In memory of my parents and to my children
My mother and father…their friends would often come to our place. (They would) eat, and drink, and (drink) tea and coffee. (They were) like our family. And my mother and father (would say) “come, come, come everyone with us. Come and drink with us”. And our situation was really good, good, good. I mean, my father’s job was good, good. And they would come to us a lot. And my mother would cook such food. Mhasha, tbeet, yaprakh, kitchri…I don’t know what other food. Excellent. And her fish was…what fish they would make! And on the Passover holiday…we had an oven. An oven we would cook bread in. As in, on Passover here, like there is matza, my mother would make it in the oven. The dough…and put it in the oven. In the oven…what bread! Oh my G-d. But without…yeast. Because they didn’t use yeast. And she would knead the dough…in the oven. What bread would come out! Really something! The mhasha, yaprakh, and kitchri and salona and tbeet…that was our food. That’s the food of Iraq…there’s nothing. Here I make the food of Chinese (people) and Morocco, I make all the food here. I cooked. But my family in Iraq…that was the food. Only my family was Iraqi, there was no[…]. There was yaprakh and fish and tbeet and kitchri and salona. All the Jews would make that (food). My mother was a seamstress. Seamstress. My mother was also a seamstress. And people would come to us often and they loved us a lot. They really loved us. And we had a big house (in which) people would sit. And my father would go to synagogue, synagogue. Every day. When I was still young I would go with him. I liked listening to the Torah. Until I came here, I liked it. When I came here, we came to Jerusalem. Me, my siblings and everyone…I went in right away. They put me into third grade. And we learned Hebrew.