Sages family

This is a family picture, with my older brother, his wife and the children.  You can see my father Jak Sages, my mother Marie Sages, my husband Alert Arguete and my daughter Lucy present in this photograph too.

When the children of two large families, the Abravanel's and the Sages', were married, they started living in Bursa.  I know they married in the matchmaking style.  My mother came from Salonika, my father lived in Bursa.  In Bursa, family gatherings were important.  There was a Jewish association.  Balls would take place and my mother and father participated in these balls.  There wasn't a luxurious life in Bursa, but there was and orderly and good life. 

I am the second child of this family.

My older brother Menahem Sages was born in 1921 in Bursa.   His wife Rene Nahmias was the sister of my uncle Michel's first wife Margeurite.  She was a very beautiful woman but she was too meticulous, she was obsessively meticulous.  When we went to her house, she would look at the shoes before she looked at your face.  She had a very good relationship with her son.  She took care of him like a baby, she paid a lot of attention to her husband too but we generally did not go to my older brother's house, he would come to our house to see me.  My brother and my childhoods were not alike at all.  Because our personalities were not alike.  He was calm whereas I was naughty and mischievous.  He did not like drinking alcohol or gambling.  He did not smoke.  But for whatever reason he was always the one spanked during the childhood years.  I would climb trees, he would sit at home.

His son Jak Sages was born in 1946 in Istanbul.  After attending elementary school in Kurtulush Elementary School, he went to the British Highschool.  And at first he went to Israel.  Adventure.  Later he immigrated to Canada.  Currently he lives in Canada, in the city of Victoria.  In those days naming after the grandfather or grandmother was a tradition.  Meaning the son of Menahem carries my father's name.  My older brother did not want his son to do military service in Turkey, for that reason, especially encouraged him to go out of the country.  His going to Canada was an adventure like his going to Israel but it was as if my older brother continually encouraged this adventure.  My older brother died in Canada where he went to see his son in 1984.