My Mother

My Mother
Written in October 2007 and completed in August 2008

Yesterday I left my mother in the home she is staying.
I still remember her smile when I told her “Que tu est belle maman…”
She said “Quoi…” as if she did not hear what I said ”Tu est belle maman .” She then gave me her modest smile and I felt her happiness.

It must be hard to be alone in a home in a far away land, a land where, until her accidental fall, she was ruling, as always, with a colonial fervor.
My mother was born in Egypt in the early twenties, she grew up in a privileged class of cotton merchants, a class on the top of social pyramid since the discovery of high quality Egyptian cotton during the US civil war.

She was part of a “family” called Riches. There was a story running in the family that the origin was Portuguese and that the name used to be Riquez. That may be true, but I am sure that my ancestors which respelled the name to Riches knew the meaning of the word in English.

These “families” were predominately Jewish and had over the ages moved around the Mediterranean but kept Alexandria as a home base. There is a (very plausible) story that when Cleopatra was in Rome she had convinced the Roman Senate to give “Roman” status to the Alexandrine traders/citizens living in Rome, and since most of these citizens were Jews an important trading tradition flourished.
It is in the houses of these “Alexandrine Romans” that Saint Peter and disciples were hiding from being captured and later fed to the lions…

When I look back at my genealogy I find one great-grandfather who was an important rabbi and city council member in the city of Oran, Algeria. He was a signatory of the union of France and Algeria, thus ending a major conflict in the eighteen seventies.
Another great-grandfather was recruited as an English / Arabic interpreter by Lord Kitchener’s army for the battle of Khartoum

Going back to the eighteenth century in the port-city of Livorno, Italy came a man named Attias. He settled with his family and established a wide commerce in oriental goods. He also bought a significant piece of land.
Apparently when he grew old he had a fight with his sons and expelled them from his business and donated the land to the people of Livorno. To this day in that city there is a district known as all’Attias.
One of these sons settled, and prospered, in Constantinopolis. One of his sons married into the Terni family and moved to Alexandria.

Another great-grandfather was established as Italian Consul in the isle of Crete. He probably was also handling the banking interests of his father in law owners of the Aboaf Bank of Rome, bankers of the Vatican and the Pope.
In that period, the island of Crete was in turmoil… The Turks were invading and persecuting the Jews, Greeks and Italians… most of them escaped by boat

My grandmother, Nonna Wanda Cohen, who was, at that time, three years old was unable to swim, so she was wrapped in rags and thrown in the water from a cliff… She was picked up by her father and proceeded by boat to Alexandria, Egypt. She ended her days in the port-city of Marseilles, France.

With the start of World War l, Italy drafted all their young men in Egypt who had an Italian passport to go and save the patria…
Of the people drafted I had four Riches great uncles who fought in the trenches, and survived… My grandmother Wanda was less lucky, her only brother got killed by the Austrians in the Dolomiti

What a leap from the Riches clan in Egypt to an old folk home in southern Italy…
My mother had her share of mishaps, but she always found a way to adapt.

At 21 she got pregnant and married my father, with whom she had her share of troubles. My father was a charmer but was also a weak character, strongly overpowered by his father. My grandfather, had the odd notion that now that his son was married into the Riches clan he could safely have his wife, my mother, pay his gambling debts. My mother who still had a sense of pride, sold her jewelry and paid her husband’s debts.
My father then went into a long depression, with its share of institutionalization and god knows what. Then to culminate this instability he fell in love with a strong willed woman, and they decided to divorce, marry each other, and lived together for 45 years… Sounds romantic, maybe, but what on the effects on the fatherless children.

After the divorce my mother had to find a job and she went from teaching English and French in night school to working in a travel agency. It was in the travel business that she met and married Guido, a very very kind and energetic man who respected his wife and her family.

With Guido my mother had a wonderful life in Greece, Israel, Lebanon, and later in Brindisi, going from cocktail party to cocktail party… always meeting ambassadors, consuls, judges etc.
Guido, who was working for a large Italian shipping line, enjoyed these years outside Italy and expected ending his career in Venice, the company headquarters. He was transferred to Brindisi, a small but important port in southern Italy as his last leg before going to headquarters.

Unfortunately, in 1972, after barely six months in Brindisi, Guido had a massive heart attack (his first) and died at the age of 51.

That must have been a shock to my mother, gone were the cocktail parties, the international communities of Beirut, Athens or Tel Aviv. What she found instead was an entourage of a few people in the shipping/ferry boat business.

The rest of the people reminded her of colonial Egypt. The neighbors, the hairdresser etc., were kind hearted and warm, but they definitely lacked the social skills my mother was used to. She made her life resorting to the colonial custom of giving, winning loyalty by giving, giving with a smile… “smile to life and life will smile to you”, she always said that to me, ever since I was a little boy. She said it so many times that it (still) is impressed in my brain. Should I ever create a family crest, smile to life will be the centerpiece.
It is with that smile that I left her to her peace in the outskirts of a small town in the deep south of Italy.

On the way back I was contemplating how did she end up at the end of the world… My mother.
If there is one trait which I inherited from her and from her mother, Nonna Clemy it is the will to travel and get to know people from around the world.

One other trait which my mother has is fatalism, she learned to accept what life gives her, whether it is the very sudden death of her husband, or the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco…