What I know about my grandparents from my mother's side is that they came from two different simple villages in Amman. My maternal grandmother, who was a very polite, quite and shy lady, was brought from the village of Na'ur as a bride for my grandfather, who lived in the village of Wadiseer. They were simple people who lived on planting crops and preparing plans of self-efficiency. I have no idea at any point exactly their families came to Jordan, or whether they have roots any where else.
The situation with my paternal grandparents is different. My great grandfather (my father's grandfather) was brought from Turkey to Jordan as a kid of may be fourteen years old. The rest of his family remained in Turkey. He got married to a very good-hearted lady named Surat. His mother tongue was Turkish, but he spoke excellent Circassian and he learned Arabic (although his pronunciation was slightly heavy), with some writing, too! Which was very rare at that time. He and grandma Surat had three children, my grandfather, and another boy and a girl. He was lonely. At every season of Hajj, he used to grab my grandpa's hand and take him to the train station to look among pilgrims for potential members of his family. This trip would be done daily, until the Hajj season is over. Disappointed, he would always stay for some time at the train station, watching the last caravan as they move towards the horizon, going back to Turkey without his family. He would always wait until the next Hajj season. And he never came across any one from his family.
My great grandfather, Grandpa AbdulAziz, was a member of the Ottoman army. At time of the Arab revolution, he was fighting with the Ottomans. Fiercely! One night, a messenger knocked on their door and told them that the British are looking for AbdulAziz so he would better disappear. That night he fled to his distant relatives whom he grew up with, and that was the point when we lost our real family name and substituted it with another one who keeps causing people, until this day, to mistake us with another family! :-)
My father was young when grandpa AbdulAziz died. So I never met him. Nor did I meet grandma Surat. But I met their son, my grandfather, grandpa AbdulMajeed. And I used to hear him humming Turkish songs. Actually, it was not only his parents. My grandfather also got married to a Turkish lady of Circassian origin, grandma Subheya. As far as I know, she was one of three sisters, one of them being a half sister (her mother was from Jordan). My grandmother and her Turkish sister were orphans. They both lived in Turkey, but their sister with the Jordanian mother lived in Jordan. Grandma Subheya was a well educated young lady. She was taught reading and writing in Turkish and in Arabic. She used to read literature. She played accordion and oud. In one of her visits to Jordan, she met my grandfather, and they got married, and she then moved to Jordan. She died at a very young age out of heart disease. So my father, also, grew up an orphan.
As a child, he traveled to Turkey to visit his aunt, who was married to -ahem- a Turkish mafia man! :-D and he has unclear memories about that trip. As we grew up, my father's Turkish aunt, used to come in visits from time to time. She would bring a bag full of presents for every one. We would wait for her visit with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. She was a strict Turkish old lady that would never tolerate bad manners. For her it was not acceptable for little children to cry over something they want from their mom and daddy. I remember her, with her lacy head scarf, and well ironed silk shirt, and tight knee-length skirt fitting her skinny figure. I remember the mixture of smells around her, her fragrances mixed with her Turkish cigarettes. Her strong voice, and the way she pronounced the letter "K" as the Arabic "Qaaf"... we cherished her visits and her stories alot. Oh, and her gifts, as well. Not for the gifts themselves, but for the way she always knew the sizes of each one, and the style each one likes. But we also feared her a little! LoL
Now grandma Moudat, my father's aunt, has passed away years ago. But her sons are daughters are still there, in Turkey. They are a very wealthy family, MashaAllah. Most of them are grandfathers and grandmothers now. One of them, a lady named Gulsen, still visits us in Jordan each couple of years.
So this is just so say, I always took Turkey for granted. I noticed it, but didn't at the same time. I had roots there, but I never took notice of that before.
Until...
Stay tuned! :-)
