[Editor’s Note: Each day this week, the newspaper will present excerpts from the new novel by Dr. Rosemary H. Cohen, “The Mother of Jerusalem Is Crying,” inspired, as all of her extensive writings are, by the sudden death of her teenage daughter 19 summers ago.]
The Preface, Part II
Re “My Daughter Was Dead”
Everyone was surprised to see me, a mother who had just lost a beautiful daughter, able to remain so calm. I wanted to cry and complain. But then I remembered my grandmother and I felt ashamed for myself for I realized I had the best example to follow in my life.
Within minutes of the accident, Liana and the rest of us were transported to the best hospitals in the city. Later, Liana was buried with prayers and all honors. We had the luxury of a week of mourning and prayers with our friends and relatives.
That was in stark contrast to the experience of my grandmother who had lost her entire family and belongings in a very short time. Her husband was killed in front of her and her daughter. She was only 18 years old, and her daughter was three years old. Ottoman Turkish soldiers had killed my grandfather, tying his legs to the tail of a horse and drawing his body through the streets of Khoy. He was an honorable and innocent man, guilty only of being born to a Christian family in a Muslim country during the wrong period of time.
The lives of my grandmother and mother changed in hardly more than an instant. They were the wife and daughter of a well-respected, kind and wealthy man. Suddenly, they had lost everything. The wife became a widow and her daughter was without her loving father. My grandmother lived the life of a survivor and struggled to secure a roof over the head of her daughter and put enough food on the table.
Both my grandmother and mother survived the evil with courage, their heads held high and smiles on their faces.
Many years later, my sister Seda died at the age of sixteen. My mother and grandmother, who had struggled bravely for so many years, had to face tragedy one more time.
Didn’t I have good examples in my family to follow?
Just hours before the accident, I met with one of my customers whom I had known for a long time. I do not know why he chose that fateful day to share his life story with me. “I lost my entire family in Auschwitz,” he told me. “While I was all alone on the deck of the ship that was bringing me to the United States, I met a young girl. Like me, she also had lost her entire family at Auschwitz. With no special aim and hope, we were both coming to the United States. Regardless of the tragedies and sad experiences, I do not know how and why we opened our hearts to love each other. I later asked her to marry me. We had not yet made peace with this world when we had our children.
(To be continued)
Dr. Rosemary Hartounian Cohen, who lives in the Fairfax District, earned her Ph.D in sociology from the Sorbonne in Paris. She lived in two other countries before moving with her husband and children to Los Angeles in 1984. She has published three books in America and is at work on her fourth. Since 1985, Dr. Cohen has operated Atelier de Paris, an international art business, on Robertson Boulevard. She may be contacted at rosemary@atelierdeparis.com
