Daughters of Iraq by Revital Shiri-Horowitz Page A

base, where he would begin his basic training. She thought about that adolescent evening spent kissing and touching each other.
    For a long time, Noa had wondered whether or not Ehud loved her, but she didn’t dare ask. He never let on about his feelings toward her, whether or not he loved her, whether or not he really desired her. He allowed Noa to love him, sometimes even demanded her attention, but he never spoke about his feelings. Noa learned to be satisfied with what she had and not to ask for more.
    With the conclusion of her army service—after her mother had died—Noa returned home to live with her father, and Ehud went on to become an officer. He fought in several battles, and every now and then she’d see his face on television, fighting in the far-off mountains of Lebanon. She had other boyfriends during those years, but none had supplanted Ehud, who remained distant, unattainable, blurry. She grieved for what she had lost. And now, once again, he was leaving without any explanation. No, she wouldn’t let him interfere with her good mood. Each person travels on his own path , she thought, each person lives in his own world . Why didn’t he buy the book? Was it because she had thrown him off, or had he never intended to buy it in the first place? She wondered whether her image of Ehud—a gruff exterior enveloping a gentle soul—was real, or whether she had fallen in love with a fictitious character. She smiled to herself and tried to imagine a different ending to their short, strange conversation. And what if they had gone out for coffee? What if they had strolled through the streets of Tel Aviv, or back to her apartment? Would she have met a different Ehud than the one who had lived in her head all those years, or would the same adolescent love erupt within her? And this time, would it be the real thing—mature and mutual? She made her way back to the library. When she got there she asked to see everything about Yona Wallach.
     

Chapter Ten: Violet
     
    Friday, January 20, 1987
     
    I was born in 1932, in Baghdad, at the foot of the Chidekel River in Iraq. The fourth child of five. My three older siblings, Farcha, Anwar, and Chabiba, were many years older than me. My mother went through a lot before she had me. After me, she gave birth to Farida, and then decided to be content with what she had. All the pregnancies and deliveries had tired her out. Around the time Farida and I were born, my parents became grandparents. I know this sounds odd to people in the 1980s, but in the second half of the last century, it was not unusual. Many women got married right around their twelfth birthday, their Bat Mitzvah, and had their first baby at the age of fifteen.
    My mother was considered an odd bird; she didn’t marry until the ripe old age of seventeen, and she was nineteen when she became a mother. That’s why my nephews were more like brothers to me. You could say that, in certain ways, my mother was a feminist long before the term feminism reached Iraq. She started learning Hebrew at a young age, even though she sometimes had to stand on a chair so her teacher could see her.  She was the oldest child, and her father made sure she received the same education as a boy. Because my mother’s parents had lost a number of children before she was born, my mother was the center of their world. Even after my grandparents had other children, including two sons, she never lost her special place in the family.
    My mother chose my father for marriage, which was quite unacceptable at the time. She fell in love with him the first time she saw him, and she asked my grandfather to track him down. My grandfather, who could never refuse his daughter, went out and found my father, who came from a poor and undistinguished family. My father, my grandfather learned, had been supporting his mother ever since his father had returned from World War I, sick and unable to recover. When he died, he left a young widow and her orphan