The walls naturally were lined with bookcases of a dark oak. The furniture included chairs and tables of this same dark wood with green leather-like upholstery. Some of the chairs were single-seaters; others were couches. And then there were all of those books. Books had been a significant part of my life as far back as I could remember. My mother read to me until I learned to read for myself. When I was five and eligible for a library card, she took me to the public library on South Broadway. The first book I checked out was The Song of Roland (my mother’s French influence), which she helped me to read, since the style and vocabulary were difficult. In addition to that stimulus, I could not but notice that my father could not pass a book without opening it and skimming it or reading it purposefully. I was especially fortunate in that Sue Nweeia started teaching me how to read when I was four and continued to instruct me well into my fifth year. She set up our living room as a classroom and played teacher; I was the only pupil. Sue is a born teacher. Having worked with teachers since 1966, I fancy that I am able to recognize those who have what Horace Mann called “the intuition to teach well,” so I can assert without qualification that Sue was in that group. She had me through the alphabet in a short time and soon reading sentences. By the time I was in Kindergarten, I could read the basic books, and, by the time I was in First Grade, I was able to read the local and city papers. The positive impact of that fortunate combination—instruction from my mother and from Sue, the example of my father’s intellectual curiosity, and the availability of the resources of the school and the public libraries—cannot be overstated. I have been in love with books for all of my life. The main branch of the Yonkers Public Library was on the corner of Broadway and Nepperhan Avenue at the edge of the complex that includes the City Hall and the courts building. It was constructed of the same powerful gray granite stone as was Number 19, and its interior was a larger version of our school library—beautiful dark wood and furniture upholstered in both green and brown. The second floor housed some

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rooms with stacks and a large children’s room that took up most of the space of that floor. This was an impressively large, high-ceiling room, hexagonal as I recall, with windows near the ceiling forming a border of light on all the walls. The circulation and reference desks were in the center. On most afternoons and on all Saturdays, the children’s room was full. At first, I went there with my mother. At some point during my elementary years, probably at the third grade, I was permitted to go by myself or with friends. On several Saturdays, the staff of the children’s room arranged for free showings of movies, mostly animated films and travelogues. The library was open Monday through Friday, from 8 in the morning to 10 or 11 at night. On Saturdays and Sundays it closed at 6. This unlimited access has been seriously constrained in the last twenty years. Just recently, for example, the public libraries in Worcester have closed down on Sundays and Mondays. Once again, our society has let economics trump social justice and equity. I still cannot resist visiting a public library whenever I am in a town for the first time, but what I note too frequently is a staggered set of library hours such as: Monday closed; Tuesday 8 to 12 noon; Wednesday, 1 to 5; and so on. What has happened to us? There is a sad footnote to this story of our public library. When I returned to the city, I noted that the magnificent library building is gone. Instead of this temple of learning, the library available to the kids in South Yonkers had been moved into the building that had been Genung’s Department Store. Instead of granite, wood and leather, the kids entered a bland, nondescript building characterized by stained and sagging aluminum frames. What happened to the original? It was torn down so that Nepperhan Avenue could be widened. Why would a street that carries a small amount of local traffic need to be so significantly widened at the place where it enters South Broadway, only a few blocks from the Hudson River? It so much resembles the kind of inept pattern of decision-making by Yonkers’ government officials. We had come to accept this pattern and believed, correctly or not, that there had to be some corruption as well. Whatever company had the contract to widen Nepperhan Avenue had to have made a nice bundle on the project. Fortunately, for South Yonkers’ youngsters, a new main library building opened recently down by the river with some of the majesty of the original building.

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Those readers who may wish to see the majestic exterior of our library can view it in the film Goodbye, Columbus. In the movie, the Richard Benjamin character works in a library, and our former library was the location used for the exterior shots.54 We could not afford too many books at home, so the school and public libraries were crucial resources. I owned a Bible, naturally, and a dictionary; then, in high school, my parents gave me a volume of Shakespeare’s plays. That book had a role in a telling incident in college. I had the good fortune to be accepted to Yale University in 1954. I was an “affirmative action” recipient. They didn’t call it that then, but that is exactly what it was. Many of the Ivy League colleges, including Yale, had decided to increase the number of students from public high schools, in order to achieve more of a balance between private and public school students at their universities. Many of us, therefore, from public high schools, were actively recruited to make application. Three of us from Yonkers, one from each of the three academic high schools—Yonkers, Gorton, and Roosevelt—were contacted by Yale’s alumni representative in the area, Cornelius Van Ness Wood, who took us up to the university, arranged for interviews with admissions staff, and generally shepherded our applications. Wood was the developer of the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers, the first of these malls that now permeate most of the country, and he was keen on getting more students from the city to attend his alma mater. It is probable that some of us who applied from public high schools had lower test scores than some applicants from private schools who were not accepted. With about four times as many applicants as openings available in the freshman class, the admissions committee had to make determinations based on numerous factors. Since all of us had test scores that fell within the acceptable range, other considerations had to come in to play, and, often, these considerations led to acceptance of students with lower scores than other students who did not receive acceptance. That is affirmative action, a perfectly understandable and useful strategy for universities to use to assure the kind of ethnic, cultural, geographic, and career diversity that enhances the life of the undergraduates. Apparently,

Paramount/Willow Tree (1969) Goodbye Columbus. Produced by Stanley Jaffe. Directed by Larry Peerce. Written by Arnold Schulman. 54

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affirmative action is now unacceptable to many people, because it includes race and ethnicity, where it had been acceptable when attending to other variables. At any rate, I did go to New Haven, happily, and finally overcame the culture shock of crossing over from South Yonkers to Yale University. In my first English class, however, I experienced an aspect of this affirmative action program that was not so positive. Clearly, some of the faculty members were not as committed to this strategy of inclusiveness as were the university’s administrators and trustees. This English professor, a man who had a national reputation in his field, distributed the course syllabus that included a list of books to purchase. As a scholarship student, I was pinching pennies, so I asked if I could use the volume I already owned, instead of purchasing the listed one. Anticipating that we would certainly be reading some Shakespeare plays, I had brought my book to class. The professor took the book, made an ostentatious display of reading the book jacket blurb, imbuing his voice with obvious disdain and not a little sarcasm. He was playing to the other members of the class in a classic display of unacceptable teacher behavior, saying to me, through a smirk, “No; buy the edition on the list.” I was not aware that Shakespeare had written multiple versions of his plays, and I knew that the plays in my book were not abridged, so I failed to see why I needed a second copy. But, freshmen are singularly powerless (at least in 1954 they were), so I purchased the “preferred” edition. This professor’s contempt for us public school products continued right up to the end of the semester. As with most of the public school graduates, I struggled during that first semester. Our academic preparation for university was considerably less than it should have been. As good an education as we received in the Yonkers schools, it could have been even more academically rigorous. Most of the students who were products of private schools, on the other hand, moved more easily and comfortably into the university regimen, having had similar academic demands and programs in their secondary education. Most of the faculty did recognize this and provided supportive suggestions and a good deal of encouragement. This authority on American literature, on the other hand, remained unmoved right to the end. On the final semester exam, I scored one of the better grades in the class. When I had my post-exam conference with this professor, he remarked at how surprised he was at my achievement, saying, “You must have lucked out in the questions.” So much for positive reinforcement.

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In our first week in the university, we freshmen had individual sessions with our faculty advisors. When I had mine, the advisor, another member of the English faculty, looked at my folder, then at me, and said, “It looks like you’re going to have a tough time here.” I had no idea what he was talking about—I had done very well in school, and I had been accepted at Yale—what could he mean? Perhaps there was something wrong with my SAT scores. I did not know what they were. Current students will be dumbfounded to learn that in those days we were not permitted to know our SAT or Achievement Test scores. When the scores came to the high school, the counselor could only tell us: “You did well on that test, not so well on this test, and very well on that test,” or some variety of those statements. So, I did not know what information in my folder prompted such negative reinforcement from my advisor. Fortunately, my puzzlement was more powerful than my distress, so that the damage that might have been done was precluded. I have to believe that he, too, was not happy with this influx of public school “barbarians” into his elite enclave. Most faculty and students at that time were unhappy with the inadequacy of the advisory system. They argued that students should have had more contact with their advisors during the first year of college. Most of us saw these advisors only in the first week when we needed signatures on our course forms. For me, that was obviously more than enough contact. I did receive my bachelor’s degree from Yale and, many years later, a master’s degree and a doctor’s degree from Harvard. I very much regretted that both of these elitist snobs had passed away by the time I completed my doctorate. I would have thoroughly enjoyed finding them and shoving my doctor’s degree up both of their turned-up noses. Happily, these two were not representative of the college’s faculty. They were the exceptions. Besides, I had the constant positive reinforcement of all my teachers from Kindergarten through Grade Twelve. I thoroughly enjoyed my years at Yale, and my affection and gratitude to that university remain boundless. The most important part of the story is that the public school program worked, even with the shortcomings in our academic preparation. The payoff that was promised to those of us who maintained our academic standings at P.S. 19, Hawthorne Junior High School, and Yonkers High School was real. The American promise of equal access was fulfilled for the thousands of us, regardless of our economic conditions, who wanted to go on to post-secondary education. In this present time, when the costs for private and public higher education have become astronomical, our country must be vigilant about

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maintaining this access. The cost of tuition, room, board, and fees at Yale in 1954 was $1,600. I received a scholarship for that full amount; about onethird of the entering class was on some form of scholarship assistance, from partial to full. As college costs have skyrocketed, the amount of financial assistance available must keep pace or else the access that I and my other working class peers had will vanish, and we shall indeed become the elitist, hierarchical society that my English teacher and my advisor so thoroughly cherished. On October 9, 2004, our Yonkers High School class had its fiftieth reunion. It was a truly wonderful experience. Of the 135 members of the class, sixty-five were in attendance, many with spouses, friends, and significant others. Only thirty-two of our classmates had died—a testament to the development of modern medicine in this country. What struck me right at the outset of the celebration was the ease with which we greeted each other. Except for two or three of my classmates whom I had run into in the ten years since we graduated, I had not seen the rest since our June graduation day. Yet, it was truly as if we had just graduated—the familiarity and ease we had being together that October day was indeed remarkable. It speaks to three important truths. First, as a class of only 135, we had enjoyed the benefits of what are now called “small learning communities.” There is a significantly large amount of research supporting the argument that students derive greater benefits from small schools than from the large comprehensive high schools so dear to traditional educators. The experience of our class of ’54 is anecdotal reinforcement of this research. At Yonkers High School, all the students, across the three grades, knew each other, and every faculty member knew each of us whether we had been in their classrooms or not. The support and encouragement that this school climate provides for successful student achievement cannot be overstated. We were spared the deadly anonymity of the large school. The second truth is that there was something very special about that class of ’54. I doubt that a week has gone by in the fifty years since I graduated that I have not thought about my classmates. I have not the slightest doubt that those recollections fortified and encouraged me throughout my adult life. There was such a spirit of mutuality, concern, and friendliness among us that it inevitably carried over and remained with us for the many years since we were together. I am sorry for all those high school kids who did not experience the comradeship that we had at YHS. Third, much of the positive attitude that energized us derived from the realization, proven in experience, that access to our aspirations was real. For

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those graduating American high schools in 1954, the country was indeed their oyster. One was free to choose to go on to college, to join the military, to work in a factory, to learn a trade, to be involved in construction, to become a police officer or firefighter, to be primarily a homemaker, or to pursue any one of dozens of other options. And, the paths to each of these options lay open before us. I have already described the manner in which the competitive colleges diminished the factor of money as a prerequisite. Other prerequisites were also removed or lessened, so that the choice was much more a matter of one’s capacities and ambitions than it was of boundaries and obstacles. When we reunited in 2004, we came together as active or retired teachers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, homemakers, construction foremen, secretaries, nurses, writers, financiers, accountants, salespersons, carpenters, electricians, and so on. Because we were aware that all of these choices were there for us, our time in high school could be exciting, happy, and promising. The final external context that reinforced the process of our assimilation was the media, which, in 1946, meant radio, comic books, and, overwhelmingly, the movies. It is impossible to overstate the influence of the movies on my generation—on our attitudes, our understanding of relationships, our knowledge of history. Of course, a good deal of what we learned we had later to unlearn, but the impact on us was powerful nevertheless. From Wednesdays through Mondays, RKO Proctors and Loews theaters on Broadway showed first-run films, usually with second billing B films. (We always pronounced Loews as “Loweeze.”) Then, on Tuesdays, each theater had a double-bill of older films brought back as re-runs. That was critically important since it was the only way we could see films that were released before our time. It must be hard for contemporary Americans, who have access to the complete library of American and foreign films through Internet, video stores, and catalogs, to understand how dependent we were on the theaters. Had they not showcased the old films on Tuesdays, I would not have seen Gunga Din, The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and so many others, until the arrival of videotapes. And then, on most Saturdays, the theaters scheduled in the mornings a feast of kids shows—about two hours of cartoons, a few “selected short subjects,” like Pete Smith’s Specialties, and one feature film,

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usually a Western, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, and Roy Rogers being the most often screened.55 Should we miss a new release at Proctors or Loews, we would get a second opportunity since those films went to either the Strand or Park Hill theaters—both also on Broadway—before they left town. Inevitably, some modeling of preferable behavior was transmitted through movies, and not just through the Westerns. Consider, for example, the role models that were up there on the screen for us boys: Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Ronald Colman, William Powell, Joel McCrea, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Young, Preston Foster, Cary Grant, Robert Taylor, Gregory Peck, Paul Henreid, Paul Lukas, John Garfield, Robert Montgomery, Dennis O’Keefe, Fred MacMurray, Donald Crisp, Paul Muni, Dana Andrews, Frederic March, Randolph Scott, Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Henry Wilcoxon, Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Errol Flynn, Dick Powell, Lloyd Nolan, James Cagney, Ray Milland, Tyrone Power, John Payne, Victor Mature. Putting aside the personal lives of these men (that was of no interest to us youngsters), and focusing only on the screen personas, one can get insight into the clues we were receiving about appropriate adult male behavior. To access this insight, one might view just one film for each of these stars, and make comparisons. I believe that by doing so one can decipher a composite image of the preferred behavior for adult males. This will include characteristics of maturity, inner strength, a sense of responsibility,

55 It is interesting to recall, especially in comparison to modern Westerns, how little violence there was in those cowboy movies to which we were addicted. In fact, as one observer has noted, there was very little blood. At the same time, there were a number of important lessons for us youngsters. In The Boston Globe of July 7, 1998, Michael Blowen makes some critically important observations about the Roy Rogers show: “Every week, Rogers, along with his wife, Dale Evans, and sidekick, Pat Brady, made the world safer by capturing the bad guys. And they did it without killing. The guns, when they did come out, disarmed the villains. In the years the show ran—from 1951 to 1957—not one drop of blood was ever spilled...Unlike so many of today’s role models, Rogers stood for something. He believed in doing the right thing. He believed in stand standing up for the downtrodden and earning respect through heroism. He believed in hard work and in an America where everyone got a fair shot...”

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self-discipline, compassion, patriotism, feelings of protectiveness toward the weak, tolerance, chivalry, honesty and integrity, self-reliance and confidence, and an appropriate degree of reticence. Of course, only a scripted character could exemplify all of these characteristics, but this is exactly what was done. It was left to each of us to assume as much of this image as we could, and of course we could not come close. On the other hand, this is not a bad list of characteristics and aspirations to model for growing boys. I wondered how boys from minority groups related to these messages, since all of these role models were white. I subsequently learned from the comments of black and Latino men that they too absorbed the message generated by these film personas, even across the racial borders. It was obviously necessary, however, that while they were integrating the message, as all of us were, they needed to filter out the negative stereotypes of blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Indians that were also part of the movies. It is interesting that so many of these minority youngsters were able to separate characteristics from color. That is a kind of maturity to which young white boys were not forced to develop. Too many white youngsters, sadly, followed the dark path that has been part of our country’s landscape, virtually from the beginning, and assumed the negative stereotypes to be accurate portrayals. They failed even to try to filter out the destructive stereotypes. As a result, even the patriotic films about the war, with rare exception, perpetuated these dishonest portrayals of people of color endemic to our society. The destructive consequences of portrayals of Germans and Japanese in the war films of the 1940s had residual impact long after the war. The images were unarguably forceful and there were so many of them that the persistence of their impact not surprisingly continued after the war. It is perfectly understandable that the film industry would mobilize itself to produce patriotic movies during the war. Was it necessary for them to go as far as they did in presenting the brutality of the enemy? History has shown that the movies’ depiction of German Nazis and Japanese militarists as brutal were essentially correct. In fact, the full brutality of the Nazis’ persecution of Jews and others appeared on screen in such documentaries as Night and Fog,56 but did not get powerful film treatment until the 1980s,

56

Argos Films (1955) Night and Fog. Directed by Alain Resnais.

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with movies such as The Grey Zone and Triumph of the Spirit.57 Bringing the horrible realities to the screen is not the issue. Rather, the persistence of the negative images came more from the films’ characterizations than from the historical realities; it is the way in which the German and Japanese characters were fleshed out on screen. If they had actually been as primitively bestial and stupid as they were depicted on screen, the war should have been over in a matter of months. Instead, because the military of both countries were so formidable and because the concentration camp administrators were so efficient in their evil, a great deal of Allied blood and treasure was expended before victory was accomplished. Only a few of the early war films, notably Corvette K-225 (1943) and Action in the North Atlantic (1943), attempted to provide filmgoers with insight into the terrible realities of war. Most of the war films were sugarcoated so as to avoid frightening the American population. There was nothing even remotely close to 1998’s Saving Private Ryan in putting the war’s horror on the screen. Saving Private Ryan was the culmination of a development in increasingly realistic war portrayals that began with the release, in 1945, of William Wellman’s Story of G I Joe and continued with movies such as The Cruel Sea (1953).58 I have no argument with the several World War II movies that portrayed the heroism of American and other Allied soldiers and sailors in that war. In truth, there was enough heroism to inspire generations of Americans. Filmmakers just needed to be attentive to longrange consequences as well. The greatest horror of World War II is that the Nazis and Japanese were not inhuman aliens that descended from the skies or came up out Dante’s inferno. They were in fact people, and that is what

Lion’s Gate (2001) The Grey Zone. Produced by Pamela Koffer, Christine Vachon, Tim Blake Nelson, Avi Lerner, and Danny Lerner. Directed and written by Nelson; MGM (1989) The Triumph of the Spirit . Directed by Robert M. Young. 58 Universal (1943) Corvette K 225. Produced by Howard Hawks. Directed by Richard Rosson. Written by Lt. John Sturdy; Warner Bros. (1943) Action in the North Atlantic. Produced by Jerry Wald. Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Written by John Howard Lawson; United Artists (1945) The Story of GI Joe. Produced by Lester Cowan. Directed by William Wellman. Written by Leopold Atlas, Guy Endore, and Philip Stevenson; Ealing (1953) The Cruel Sea. Produced by Leslie Norman. Directed by Charles Frend. Written by Eric Ambler; Dreamworks (1999) Saving Private Ryan. Produced by Ian Brice, Mark Gordon, and Gary Levinsohn. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Robert Rodat. 57

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makes that period so utterly frightening to us. Dehumanizing them into sub-human brutes may have been satisfying in the context of fighting the war, but it also enabled a relaxation away from necessary investigations into how this could happen. Many people were disturbed by Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.59 They felt that Arendt had softened the image of the Nazi brutes. Actually, she did something else. She demonstrated that the most frightening aspect of the Nazis is they were very much like the rest of us. By excluding this reality, those movies did us a disservice. Another kind of negative stereotyping perpetuated by those movies were the inaccurate and destructive characterizations of minority populations. Black actors Stepin Fetchit, Butterfly McQueen, Nicodemus, Mantan Moreland and Latino actors Chris Pin Martin, Carmen Miranda, and Leo Carillo were no more representative of black and Latino Americans, respectively, than were Abbott and Costello typical of white Americans. Yet those portrayals were so pervasive that they warped the image of people of color in the minds of both the minority and majority populations. It is just as probable for minority populations as it is for majority populations to internalize negative stereotypes. The struggle to reroute Americans away from those immoral and patronizing depictions has been a very trying one and still is far from complete. We must never underestimate the power of the visual image to define people’s understanding of others. By these distorted images, the movies fostered the distancing of “the other,” and we were imbued with them during our weekly visits to the movie theaters.60 I am not able to comment intelligently on how the experience of viewing female stereotypes on the screen affected the self-images of my female friends. I am aware, however, the movies blared a constricting message to young women, the one about the “cult of domesticity.” Women

Hannah Arendt (1963) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report in the Banality of Evil. New York City: Viking. 60 Relevant studies on this theme are: Clara Rodriguez (1997) Latin Looks: Latina and Latino Images in the U.S. Media. Boulder CO: Westview Press; Jack G. Shaheen (2001) Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. Northampton MA: Interlink Publishing Group; Donald Bogle (1976) Toms, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. 59

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were told to maintain home and hearth, to defer to their spouses, to raise the couple’s children, and were to be essentially shy and restrained in matters of sex—“close your eyes and think of pleasant things.” Yet, interestingly, and somewhat subversively, the movies of the 1940s had started on a process of displacing this stereotype of the passive and submissive wife by the increasingly frequent appearances of strong female characters. I cannot help but believe that the modern feminist movement, successor to the suffragist struggle but still in its infancy in the 1940s, was reinforced by those atypical female movie stars. A different concept of woman was evident in the screen performances of Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, Sylvia Sidney, Katherine Hepburn, Anne Baxter, Ann Sheridan, Myrna Loy, Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Vivien Leigh, Greer Garson, Claire Trevor, Jane Greer, Maureen O’Hara, Susan Hayward, Ginger Rogers, Olivia DeHaviland, Ingrid Bergman, Luise Rainier, Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, and Dorothy McGuire. Given the prevailing cultural norms of that time, many scripts included dénouements in which these strong females receive comeuppance in some form or other. And the film noir genre had its stable of femme fatales whose danger to the male heroes was a constant presence—the persistence of the Eve libel. It was one thing to have strong women, but it was something else to allow them to prevail. Still, the image of the strong, self-reliant, intelligent woman was up there on the screen so that there was no way to go back. Writers who portrayed these strong women as doomed were fighting a rear guard action—the sense of gender equality was inexorably moving forward, with movies unwittingly, and sometimes wittingly, giving the movement a push. We didn’t discuss this cultural anthropology as youngsters on the Block, but its effect on us was real nevertheless. The process of assimilation included also the integration of women into the mainstream, away from the cultural marginalization that had been the norm. Because of the absence of visual images, the cultural impact of the radio shows was more muted but reinforced the prevailing norms nevertheless. The four main categories of radio shows then, as it is with television offerings today, were comedies, crime shows, news and information programs, and westerns, with only the latter falling off in popularity and frequency after an extensive run in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. In 1946, we had two concentrated periods of radio listening: from 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm, when most of the shows were 15 or 30-minute serials, and the time following dinner—7:30 to bedtime—when mostly half-hour dramas and comedies were aired. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the

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dominant show in the 7:30 slot was The Lone Ranger. To understand the pervasive appeal of this western, I need only report that in the summer, when the apartment windows were open in a struggling and largely unsuccessful attempt to capture some breeze, one could sit on any stoop on the Block and hear virtually the whole program since it emanated with remarkable clarity from out of a dozen open windows. Pop loved the radio shows. Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons was his favorite. The portrayal of this wise older man fitted in nicely with his Middle Eastern concept of age correlating with wisdom. After dinner, Pop would take his glass of tea, sit at the kitchen table, put his chin into his hands, and listen to the table model Motorola. As soon as my homework was done, which took very little time (we were given much too little homework in those days), I joined him, mimicked his chin on hands posture, and listened first to various news broadcasts, usually from seven to seven-thirty, and then on to The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, Gangbusters, Mr. And Mrs. North, Boston Blackie, Duffy’s Tavern, Can You Top This? and all the rest. Monday evenings provided a change from the prevailing comedy and drama shows with a series of music programs, including Paul Lavelle’s Band of America and the Bell Telephone Hour. Yes, we were even given this opportunity for assimilation into the mainstream culture’s classical musical traditions. It was all great fun, and, from time to time, it struck us that millions of Americans were doing exactly the same thing, reinforcing the feeling of belonging to a national community. Together, the games on the Block, the public schools, and the popular media not only provided us with models and cultural information but also gave us that satisfying sense of the oneness of the country.

CHAPTER 6: TRIPS It was a city, as John Cheever once wrote, that ‘was filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.’ In that city, the taxicabs were all Checkers, with ample room for your legs, and the drivers knew where Grand Central was and always helped with the luggage. In that city, there were apartments with three bedrooms and views of the river. You hurried across the street and your girl was waiting for you under the Biltmore clock, with snow melting in her hair. Cars never double-parked. Shop doors weren’t locked in the daytime. Bus drivers still made change. All over town, cops walked the beat and everyone knew their names. In that city, you did not smoke in the subway. You wore galoshes in the rain. Waitresses called you ‘honey.’ You slept with windows open to the summer night. Pete Hamill, Piecework (1996)61

Fortunately for us, Yonkers’ strategic location provided easy access to the countryside of Westchester County, to the park areas of New Jersey, to the Long Island beaches, and, especially, to the excitement that is New York City. Even though New York overwhelmed Yonkers so that we always felt that we lived in its shadow, the City more than compensated for this with magnificent cultural, entertainment, and economic opportunities. The jobs in the City were easily accessible to us because of the diversity of transportation options—rail, bus, subway and, for those few who owned one, by car. Three, now two, major league baseball teams called the city home; an astonishingly wide selection of colleges and universities were spread throughout the five boroughs; music, theater, and motion picture palaces presented world class entertainment; museums housed innumerable,

Pete Hamill (1996) Piecework. New York City: Little, Brown and Company, page 15. 61

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diverse, and exciting collections of history, art, natural history, books, and collectibles; the diverse ethnicities and their retail stores and restaurants were spread throughout Manhattan and The Bronx; and there were the vast retail emporiums of Gimbels, Macy’s, Alexander’s, Saks, and others. Day trips to the City, therefore, were adventures in wonder and pleasure. Those who visit New York City now will understand this fascination that we had, because it still evokes that feeling. The ambience is more frenetic now than it was in 1946, and there is considerably greater crowding, but the essential liveliness and the thrill of discovery is still there. In order to understand the difference in population and traffic density from 1946 to the present, one need only view location shots of the City in movies of the 1940s and ’50s. A set of especially striking views is presented by means of the background shots in the first 15 or so minutes of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948).62 As Cary Grant drives through Manhattan between office and residence, we are astonished to note in the background shots how few pedestrians, cars, buses, and trucks are moving through the City’s streets. Nevertheless, the essential liveliness and stimulation that residents and visitors gain from the City are still weaving their seductive spells. My family took full advantage of those benefits while I was growing up, at least those within our means. One of the more exciting aspects of the city was (and is) its multilingual, multiethnic demography. Up to and including the 1940s, this diversity was highlighted by the concentration of particular ethnic groups in delineated sections. As a consequence of these concentrations, the City had German stores in Yorkville, Scandinavian stores and restaurants in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section, Jewish establishments on the lower East Side, Middle Eastern import stores and bakeries along the lower West Side’s Washington Avenue, and so on. All of this constituted a continuing multicultural celebration. Pete Hamill is only one of a long list of writers who experienced these opportunities and left us paeans to this remarkable City. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, most such writing is characterized by a sense of loss. That is an understandable result of the filter of nostalgia, but it is nevertheless reckless in that it diminishes the accomplishments of recent years and is dismissive of the aspirations and accomplishments of

RKO (1948) Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Produced and written by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. Directed by H. C. Potter. 62

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current residents. As a consequence, those of us who grew up in the 1940s and ’50s identify with these expressions of great loss and, in doing so, unwittingly participate in this distorted perception of the City . We constitute a fraternity of those who “remember when,” when we should be celebrating the reality that these admired characteristics of the City remain constant. A common result of these nostalgic filters is that our recollections of the City as a cultural playground are limited in terms of their accuracy. While they may emphasize the positive and dynamic aspects of New York City back then, these memories tend to repress, through denial, some unpleasant realities that were part of the City “in our time.” Underneath the genuine and exciting mosaic of diverse sights, sounds, cultural expressions, and customs that we celebrate lurked another reality—access to the cultural, economic, and educational benefits of the City was severely limited for certain groups. The ethnic enclaves were communities of mutuality and support, if one was a member of the neighborhood’s prevalent ethnic group. If, on the other hand, one was a member of a group distrusted and disliked by most of the country’s mainstream, Euro-American population, then that person received the worse kind of exclusion, often to the point of harassment. What we too often failed to accept as true, at the time and also in our current reveries, are the restrictions about residency that were active in most of these areas. Inspired by this insistent innocence, we memorialize the ethnic enclaves and mourn their passing. It seems appropriate for my generation to mourn the loss of the community aspect of these enclaves, but only if we simultaneously recognize the negative aspect and endorse the slow but steady erosion of exclusivist practices that have taken place over the last forty years. This denial should not be surprising in those of us who were youngsters in the 1940s. The diversity of the City was exciting and broadening, so that visits to the particular ethnic enclaves were pleasurable adventures during which we touched so many different cultural expressions. The ethnic neighborhoods constituted just one facet among several that lend to the magic of New York. The diversity of sights and sounds, the dynamism of noise and movement, the variety of language and accents, and the smorgasbord of national foods never failed to thrill us. For Assyrian kids, naturally, visits to the Middle Eastern import outlets in lower Manhattan, on the West Side, had special meaning. Standing amid the products from the Middle East, taking in the wonderful aromas, hearing the languages of the area spoken—all underscored our sense of identity. I remember in particular looking wide-eyed at the several boxes and crates

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scattered around the shop floors, on which were pasted labels in Arabic, Turkish, Greek, and some of the several languages of India. Amid these international props, I indulged in fantasies about exotic locations and fancied that I was in one of those film noir pictures where some American adventurer, perhaps George Raft or Humphrey Bogart, was standing on a foreign wharf. I find it interesting, on reflection, that my experiences as an American, movie-going child overwhelmed my knowledge of the real Middle Eastern context that I had learned from our immigrants. The scene I constructed always took place at night, with mist and fog horns as back drop, and the impending action awaiting a ship from Hong Kong, Istanbul, Bombay, or Djibouti. It was so pleasant to forget that, in real time, I was in New York. Instead, I happily pretended that I was on secret assignment in a trading store in an Asian or African port. Because these import stores were situated in the shadow of the overhead West Side highway, the ambience was dim even in daylight, which emphasized my imaginative wanderings of foreign intrigue. The store that Humphrey Bogart owns in Damascus, in the movie Sirocco (1951)63, will give the viewer an excellent analogue to the stores on Washington Avenue. Soon after 1946, forced out by development in the area, the Middle Eastern stores relocated to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The quality of the goods remained excellent, but the wide, sunlit boulevard, together with my “advancing” age wrote finis to my fantasies. Always accompanying our family on trips to lower Manhattan in Pop’s 1937 Chrysler were two or three friends or relatives. We regularly went just before the major holidays to load up on the items needed for Assyrian Christmas or Easter menus: bulghur (cracked wheat) for hareesa, pumpkin seeds, Basmati rice, sesame seeds, coriander, dates, pickled grape leaves, Turkish candies and such. Most of our purchases were made at two of the bigger outlets, Sahadi Company and Malko Brothers. Sahadi has since added a packing plant to its operation so that one may buy their Middle Eastern products at stores around the country. As discussed earlier, the availability of these food items in markets everywhere prompts a reaction that is decidedly mixed. I can’t help feeling pride that so much of what had been found only in the homes of Middle Eastern

Columbia/Santana (1951) Sirocco. Produced by Robert Lord, Directed by Curtis Bernhardt. Written by A. I. Bezzerides and Hans Jacoby. 63

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immigrants is available and desired by the general population. At the same time, I feel a loss of the sense of exclusiveness. I used to enjoy that exotic feeling, a sense of special possession, in knowing that very few people outside our ethnicity were acquainted with pita bread, stuffed vegetables, yogurt, and the rest. We knew that these items were not for the uninitiated and, because they were so delicious, our secret was that much sweeter. Of course it did not occur to me that if every ethnic group maintained this exclusivity, we would not have had access to the very diversity on which we thrived. Just before getting into the car for the return trip to Yonkers, we maintained our ritual of ending the shopping at Near Eastern Bakery to buy several packages of pita bread. This bread was not available anywhere but in these Middle Eastern neighborhoods, so we were able to get it only on the New York trips. Since the bakeries were in constant motion, the bread we bought was always fresh and warm. Invariably, a few packages never made it as far as Yonkers. My family had two other regular shopping excursions to New York City. A few times a year we went to the Fordham Road section of The Bronx, our primary destination being Alexander’s department store. It was a favorite of my mother as a source for clothes for my brother, sister, and me. So, we were sure to go just before school opened in September and again before Easter. Whenever I needed a new Sunday suit, I usually got it at Alexander’s in time for Easter services, my parents hoping it would last through two Easters. Curiously, another destination on Fordham Road has nothing to do with clothes but a lot to do with eating. There was a delicatessen not far from Alexander’s that stocked the most wonderful cold cuts. I don’t recall its name, but it was one of the many famous and outstanding Jewish delis for which the City is known. We stocked up on ham (yes, even in a Jewish deli!), cheese, salami, bologna, and such, just as we stocked up with Middle Eastern items on Washington Avenue. Another regular shopping excursion, somewhat different in intent from the others, was to Macy’s on 34th Street. There was rarely a specific purchase that we intended to make; our purpose was less directed. Usually just Mom and I made this trip. My parents had only two charge accounts— one with Sears and the other at Macy’s. They swore by Sears, and Mom thoroughly enjoyed Macy’s. Most often, she didn’t buy a thing, but took great pleasure from window shopping through the several departments in the store. It constituted a welcome break for her from the daily routine of Caroline Avenue. In those days, when Macy’s was under the control of retail geniuses, not stock manipulators and accountants, the store was an

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aesthetic delight—beautifully decorated, with motifs changing with the seasons. And there was the interminable ringing of store clerks’ bells. I have no idea who was to respond to these, presumably the floor walkers. I was curious to know how, amid the din of so many bells ringing, each floorwalker knew which sales person required assistance. Evidently the floorwalkers, like penguins who recognize their mates’ calls even among a hundred chattering birds, were able to distinguish the bell of each sales person. The bells were not at all annoying to shoppers, providing instead a tympanic counter point to the shopping experience. The clerks always dressed up, which encouraged and supported our feeling that we were patronizing an upscale store. The careful and uncrowded manner in which goods were laid out contributed as well to this special feeling. Unfortunately, the bean counters now in control of Macy’s favor the clutter of a K-Mart or Wal-Mart style of stocking goods in barely differentiated piles. Sometimes Mom and I ate at the store’s in-house restaurant, but more often she allowed me to persuade her to go the nearby Horn and Hardart’s Automat. In our present time of abundant and omnipresent technology, it must be hard for those born into this culture of technology to understand how thrilling it was for a youngster to get a sandwich or piece of pie by putting some nickels into a slot, turning a crank, and watching the little door pop open, in order to retrieve the sandwich or piece of pie. Part of the excitement was watching as the cylinder holding the sandwiches rotate inside so that attendants could reload each slot and then rotate the cylinder back to the customers. I don’t know how such a simple operation could fascinate so much, but it did. I suppose there was about it the thrill of modernity.64 Many trips had nothing to do with shopping. A favorite excursion was to the Bronx Zoo. What an amazing collection of birds, mammals, reptiles, and sea life! One could not cover all 265 acres of the zoo in one trip. A good bit of time was spent just at the seal pool and at the monkey cages,

64 The only time I saw that mysterious inner space from which the cylinders were reloaded was in the 1962 movie, That Touch of Mink, with Doris Day and Cary Grant (Universal; directed by Delbert Mann; written by Stanley Shapiro and Nate Monaster). Ms. Day’s close friend is played by Audrey Meadows, and we see her reloading the sandwich cylinders.

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watching their shenanigans. The lions and tigers were enclosed in cages that were much too confining for them, unlike the current and more humane practice of having animals in open areas constructed to resemble their native habitats. But it was all a wonder to us, to be able to stand only a few feet away from the big cats, apes, crocs, zebras, giraffes, and the rest. If only the current policy makers for public schools would remember that education takes place in venues beyond classrooms and standardized tests. We did not go to theater or concerts then; both the cost and the concept were beyond my parents’ purview. Those opportunities came for me only in my later high school years. But I did get to attend a magnificent program at what constituted grand theater for us working class commoners—Radio City Music Hall. In essence, Radio City was a movie theater with some live performances, not unlike our local movie houses with their occasional vaudeville nights. But of course, with its soaring ceilings, expensive furniture, army of ushers, and awesome size, it was so much more. For me, it was high culture indeed. I was taken there for the first time in December, 1948, by Aunt Catherine. The movie was I Remember Mama, a wonderful evocation of the immigrant experience,65 and we went at the season when the Hall presented its famous Christmas Pageant. Prior to taking our seats, after ogling with astonishment the huge, magnificent lobby chandeliers, I went to the men’s room that had this incredible device that enabled one to push a button in order to have warm air blown on hands to dry them, without resort to paper towels. Then, as we settled in to our unbelievably comfortable seats, we were entertained by the Corps de Ballet, the Rockettes, the huge Wurlitzer organ, and the Music Hall orchestra. I still remember the thrill I felt when I first saw the orchestra. The platform on which the orchestra played rose up in front of the stage from the level of the orchestra seats to the level of the stage, and then, after playing a few pieces, it descended again to just below the stage, from where it accompanied the other performers. As it rose, a bevy of floodlights were focused on it and all members were in formal wear. What a wonderful opportunity for a youngster who couldn’t afford to attend regular orchestral performances at Carnegie Hall or at the Metropolitan Opera House. We were, however,

RKO (1948) I Remember Mama. Produced by Harriet Parsons. Directed by George Stevens. Written by DeWitt Bodeen. 65

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acquainted with the music played at these venues; we had classical music at home, on 78s played on an old crank-up Victrola, and there were the Monday evening music programs on the radio. At P.S. 19, Hawthorne Junior High School, and Yonkers High School, we even had student bands and orchestras. But, up to that moment, I had not been in the presence of a live symphony orchestra. From the moment that orchestra rose up I fell in love with classical music and symphony orchestras and have remained enraptured ever since. Of course, immediately after the show, to round out a truly magical afternoon, my aunt took me to a Horn and Hardart before we took the subway back to Yonkers. Yet another example of the variety of entertainment was our visit to Madison Square Garden for a rodeo. This was either in 1946 or 1947. Mom and I, together with Darius and Dan Baba, their sister Irene and mother Elizabeth, trekked down, by subway of course, for an afternoon of real cowboys. It was fascinating—bull wrestling, bronc riding, roping, clowning and the rest. Here were our adored cowboys, not images on a screen, but in live action. On the return trip, I had a cardboard cowboy hat and a cap pistol complete with holster. I was fully equipped to play cowboys with my peers on the block. Other daily trips took us around the lovely countryside of Westchester County, all the more beautiful then because the upper county was sparsely settled. On Sundays, weather permitting, after church services were over and the dinner dishes washed, Pop would load us into his Chrysler and drive through the county’s network of country roads. In the summer season, the Sunday drives were destination specific, ending at Playland/Rye Beach, Glen Island Park, or Orchard Beach. In the spring and fall, the drives were seemingly aimless meanderings around the countryside. Pop enjoyed the pleasure these drives provided to his family, and he and Mom reveled in the diversity and beauty of the county’s landscape. The area included small farms, country estates, tiny towns and villages, and several densely wooded sections. We drove around, admiring the landscape and the homes, having that comfortable feeling that comes from encountering the bucolic quietude and natural beauty of the rural and semi-rural environs north and east of our city. There was an adventurous aspect to these drives as well. Pop would follow roads randomly, without use of maps, so that neither he nor we knew where we would emerge for the leg home. It permitted me to fancy myself an explorer. Our drives most often started on the Saw Mill River Parkway and from there they could go anywhere. Occasionally, we even

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crossed the state line and found ourselves in Connecticut’s Fairfield County. That seemed amazing to me—that we had actually crossed into another state. On a few Sundays, rather than roaming, Pop headed directly for the Kensico Dam and Reservoir. We were always impressed that the road actually had been built on top of the dam, and after crossing it, we came to a place where the water flowed over a series of outdoor baffles and then was shot into the air by means of several pipes, creating a photographer’s dream of foam, movement, rainbows, and shimmering reflections. I suppose that would now be called a “photo opportunity.” I was informed that this was an aeration process for aiding in the purification of drinking water. Whether this was so or not, it provided us with an aesthetically uplifting outdoor show. A few times we even drove as far north as Bear Mountain or West Point. At the former, we parked the car and took time to run and play on the vast meadows of this park. What a beautiful setting! I was also taken with the Park’s buildings, constructed to resemble log structures. That certified that we were indeed far from our urban setting. Stopping at Bear Mountain had an additional benefit—a trip to the Park’s cafeteria. It lacked the technological thrill of Horn and Hardart but, nevertheless, served up a delicious hot dog and French fry special. The attractions of the Military Academy were of a different sort. For my parents, the Academy was a very special place that seemed to embody all that they loved about this country—its traditions, symbols, and history. Their homage to this country seemed to be especially fervent when they were at their favorite location at the Point, the Academy chapel, a Gothic structure with a grand interior of stone, stained glass, flags, and dark wood pews. Sitting in that chapel was a moving experience for Mom and Pop, and for me as well. I visited the Point recently and, sitting in the chapel, could feel the sense of awe and well-being that I believe moved my parents. The grandeur of the Gothic style, the realization of the famous military leaders that had sat there, and the sylvan setting surrounding it all promoted a sense of serenity and assurance. I have experienced the same feeling at other times, even in urban settings—Riverside Church and the Cathedral of St. John Divine in New York City, Grundtvig’s Kirke in Copenhagen, the Lutheran Church in Jerusalem’s Old City, and, small though it may be, in the chapel on the floor of Yosemite Park’s main valley. In each case, the mood of contemplation and serenity that is evoked must be exactly what the builders intended.

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In 1946, just after World War II, the Academy’s impact on all of us, native born as well as immigrant, was greater than usual. It had produced Eisenhower, MacArthur, Bradley, Patton, and the others whose names were current news. The aura of American exceptionalism that, for so many of my parents’ generation was associated with America’s successful military campaigns of 1942 to 1945, permeated the atmosphere of the Academy. For those of us who lived through the War, either as participants or observers, the actions by our military will always be regarded with gratitude and awe, as an example of the most effective and moral use of force that a democracy can make. As we walked the Academy grounds in 1946, we were surrounded by a palatable sense of pride and accomplishment, of a righteousness that replaced the discomfort that ordinarily results from the inevitable ambiguities of foreign policy. An additional serendipity of walking the Academy was the vista of the Hudson River at one of its widest and more beautiful points. We were able to look north and south, renewing our appreciation of the magnificent beauty of that waterway and, incidentally, were reminded of the incredible task that it must have been for the American revolutionaries to stretch a chain across the river at West Point. Pop enabled us to have a comprehensive view of the river by driving to Bear Mountain Park or West Point on the western side of the river and returning along the eastern fringe. On a few Sundays in the early fall, we interrupted our ride by stopping at a field in the eastern part of the county where there were wild grape plants in abundance. My parents, aunt, and any other adult who accompanied us picked the correct leaves, the large and tender ones, for curing and preserving so as to have a year’s supply for making dolma d’durpi. Our stuffing for grape leaves is lamb, cilantro, rice, parsley, and dill, and is was served with yogurt, although a lot of the stuffed leaves never made it to the plate—each was small enough to be taken with fingers right out of the pot and eaten whole. I am not surprised that stuffed grape leaves, both the lamb and the vegetarian styles, have become popular appetizers in several restaurants, and not only Middle Eastern ones. I remember during one of these leave-picking forays that we noted some tract houses were being built around the field that we frequented. That did not seem to disturb our picking, until, at a subsequent trip, we learned otherwise. While the adults were picking leaves, and we children were romping around the vines, a woman came out of one of the almostcomplete houses and proceeded to berate us in a voice of incredible volume. She gesticulated wildly, shouting to us to get out, or she would call the police and get her husband. I am not sure what he would have done—

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fired off a shotgun, I suppose. I have rarely seen anyone at that pitch of hysteria. She did not let up on her banshee impression until we were in the car and departing the scene. The adults were stonily silent for a very long time on the way home. It took me some time before I came to understand that incident. At the time, I was unable to conceive that a group as benign and gentle as my family, picking leaves while still dressed in their Sunday best, could provoke such a fearful reaction. I must have assumed that the woman was simply unbalanced. She might well have been. How else could I explain why people as gentle and unthreatening as my parents could be the objects of such an onslaught? But in later years, with the benefit of confirming experiences, I came to understand the complexities and nuances of this encounter. I finally came to know the reasons for the strangely quiet looks on my parents’ faces and their determinedly quiet demeanor as we drove away from the screaming harridan. Their expressions derived from a combination of anger and embarrassment, underneath which was a sadness. At the time, I sensed that the new homeowner’s hysteria might not be only what it appeared to be on the surface, but I lacked the experience and maturity to get anywhere with my misgivings. It took some similar experiences in subsequent years to enable me to deconstruct this incident with greater clarity. I finally was able to see what my parents saw in this incident. We were dark people, and so, in the eyes of this woman, were probably immigrants from undesirable parts of the world. We were of that group of Mediterranean and Asian peoples whom Anglos, with the disdain of cultural superiority that pollutes American society, called “blackheads,” “ragheads,” and other demeaning epithets. I understood, finally, that my parents knew right away what was actually happening in this most unpleasant scene. For me, it turned out that this was the first in a series of experiences where I became aware of difference and how, in our society, this reality, for too many people, is negative and threatening. I use a strategy in teaching my classes in cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity that I derived from these experiences. I try to engage each student to construct an understanding of himself or herself in relation both to the prevailing cultural context and to the idea of being different. I ask the students to indicate the first time they were made aware of difference. This exercise is for all students, not just for those of ethnic or racial groups that are underrepresented in this society. This introspection of their own timelines, coupled with a sharing of insights with their peers, creates a useful and compelling way for young people to develop and expand their capacity for empathy.

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I believe we did not go out to pick up wild grape leaves again after that, at least not in Westchester County. We depended, instead, on getting preserved leaves from friends and relatives around Elizabeth, New Jersey, and New Britain, Connecticut, who had large yards with grape vines and put up enough jars of the cured leaves to share with others. Of course, we also bought the preserved leaves on the trips to the Washington Avenue stores. Pop’s car, the magic carpet that carried us on these wonderful trips, was a truly remarkable vehicle that he purchased in 1939, two years after it was built. He used that car everyday: carrying paints and tools on weekdays, shopping bags from the markets on Saturday afternoons, and us with our picnic baskets on Sundays. He held on to it until 1954 and gave it up, not because it had stopped functioning, but only because my mother finally refused to be seen in it. The car had passed from presentable, to adequate, through unappealing, ending up in hideous. That Chrysler would have done wonderfully as a prop for the film version of Steinbeck’s Joad odyssey. Because of all of our experiences in that car, all the wonderful places it took us, and because I learned to drive in that floor-shift Chrysler, I was almost as sad at getting rid of it as was my father. It carried us on all those drives without ever breaking down or even having a flat tire. Dave Mechanic obviously did a great job in his regular care of cars. But my attachment to the Chrysler was nothing in comparison with Pop’s. He and that car were so closely linked to each other in the thoughts of the Assyrian community that the two became parts of the same identity. One could not think of Eprim Shlemon Ameer without simultaneously picturing that gray sedan. In fact, there were only a few members of Yonkers’ Assyrian community who, at one time or another, had not ridden in Eprim’s car. Pop told me, when he finally sold it, that if we had owned a yard, he would have kept his precious sedan and put it up on blocks. We saw the car a few times in the years after its sale; the new owner was getting good use out of it, while my father’s expression each time he saw it was one of regret. I have reflected with a good deal of satisfaction and pride on one aspect of the Sunday drives. My parents gave way neither to resentment nor to envy as we drove past beautiful houses and grounds, nor were they disconcerted at the disparity between our neighborhoods and the properties we passed. They were not at all bothered that these multi-room houses and spacious yards were in dramatic contrast to our small apartment. They often joked about housing costs, since their income would not permit even a house purchase in South Yonkers, let alone in the Westchester countryside. Two realizations enabled them to have peace with these economic realities.

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First, they were convinced that their children would have access to this kind of living even if they themselves could not. Happily for Eleanor, Franklin, and me, they were correct. Second, a move into this countryside would have taken them away from living inside our Assyrian community. I have no doubt that both my parents considered living within the community at the expense of more luxurious housing to be a worthwhile trade-off. They certainly would have preferred a single-family residence or even a larger apartment than the cramped one that we had, but only if these moves could be made within the parameters of South Yonkers and in relatively close proximity to the Assyrian Presbyterian Church, the Club, and the apartments of friends and relatives. Too much that was important to their lives would have been sacrificed in a move at a distance from our community. So, in a small but important way, the Sunday excursions made up for our cramped quarters on Caroline Avenue. That we had the pleasures and sense of well being of South Yonkers and the Assyrian community, and the stimulation and broadening that came from these trips to and around New York City and Westchester, made these the best of times.

EPILOGUE Given the chance, I would not go back now to my home place to live…we are lucky and happy in our lives. But there is a price to be paid for having left those places, and no matter what else happens we will always carry that invisible weight, that small sorrow. Roland Merullo Revere Beach Elegy: A Memoir of Home and Beyond (2002).66

I. In November 1976, a week before Thanksgiving, Agnes Yaure Ameer passed away. As with all patients that are struck down with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a terrible degeneration of the nerves and muscles, she had suffered greatly. When she went to LA in late 1974 for a definitive diagnosis at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, she was told that she would have, at best, from two to five years. She actually had just over one year left and spent that time at Eleanor and Gerhard’s home in Wappingers’ Falls, New York. She had the constant love and care of those around her, including round-the-clock attention from Pop. The funeral was at the Assyrian Presbyterian Church in Yonkers with burial in the family plot at Oakland Cemetery in Yonkers, alongside Rebecca and Shlemon Ameer. Because Mom had lived through the terrible Assyrian holocaust and survived the deprivations of being in Russia during the Revolution, it seemed to me terribly unfair that she had to spend the last two years of her life tormented by this particularly insidious disease. Pop passed away quite suddenly in March 1982, from a heart attack. He had been staying with Aunt Catherine and Uncle Yonan in Turlock. The

Roland Merullo (2002) Revere Beach Elegy: A Memoir of Home and Beyond. Boston MA: Beacon Press. 66

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suddenness was surprising, since Pop was rarely ill during all his seventyeight years. On the other hand, given that the time he spent watching Mom waste away had to erode his spirit, we should have expected that he would have loosened his grip on life. That is not an unusual result when a person has taken care of a spouse with a terrible disease over an extended period. Pop’s funeral was held at a Presbyterian church in Turlock, and his body was shipped to Yonkers for burial in the family plot, alongside Agnes. I was in Los Angeles when word came of Pop’s heart attack. We got in our car and started up Interstate 5 and then on to storied Route 99, the spine of California’s central valleys, toward Turlock. Not too far from Los Angeles, as we drove through El Cajon Pass, I had a momentary but powerful vision that was a combination of Hollywood and epiphany. I saw Pop standing in a field of clouds with his very familiar green parka and grey felt hat. He was looking back at us while, in the distance, standing on a hill of clouds, was a large group of people waving to him. I could not make out their faces but was sure that all were smiling. And, then, in an instant, he was gone from my sight. At that moment, I felt a good deal of peace about Pop, and my grief subsided. It is a tribute to America that Mom and Pop, barely escaping the horrors of World War I, had found so much joy in this country. Those of us in the Assyrian community who are first generation Americans have a gratitude toward this country, for what it provided to our parents and grandparents is boundless. As with so many refugees who made it to these shores, Mom and Pop, and the other Assyrians of their generation, had much longer lives than could have been expected, given what they experienced during 1915–1918. Their time in America was comfortable, productive, and joyous, especially as they watched their children grow and succeed and had the pleasure of seeing their grandchildren thrive in this society. They were never able to accumulate much in the way of wealth or other material goods, but, in any case, what they had could not be purchased by any amount of money. Not surprisingly, that generation passed on to us their deep affection for America, but also transferred to us the accumulated experience of their ethno-religious group. This came to down us as a set of values emphasizing community, mutuality, and responsibility. As a consequence of receiving this ethos of values and responsibilities, whether or not we engage in active religious observance, my and succeeding generations of Assyrians hold in great respect the place that religion has in supporting a society characterized by a strong pattern of ethical norms and behavior.

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II. We were reminded, on October 15, 2003, of another aspect of the Assyrians’ historical experience. Three young American security specialists, assigned to the American embassy in Tel Aviv, were killed by a roadside bomb in Gaza, and the American diplomat they were escorting was severely wounded. In a tragically ironic replay of this aspect of Assyrian history—the recurring pattern of actual or threatening violence—one of the three was Mark Thaddeus Parsons, the 31-year-old son of John Parsons and Agnes Joseph Parsons. The violence that had driven his grandparents from Urmia had been manifest yet again upon one of our Assyrian families of 54 Caroline Avenue. Mark was part of the security team employed by the DYN Corporation of Texas to guard members of the diplomatic services in the Palestinian Territories. He had graduated from Penn State and studied at the Navy Seal School in Colorado. His work took him to that part of the world where violence had driven out his grandparents, only to become a victim himself of that same mindless violence. In a further bit of irony, the three specialists were taking the American diplomat to a meeting with Palestinian candidates seeking Fulbright scholarships for graduate studies in the United States. That this endemic Middle Eastern violence, from which Mark’s grandparents and their fellow Assyrians escaped, should be visited on the third generation of those refugees, is disheartening, to say the least. We are daily witnesses to this harsh reality in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and, most dramatically and, horrifically, in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must not lose sight of the part of this dual legacy: the Assyrians’ memories of home that were suffused with pleasant reminiscences of villages, vineyards, communal celebrations, churches, and schools. But, as with all Middle Eastern peoples, these are too often overshadowed and overwhelmed by the recurring explosions of violence—one of which took Mark’s life.

III. In January 1995, my Assyrian friends and I sadly came together for the funeral of Norman David, who died, at age 60, from a virulent cancer. The atmosphere at his wake was decidedly sad. In a peculiar way, however, it was at the same time a reminder of the strength and mutuality of our Assyrian community as so many long-time friends and relatives gathered there. I had been able to maintain regular contact with some of those people gathered there that night, while others I had not seen in a very long time. Dan and Darius Baba, George and Davy Odishoo, Beatrice Ameer,

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Sonny and Elaine Ameer, Bill, Lil and Karen Sargis, Arnold Eshoo, Larry Johannan, Albert Benjamin, Johnny Aslan, Joey Aziz and so many others filled the funeral home. Our coming together could not, of course, erase the sadness we felt at Norm’s untimely death. Yet, alongside that, I, and probably most of the others gathered together as well, was reminded of that powerful sense of renewal and of place that is always at work when Assyrians are together. No doubt similar feelings are present in gatherings of other communal groups, especially those with long histories. Inge-Lise and I took that time of being in Yonkers to visit Oakland Cemetery before going on to the wake. While Inge-Lise stood for a long time in front of her grandparents’ gravesite, I wandered among the other stones and monuments. So many of the names I read were familiar, and they reminded me of other names too—Baba, Yohannan, Lazar, Karam, Karaman, Sargis, Nweeia, Alexander, Hatem, Jacobs, Joseph, Benjamin, Georges, David, Yonan, Kambar, Badal, Sarmast, Abraham, Moorhatch, Eshoo, Nimrod, Pera, Oushana, Odishoo, Shomon, Simon, Shlemon, Hasrato, Mirza, Sayed, Soleiman, Solomon, Gevargis, Yalda, Werda, Neesan, Nader, Malik, Paul, Sargon, Hurmis, Elia, Elias, Mar-Elia, Bakus, Shabaz, Yaure, Gabriel, Aslan, Samuel, Yacoe, Tamraz, Oushalem, Aziz, Birney, Isaac. A memoir such as this one is characterized by recollections of happy times and wonderful people. Inevitably, it also carries the burden of those stirrings of sadness and loss that accrue over time. These, however, must not be allowed to overwhelm the greater story. The story of the Assyrians in America, on which I reflected as we walked through the cemetery, is a triumphal one and should be celebrated as such. In spite of the sadness that brought us back to Yonkers that day, I felt imbued with that spirit of celebration. As I read the names on the gravestones, and as my remembrances of the faces that went with the names washed over me, I finally realized that I had never really left either the Assyrian community or South Yonkers. Or, more accurately, the community had never left me. This Epilogue, therefore, is the end only of this memoir. It is not the end of the experience of the Assyrians—that continues in the lives of my generation and those of succeeding generations who constitute the descendants of those brave people who fled from horror and arrived at hope. I am immeasurably proud of the contributions that Assyrians have made as productive citizens of this country.

EPILOGUE

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Wherever I have gone in my life, no matter the distance from Yonkers, whatever I have accomplished—those people have always been with me. They are part of me and are a part of my accomplishments. They enhance my joys and help cushion my sorrows. Wandering around the cemetery that day, I was overwhelmed by the realization that one of the greatest gift I have been given is that I was able to love and cherish all of these people so very much.