The Syrian Flag
My parents and I
Coming to the Big Apple
The summer of the year 1969 was going to be the summer that would change my father’s life forever. He came to New York from Syria at the age of eight with his parents, brother and two sisters. They all had very little knowledge of English and so would have some trouble adapting to the new lifestyle. The parents opened up a travel agency and the father became the first ever to plan pilgrimages to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. So, gradually the family began to make a living and support themselves in this country.
My father at a young age
The children were all enrolled in school and each had his/her share of difficulty fitting in. My father, whose name is Anas, tried his best to understand the English language. When he first saw the letter “t”, he thought it was a plus sign and thought to himself, “Why do you add words in English?” It was not until much later that he fully understood that the character that he presumed to be a plus sign was actually part of the English alphabet. By the end of his first year in school, Anas had pretty much grasped the insides and outsides of the language.
As the years went by and more children joined the family, which soon became a family of nine children, more responsibilities came in and in a matter of time, my father and his siblings all had to learn to get everything they wanted on their own. In other words, they had to learn to be independent and not need their parents for every little thing. Sometimes my father even had to look over his younger siblings in his parents’ absence. Thus, it is obvious that life was only getting harder for my father and his siblings.
My grandfather and grandmother were pretty strict and had a lot of rules in the household. They wouldn’t allow any of their children to watch television before they finished all of their assignments and they wouldn’t spoil their children either. For instance, they wouldn’t shower them with clothes, shoes, and accessories. My father once told me that he would wear the same pair of shoes everyday until it was worn out. Then his parents would buy him new ones. In the household, everything followed a protocol. Things had to be done certain ways and if they were not done correctly, a punishment was enforced. So, everyone had to do his/her share of cleaning dishes and mopping floors and no one could object.
Not only did all of the children have cleaning chores, but they had religious tasks as well. Every morning, before sunrise, at a time that Muslims call Fajr, everyone would do their prayers and then sit in a group and recite from the Holy Quran. That’s how things were done and if someone did not do what my grandfather said to do, he/she was in for something big. These rules stayed in place for many years and in fact, eventually my father’s siblings would try to get around them in any way they could.
My grandfather would usually not allow his children to leave the house after a certain time and so what one of my aunts did to leave was escape through her bedroom window. Although her bedroom was on the second floor, the jump was not so high. To make sure no one knew that she left, she would put pillows under her blanket acting like she was sleeping under the covers. Thus, my aunts and uncles were huge risk takers and, interestingly, they are still like that today.
When my father grew old enough, he went to college and worked to pay for the tuition. At the time, there was not as much financial aid as there is today. Also, like I mentioned earlier, my father had to depend on himself to pay for his college—his parents were not going to pay for it. So, he worked hard to balance between his work and school and a few years down the line, he decided to become a cop. He then took the exam and passed. He finished college, got his bachelor’s degree and spent the next twenty years of his life as part of the New York Police Department. In those twenty years, he ranked up, became a lieutenant, and retired four to five years after that.
In my father’s time as a police officer, a lot took place in my family. My grandparents, their son and their relatives got into a terrible car accident and my uncle passed away. Everyone else was okay except my grandmother who was taken to the hospital to be treated for bone injuries. She stayed there for about a month and the day she was finally going to be released, a horrible fire lit up in the hospital and my grandmother and grandfather died from the smoke. Those were very tough times for my father and his siblings. It was a tragedy to lose three loved ones in one month.
The siblings supported each other as much as they could and as the years went by, the pain was forgotten and all of the siblings soon separated and each one began to live his/her life independently. Today, my family is scattered all over the United States—in Texas, Illinois, Washington D.C., Massachusetts, and of course here in New York. But, occasionally we all meet in one place because of a holiday, wedding, or other special event.
My father and I
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