The Kurdish threat to the Jewish community had become unbearable. Destitute, we could no longer survive under such conditions. Our neighbours rented rooms in the ‘Ajam quarter, which the Kurds did not enter, and the Jewish neighbourhood gradually emptied. In the end we too moved to the adjoining quarter. We lived among Jews there and the Kurds kept away, yet fear never left us.
A few days after the move, my elder brother announced that he was going to Khoy. “When I returned from Russia, I brought a great deal of merchandise with me,” he explained. “When I saw how bad conditions were in Kuhna Shahr, I sent half to Tabriz and left the other half in Khoy. I will go there; perhaps I can recover some of it and we can make a living.” He set out the following day.
In Khoy he found the merchandise and sold it to a resident of the city. After getting to know my brother, the buyer offered him an attractive partnership: my brother would invest his money, while the man would supply sheepskins in his possession; together they would process the leather and profit by selling shoes. My brother considered the proposal and accepted it. They cleaned and prepared the skins and began making shoes. When the partner saw that he had found an honest and industrious man, he placed a two-room building in his courtyard at my brother’s disposal and invited him to bring his wife to live there.
The offer appealed greatly to my brother. In Kuhna Shahr we had been living as refugees; in Khoy he could restore some order to life, with a home and livelihood for himself and his wife. In time he might also bring Mother and me.
The business did indeed earn a profit. My brother returned to Kuhna Shahr, explained the situation to Mother, and promised that he would soon rescue us from our wretched life in the town. He took his wife and went back to Khoy. His new partner, Mashdi Sattar, furnished the two rooms and supplied everything they needed. My brother believed him to be a good man. A month later he sent Mother a letter: he was doing well, earning money, and treated kindly by the neighbours, but he wanted her to send me to Khoy. He had received authorization to travel to Tabriz and retrieve the goods he had left there, and asked me to stay with his wife until he returned. At the end of the letter he wrote that, as soon as he came back from Tabriz, he would collect Mother as well.
Mother entrusted me to one of our neighbours, hired a donkey, gave the man money, and asked him to take me to the address my brother had provided in Khoy. A few days after I arrived, my brother left for Tabriz. Among the goods he had brought from Russia was tobacco for water pipes. Wartime shortages allowed him to sell it in Tabriz at a good profit.
Thinking that he might not have another opportunity to remain in the city, my brother searched for the temporary grave of our brother Ibrahim. After finding it, he bought a permanent burial plot and transferred Ibrahim‘s remains there. At that time three families arrived in Tabriz from Urmia. Since the plot he had purchased was larger than he needed, he decided to register the title in their names so that they could use the land as a Jewish cemetery. One member of the families was Mr Baruch, whom my brother had known before and who was very pleased by the gesture. The papers were completed within a few days, and my brother began his return journey.
Meanwhile, Mashdi Sattar’s wife took advantage of Shimon’s absence and began pressuring my brother’s wife. She and the women of the neighbourhood gathered around her, preached to her, and claimed that her husband had already converted to Islam and changed his name from Shimon to Shaban; she must do the same. “You too will become a Muslim,” they said. “Join the true faith, and then you will see what gifts we bring you and how much better your life becomes.”
The pressure continued every day. “Until you accept the true faith, you are impure,” they told her. “You may not enter the pool in the courtyard or even touch the water with the tip of your finger.” After days of persuasion, my brother’s wife gave in and said she agreed. At once the women began singing and dancing as though a wedding were being held in the house.
They dressed her and covered her head, then took her to an imam named Zarnishan. He changed her name, admonished her, and gave her tanbahat1. Gradually she began receiving religious instruction. Visitors kissed her hand, and she was now considered pure: she could bathe in the pool, and others could touch her.
One day they turned to me. “You may not bathe in the pool or put your hand in it. You have not accepted the true faith; do not make our pool impure.” The campaign that had first been directed at my brother’s wife was now turned against me. They asked when I would follow her and promised that I too would then be allowed to touch anything. I showed no willingness to yield, and persuasion gradually became intimidation. They separated my belongings from the other household goods and forbade my brother’s wife to touch me or my eating utensils. “Let him wash his own dishes,” they told her. “He is a Jew and will bring you bad luck.”
I saw that my brother’s wife remained silent and offered no resistance to what was being done to her. At night I thought of Mother. If she learned that her daughter-in-law had become a Muslim, who knew what she might do?
I knew what I had to do.
At daybreak I rose, dressed hurriedly, and pulled on my boots. I opened the door and ran outside. My brother’s wife heard me and hurried after me. “Do not go,” she called. “Wait; take something for the road.” I ignored her and kept running. I passed through the city gate and asked the way to Kuhna Shahr. They told me that the journey took two days and covered about one hundred kilometres.
I completed it in a single day. It was twelve days before Passover2. Snow no longer covered the road but lay piled along its sides, and the ground was very muddy. I was nine years old, yet I flew over the mud like a bird.
I was distraught. Behind me was my brother’s wife; ahead, Mother was waiting, and I had to tell her what had happened. Fear and danger drove me onward so fiercely that I did not notice when the sole of one boot, mired in the mud, tore away and remained behind. I removed my boots and socks and continued barefoot.
At last I reached a hill from whose summit I could see Kuhna Shahr. The sun still stood about two men’s heights above the horizon. Until then I had run almost without stopping. The sight of the town calmed me a little, and only then did I feel the exhaustion and the growing weight in my legs. I decided to rest briefly, but I was so weary that I fell asleep.
The sun set while I slept. Suddenly I felt a wooden stick striking my body and awoke in alarm. A donkey caravan was passing, and one of the travellers had stopped to wake me. “Get up, get up — you will freeze here!” he warned. Every muscle was stiff, but I rose and continued. Walking loosened my body, and I was soon able to quicken my pace again. In the darkness and cold the road seemed endless. Fear gripped me and drove me to run faster and faster.
When I entered the town and reached our house, I collapsed on the threshold. Mother saw that I was exhausted and did not try to question me. She covered me with blankets and let me sleep. The marks of the journey were visible on my body, and she sat motionless beside my head throughout the night. When I awoke she asked, “Why have you come in such a state?” Then, in a single rush, I told her everything that had happened.
Mother took the news hard. “Was this all I lacked?” she cried. “Of my eight children only two remain, and now the elder is slipping from my grasp and becoming a Muslim?” She wept and struck her head. Suddenly she stopped. “I do not believe it, and I will not believe it until I see with my own eyes. We will go to Khoy tomorrow. Or should we wait for Shimon to return from Tabriz? No — we will leave now, and I will see my daughter-in-law.”
We hired two donkeys and set out for Khoy. After a day’s journey we stopped in a village called Monanjik and spent the night there. On the afternoon of the second day we reached the city. I knew the roads and led Mother directly to my brother’s house. She approached the door and knocked.
“Who is it?” a voice called from inside.
“It is I. Open the door!”
“Whom are you looking for?”
“I am Shaban’s mother. I have come for my daughter-in-law.”
“There is no such person here,” the voice answered. “Your daughter-in-law has left you and joined the true faith. Do not interfere — go away!”
Mother picked up a hard object from the ground and began beating on the door. Since no man was in the house, they sent for Mashdi Sattar. When he arrived, he repeated the same claim. “What do you want? She no longer belongs to you; she has left your people.” Mother insisted: “I want to see her. I want to see her face.”
While we argued outside, the door suddenly opened wide. My brother’s wife burst from the house and ran towards us. She threw herself into Mother’s arms, embraced her, and wept. “I was alone here,” she explained. “They forced their will upon me. Now that you have found me, I will not leave you even for a moment.”
Mashdi Sattar tried to separate them, but my brother’s wife turned on him furiously. “You are a shameless man, yet you pretend to be holy3. How dare you force upon me something I do not want? I will never abandon my mother’s faith!” She cursed him and spat in his face. We hurried from the courtyard, and my brother’s wife came with us barefoot, just as she had left the house.
We hired two donkeys again, one for Mother and one for my brother’s wife, while I walked and urged the animals onward. The owners were travelling in a caravan of forty-five donkeys and eleven people. They carried two rifles known as “takatash.” When we reached the Black Hill on the outskirts of Kuhna Shahr, we heard shouts behind us: “Stop the caravan and leave everything, or we will kill you all!”
The ‘Ajams of Kuhna Shahr were considered relatively braver than those elsewhere. The two men carrying the rifles told the others to hurry. “We will delay the robbers behind us. Once you cross the hill, you will be out of danger.” One of the armed men struck the donkeys to spur them on. I saw the second rifle lying on the ground and quickly picked it up. The man ordered me to lie in a ditch beside the road and jumped down next to me, while the caravan moved away.
“Do not move!” the ‘Ajam shouted at the robbers. “If you advance, we will finish you one by one.” The moment he finished speaking, I fired a shot into the air. “Son of a dog,” one robber muttered. “That one is shooting to kill.” There were five of them. When the man beside me made it clear that we would not surrender, the five began to retreat. We rose quickly and caught up with the caravan.
On the road Mother told the donkey owner what had happened to us in Khoy. He became angry. “They are Shi’ites,” he said. “There are hardly any others in Khoy. They are fanatics; in their eyes not only you but everyone unlike them is impure. I too am a Muslim, but we Sunnis are more moderate. We recognize all peoples with a scripture as human beings. I too wish others to become Muslims and regard that as a virtue, but I must persuade them, not compel them. My faith must be accepted with love; otherwise I commit an offence against it.” We reached home as he spoke.
After finishing his business in Tabriz, my brother returned to Khoy unaware of what had happened. When he found his wife gone, he turned anxiously to the owner of the house. Mashdi Sattar complained, “You have a Jewish mother as hard as stone. She came here and used trickery to take your wife from us.”
My brother feigned innocence. “I am surprised that my wife did not accept the true faith,” he said. “I had better go and bring her back here.” After settling their accounts, he set out for Kuhna Shahr. He left all his belongings in Khoy, with no intention of ever returning.