From The Peopling of New York City
How I Became a New Yorker
The story of how I became a New Yorker is quite interesting. My parents were both born in Beirut, Lebanon. My mother was born in 1965 and my father in 1962. My mother left Lebanon in 1978 when she was 13 and my father left in 1970 when he was 7. The reason my father left is a mystery to him as well as to me. All he can recall is that one night his parents packed their stuff and left. I try to question my grandparents to find out the reason why they left but my grandparents won’t uncover the true story. My mother left because of the War of 1975 in Lebanon. It took her family three years to leave because her father had owned many warehouses at the time, so it took him a while to liquidate his assets. The war had started out between the Christians and the Muslims but it seems to be that throughout history, Jews are always targeted. For those three years, my mother’s family escaped form town to town. Many of my grandfather’s warehouses were burned or robbed. My mother lost her maternal grandmother to the war and her uncle was wounded and became crippled for life due to the war.
My father left Lebaon to Israel in 1970, prior to the war. Life was extremely difficult in Israel. My paternal grandfather had lived an extravagant life in Lebanon, where he owned his own business. Now, in Israel, he became a stock boy in a warehouse. He was ashamed of his job but knew that he would have to continue doing this in order to feed his family. My father was ridiculed in school and beaten up by the other children. Over the years my grandfather made his way up the ladder and later became the manager of the warehouse. My father was drafted to the army and when he completed his service he left for America at the age of 21. He simply went to visit his brother who was there already, but when he arrived he knew he wanted to remain in America. He had received a business opportunity and he knew it was the right thing to do.
My mother left to America in 1978, at the age of thirteen. Her two older brothers had snuck out of Lebanon beforehand so they had already found an apartment for everyone to live in. One of them had been accused as a sniper so he had to leave Lebanon immediately. The other brother had been kidnapped and he managed to escape, so he too had to leave Lebanon immediately. It was difficult for my mother’s father to face poverty in America. However, with the little money he had managed to save, he built up his business. My mother attended Magen David Yeshiva. However, she did not know the language so instead of placing her in eighth grade where she belonged, they placed her in first grade. Other children ridiculed her. However, she managed to make it to eighth grade within a year and graduated valedictorian in both eighth and twelfth grade.
My parents had met when my mother was 18 and my father was 21 on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year for the Jews. Ironically, the next time they met again was the following year on the exact same day. A year later my father’s parents came for my uncle’s wedding and they refused to leave until my father would find a woman to marry. They literally drove him crazy and he told them that the only girl he was interested in was my mother. It turns out that their parents knew each other from Lebanon. My parents dated and were engaged after four months. Six months later they were married and a year and a half afterwards they had my brother Isaac. A year later they had me and this is the story of how I became a New Yorker.
