One son became an NYPD officer and the other an FDNY firefighter. They still speak Bengali; it’s helpful to have an extra language in their line of work.
All in 1990s
One son became an NYPD officer and the other an FDNY firefighter. They still speak Bengali; it’s helpful to have an extra language in their line of work.
In our culture the best thing that parents could do was to get their daughters married off and pass the responsibility to someone else. As Arab Christians, divorce was not in our vocabulary.
I thought, “There’s a country where girls want to hang on my every word.”
At that point my dad said, “This is not for you. Stay home. Be the math guy with the clean clothes.”
It was supposed to be me, my brother, and our other sister. Sadly, my sister passed away just before we were all supposed to leave.
I was buying furniture not only to store his CDs! I also had things I wanted to store! It’s funny actually, but it is a balance - it’s my style, but it houses his collection.
I would make my mom either tie my hair back because I hated flyaways, or she would just put the kosinka on me to avoid a tantrum.
It had been illegal for soldiers to steal things from Germany after the War, so you can see that the maker’s mark was rubbed off in order for it to have been smuggled out and brought to the Soviet Union.
This was right before the Revolution. They were from wealthy families and were very afraid to draw attention.
We had been mapping out microchips, the plans for which were routinely stolen from the U.S.
I took an orthographic dictionary so that I would always remember how to write properly.
When we arrived here and walked into our rental apartment, we found what seemed like hundreds of these boxes stacked everywhere, just waiting for us.
In Georgia there were only about 10 Jewish last names, so it was fairly easy to tell who the Jews were.
They took my mom and me aside to a different room, where they searched our things, and of course they found the bag of jewelry and threatened to call the police.
My dad was literally yelling at the scale, “48 kilos! We have room for 2 more kilos!”
I remember asking my parents whether I could pack a suitcase full of toys...
My dad was a nuclear physicist. He also wrote poetry up until he passed away in 2001.
So we started our life here with furniture from the garbage, but we had pots and pans, fine china, and every imaginable kitchen utensil!
These pots! Imagine, having to haul these heavy pots with us on the plane!
It reminds me of the weekends I spent with my grandparents in their Moscow apartment and how we’d have tea from it every morning.
