Looking for Shama

I love doing research. It was one of my favourite things about being a journalist. I use to spend hours in archives and libraries (the pre-internet days.) I loved it. It made me feel a little bit like a private investigator.
Recently I’ve been feeling that thrill again. I’ve been spending my days digging into my family’s unwritten past, interviewing old family members and sitting in archives (how I love that old paper smell,) and since most of what I’m looking for is really old – the internet is not much use for me.
Apart from general information about Yemeni Jews, I’ve been looking for some specific details as well: I’d love to find a photo of my great grandmother Shama. Shama is the protagonist of my (fictional) novel. She abandoned my grandmother and her twin sister in Yemen when they were at 2 and moved to Israel with a new man – her third husband. I’ve been told by many how beautiful she was, even though nobody who’s still alive has actually seen her. She died young, a long time ago. I’m thinking around 1914.
I’ve been trying to pinpoint a few dates in my family’s history. For example, I want to know, for once and for all, when my grandmother was born.
M grandmother doesn’t have a birth certificate. She was born in a village in North Yemen, by the village midwife, in a time and a place where birth dates had little importance to people. My grandmother has been eighty for about a decade until a few years ago someone had thought to update her estimated age... Now, her children approximate that she’s about 94-95. Everybody seemed happy with that guess, until I came along to question and stir everything up.
That age didn’t seem right according to my calculations. If she’s 95, then she was born in 1913. But that’s impossible, since I discovered that her younger brother Aharon, who was born in Israel to Shama and her new husband Yair, was born in 1913.
“Who told you that?” My uncles and aunts ask suspiciously when I gently bring up the subject.
“His daughter!” I say, pretty sure of myself.
“Have you seen a birth certificate?”
“Well… no.”
“Then she’s just estimating. She must be wrong.” They conclude.

Pretty much everything that side of the family says is regarded with suspicion, because… well, they’re the OTHER family, the one that was born to Shama in Israel. In that story – they’re the bad guys, even though they have done nothing wrong, except for being descended from the wrong husband. They’re the ones who defend Shama. They seem to think that what she did was excusable, while my family simply sees her as an evil person, a terrible mom and even a bit of a slut. They don’t say it in so many words but I know that some of them are a bit annoyed with me for spending so much time with that side of the family. They don’t really get why I chose to focus on HER story. If it was up to them, they’d rather see me tell my grandmother story, from her point of view. It’s a good thing my grandmother doesn’t know what’s going on, because she would have flipped! Just the other day, I came to the weekly family gathering at my aunt’s house and one of my aunts welcomed me with a glare. “I heard you have a new best friend!!!” She said, referring, of course, to Aharon’s daughter, who’s been helping me with my research (who – just to set things straights - is as stubborn and convinced of her version as my family is of theirs. There’s no convincing of either side.)

Anyways, I go back to see her, hoping for a birth certificate, and sure enough she doesn’t have one. Because even though Aharon was born in Israel, he was born at home and if his parents neglected to register him, like many Yemenis back then did, then his real birth date is nothing more than a guess. His daughter does show me a book published by the Ministry of Security that lists soldiers who died in the independence war, in 1948. The book clearly states that he was born in 1913.
I come back to my family, armed with that new information, but my family isn’t convinced. “Of course the book said that!” They dismiss with a sneer. “The book say whatever the family had told them!”
So I decide go to the only living son of Yair, Shama’s husband. (Are you still following?) Yair, whom Shama went to Israel with, remarried after her death and had many more children. I meet with the youngest of them, the only one who is still alive (at 70+,) and ask him, “When did your father immigrate to Israel?”
“1912,” He says. No hesitation.
“Do you have his immigration papers?”
“Of course not!” He laughs at my stupidity. “They didn’t issue any back then!” He refers me to a history book his father is mentioned in, and the date of his immigration is there as 1912. His date of settling in the Yemeni neighbourhood is 1913. He was one of the founders of our neighborhood.
Well, I figured that’s enough proof. According to the story (and it’s the one detail everyone agrees on) Shama left my grandmother and her sister when they were 2 and immigrated to Israel. This means my grandmother was born in 1910! Which makes her 98. Ninety eight!!!
“He was always a bit weird, that guy,” my family remains suspicious. “I wouldn’t trust what he says.”

To make things easier for me (and my future readers), I’ve decided to make a family tree, a task that proved incredibly difficult, even in a technical sense, because there were so many marriages between cousins and polygamy was widespread. How exactly does one draw a tree like this, where lines cross over from one family to the other, and the same name appear in two different places? My tree looks possessed, like it came from a haunted forest.

The research is more challenging than I expected. I’ve seen Shama’s third husband – Yair, mentioned in books and documents several times, but never with her. The one time his wife was mentioned it was the one he married after Shama’s death. I’ve even seen his photos, but never with her. It’s sad. It’s like she’s been deleted from history. It’s like she really is just a character in my book, a figment of my imagination. How can I not find anything about her? How come I can’t find anybody who knew her? How can a person leave so little behind?
I travel south to a village inhabited by old Yemenis to visit one of my grandmother’s cousins, a vibrant beautiful 90 year old woman who remembers my grandmother from Yemen. “Did you know Shama?” I say, hopeful. “Of course!” She says, “She was my sister!”
Ha?
Apparently, Shama was a common name. It was Jenny of early twentieth century Yemen.
When I ask Yair’s son about her, he claims his father was married to seven women. Which one exactly am I asking about?
I had lots of hope from a meeting with another one of my grandmother’s cousins. He’s Shama’s nephew, the son of Shama’s sister! I’ve been told he was a knowledgeable man, a professor in University. For sure, he’d be able to help. But the man is now in his eighties and in recent years he has suffered significant memory loss. Since Shama died before he was born, he’s having a hard time even remembering her name. “Yes, there was another sister,” he says, unsure. Eventually he gives me something he had written about the family, and in it, to my relief – Shama is mentioned. She was real! She did exist! Unfortunately, some of the information in it contradicts the one I’ve gathered, mainly – the name of Shama’s father (she was his mom’s sister – but only from their mother’s side... )

“Why don’t we ask grandma?” My mom suggests. My grandmother still communicates sometimes, although only when she feels like it (and when you come to think about it, it’s not much different than how she’s always been…)
A few weeks ago, for example, I mentioned to my mom and her siblings that Shama’s mother was named Simcha.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“That was her name. Shama brought her with her to Israel when she immigrated.”
“No, no, no,” they said. “You’re confused. Who told you that?”
When I tell them who, (it’s the other family again!) they narrow their eyes and insist they never heard about it.
Being stubborn is clearly a family trait.
But I guess I made them curious, because the next time they visited my grandmother they asked her: “Mom, what was your mother’s name?”
“Shama.” My grandmother said (now that she’s old, she doesn’t bother going through the list of curses that she had always attached to her mother’s name.)
“And what was her mother’s name?”
To their surprise, my grandmother said: Simcha.
What do you know? I was right! They were wrong!

I was looking forward to talking to my grandmother. I just need her to tell me her grandfather’s name, for the family tree. I’ve narrowed it down to two options, it’s either Salem or Aharon. But my grandmother is having a bad day. She’s not communicating at all, no matter how much we plead and try. “You should have come yesterday!” the nurses say. “She was so clear yesterday!”


It may seem like I’m not making much progress but that’s not the case. I’m quite happy with how things are developing. I’ve found historic documents that included Shama’s third husband; things like the price he paid for his 1913 house for example. I found my grandmother’s immigration papers with a cool picture where she stands next to my grandfather and his second wife… I’m close to decoding our family tree (which a year ago – seemed near impossible!) and I’ve found information about Simcha (Shama’s mom) that I haven’t known before, like the fact that both her husbands divorced her (and not died, as I thought before) because she didn’t bear any boys (and when she did, they died at a young age.)
I found out my grandmother’s age once and for all (and now even her children are starting to believe me!) I heard many great stories about my grandmother and her siblings, and general stories about Yemen and the neighbourhood. I found old photos of Shama’s sisters, and even an ancient photo of Simcha’s second husband!!! I even heard a story about my grandmother birth, that Shama’s sister told her son. They didn’t know that Shama was carrying twins, and after my grandmother came out they all thought they were done. Then, when they realized there was one more, someone ran to notify the husband: “Wait! There’s another one!” After Saida came out, the husband asked: “Anything else? Are we done?”

Next Sunday I’m heading to the National archives in Jerusalem. I’m really excited. I’ve spoke to an advisor there. At first, she didn’t sound so hopeful. The archive only had documents from 1919 and up. She looked into another archive, from the Turks days (Ottoman Empire) that had documents dated until 1907. “Unfortunately, the years between those two dates are not very documented,” she said. Then she remembered a private collection (The Yavnieli Archives) and in it she found a list of Yemeni immigrants from 1912! If I’m lucky, I might even find her photo! But at this point even seeing her name in print would be nice. Anything to make her a little more real.