“Ah, you prankster,” he would repeat affectionately.
If only he knew what treacherous plans I often hatched while stroking his beard gently and tenderly. If only he could imagine what Yura and I whispered to each other, giggling behind his back.
When Grandpa Yoskhaim fell asleep, you could do anything to him. So why couldn’t we trim his beard for free during his blissful sleep? Chick-chick with a pair of scissors, and half the beard would be gone. We’d trim it and hide… Our bobo would wake up, stretch and begin to scratch his dear beard. He would plunge his fingers into it and feel that something was wrong, something was missing. Grandpa would rush to the mirror and see that it was not him reflected there but a younger man.
No, we didn’t expect Grandpa would like it. On the contrary, he would begin to curse us and run around wildly. We would have to hide well, for it might be scary. He could beat us up in a fit of temper. It was I who feared it; it was nothing to Yura. He would run alongside and shout, laughing, “You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!” There would be a lot of yelling and a big uproar in the yard.
At last, I fell asleep, distracted from his snoring by those pleasant thoughts. And now, as I woke up at dawn, I remembered with pleasure that I was in the old house…
I loved this house and knew its every corner. It was quite large, and it was shaped like a letter L. My grandparents lived in the longer part of the L. Our family had occupied the lower part before we moved to Chirchik. Uncle Misha and his family lived in a separate house across the yard.
My grandparents had three rooms. The door of the small and windowless kitchen opened right into the yard. The light was on there now. Grandma Lisa was already up and busy at the stove. From the kitchen, you could enter the middle-sized living room and from there, the largest room, the bedroom where I was now. Apart from two beds, it had a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, and a big antique cupboard. It was beautiful, made of walnut wood with carved edges. Its upper part, topped with a carved casing and with thick decorated legs, rested on its wider lower part. There were Passover dishes in this upper tier. Household utensils were kept in the lower part. Grandma Lisa told me that she had gotten the cupboard from her parents who, likewise, had received it from their parents. I remembered that, as I opened the doors of the cupboard. They would creak like only very old furniture can, melodiously and slowly, now louder, now softer, the right door in one key, the left in a different key… I would open one of them and then the other. After “playing” the upper doors, I would switch to the lower ones. I could hear the whole symphony that way. It seemed that the cupboard was singing about its life story.
My grandparents’ beds were on each side of the cupboard, Grandma’s on the left almost at the door, Grandpa’s behind the cupboard in the far corner. I thought that Grandma had chosen a cozier place for her bed – the big, oval silver-painted gas furnace sat next to it. It heated two rooms, the bedroom and the living room. How warm and nice it was to sleep near the furnace on cold winter nights. But it was summer now, so the furnace wasn’t heated, and Grandpa’s bed was warm, soft and cozy without it.
Grandpa was already up, he always got up very early. He stood at the window across from the bed, his dark silhouette clearly outlined against the pre-dawn blue. Grandpa prayed, swaying back and forth. He prayed just as he had yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before that… as he had prayed all his life for as long as he could remember. Back and forth, back and forth… His beard rose and fell and also trembled slightly because Grandpa moved his lips as he was reading a prayer. I heard that rustling whisper while I was waking up. His favorite dark green skull cap, which now looked black, hugged his bald head tightly. The tefillin, the small box attached to the middle of his forehead, reminded me of a light used by divers swimming underwater. It loomed on Grandpa’s forehead like a strange growth. I knew that there were commandments in that box, which was why every man who prayed had to wear it. There was an identical box tied to Grandpa’s left arm above the elbow.
I began to listen and could gradually distinguish words. I didn’t understand them, for Grandpa prayed in Hebrew, of course. He would hold the prayer book in his hands. With its swollen yellowed pages, it served Grandpa patiently and with dignity every day. He glanced at it out of habit for he remembered many prayers by heart. That didn’t mean that Grandpa Yoskhaim was an educated person and knew Hebrew. He could read, in other words he knew how to pronounce letters and words, but that was it. He was only aware of the meaning of the words and prayers thanks to the explanations offered by the rabbi at the synagogue.
“Grandpa, do you understand what you read?” I asked him more than once.
“Not quite,” he answered honestly.
“How can it be?” I wondered, thinking, then why read the prayers.
“It’s not necessary to understand but rather to feel,” Grandpa answered with conviction.
At the time, I didn’t really understand the profound meaning of his words. But even so, even though I didn’t understand, the impression of seeing Grandpa Yoskhaim praying was deep, powerful, and very important for my young soul.
I grew up in the Soviet Union. I was a Soviet child, which meant that I barely felt I was a Jew. I never gave it a thought.
Antisemitism was not often manifested openly, but it did exist. Most Jews resorted to assimilation, or rather adaptation; they wanted to be like those among whom they lived. However, that old story had spread over the centuries. And other things were added to it under Soviet rule. Any religion, not just Judaism, was practically banned in Soviet lands. It was considered ridiculous and shameful to be religious. It was considered evidence of ignorance. Moreover, it was an indicator of dissent, high handedness and animosity. It’s not surprising that we children not only didn’t study religious history in kindergarten or school but knew nothing about God either. There was no God for millions of Soviet people. Period. He was forgotten. Only old people of different ethnicities stubbornly attended their churches, synagogues, or mosques, of which there were very few. In Tashkent, there were only a few synagogues, so people would pray at home, observing their holidays and fasting.
It turned out that whenever I went to either Grandpa Yoskhaim’s or Grandpa Hanan’s home, I was absorbed in a different reality. Back home, I would forget it and became an ordinary Soviet child. I forgot about it, but obviously not completely.
It was only many years later, already in America, when I began to become a Jew all over again, when I began to feel my Jewishness, that I understood how the dark silhouette of my Grandpa against the background of the blue dawn was not just a scene from my early childhood. It was something much more significant; it was a link connecting me to my ancestors, to the people given to me by fate.
Grandpa was still praying when I entered the kitchen, where the clinking of dishes was heard: Grandma Lisa was cooking breakfast.
Chapter 25. “Just Look at Her!”
Grandma Lisa’s father, Nataniel Kozi was considered a prominent businessman in the Uzbek town of Chinaz early in the twentieth century. That’s how one would refer to him in contemporary language. He was a rich man, a bigwig, a factory owner, in the language spoken in old Russia. Nataniel owned a cotton mill. His son Rahmin Simhayev was in the business of sewing women’s apparel.