We lived, all the Jews, we lived in Wadi Abu Jmil. It was like one big open space. Everyone was there, with the houses. And they would do […] and do everything. And there were three prayers put there. And we would go from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, from road to road, everything…we would all know each other. We would have lots of fun together. And we all knew each other.

We were with…living well with the Christians and the Muslims. And later, after the Six Day War, so the differences began to show who was Jewish and who wasn’t Jewish. And everyone then started…in our neighbourhood…everyone would come wanting…to take money, for us to give them money for the terrorists. And they started listening to the Jews, and cheating the Christians with the Muslims. We were scared, so we escaped. We left via Turkey. We left, came to Israel. Because we were scared of all the problems that were there….and killings. The Christians with Muslims mostly in Beirut. And everything became…we were scared.

On a Friday, our mother was cooking. We had an opportunity on Friday…we would bathe on Thursday. And on Friday we would come and clean the house and cook, and then we would have lunch - rice in sour sauce and kibbeh for Friday. And in the evening we would do kiddush together. And sit together with dad and mum. My uncles would then come visit us. We would have fun. On the holidays, after prayers, everyone would visit each other.

Milk we would only drink in the morning. We would put a glass of yogurt […] the cheese we would take to school as a sandwich. And we would drink…take yogurt in the morning. Then, in the evening we would eat what food remained from the afternoon. We didn’t eat much dairy. It was all meat and chicken.

There was a special butcher who slaughtered the chicken so we could eat grilled and fried meat and kibbe and […] and we had everything. Food was…plentiful, thank G-d.

The milk would be brought to us in loads, kilos, they brought it to our house. The vegetables were brought to our house. We lived well, comfortably. There weren’t many issues.

Dad would come from the synagogue and we would prepare the table so we could have do kiddush. My uncle would always come at two or three and be together to prepare the table and have lahmajin and tabouli and kibbe and olives. We would have breakfast at 10 and tell stories, talk about what happened during the prayers and what we learned and didn’t learn in the prayer.

At one thirty my father would always serve lunch. Whoever came late, my father wouldn’t allow to be with us at the table. We all had to be sitting at the table at 1:30 in front of my father. After, we wold go for a walk in the afternoon and go to the cinema and go here and there. We came with our friends here. We would come home at 5:30-6:00. I mean, it was a day of visits. A whole day. Syna gogue and visits.

(We had) three or four synagogues, and there was Alliance Israelite. And there was the alley…other schools. And the Jews had two or three. And then…when we stuied for the brevet. After the brevet we would go study at college with Christians and finish our studies. 

We loved each other and helped each other. We were young and laugh and…everyone was together, and visited each other and love each other really. Help each other, love each other. 

There was…in Tyre…we had a prophet named Sujud. We would go there…go up till before Tyre. We would go to the prophet Sujud. We would go up till… about a small journey from some place. They would drop us off at a donkey there. We would go up, it was very high. There we would visit for three days. After three days, if we didn’t come down, heavy rain would be pouring.