Esther Burla

This is a photo of my mother, Esther Burla, nee Suhami, but I don’t know when or where it was taken.

We didn’t know anything from my mother’s side of the family, because the marriage of our mother and father came about in such a way that we simply didn’t know. That’s because my father was sent, while serving in the army, to Chios to buy some things for the army, and he fell in love with my mother, dropped out of the army, took my mother and went to Egypt. My mother’s sister lived in Egypt. She took care of them, helped my father to get a job, and we were born in Egypt, three children. We only knew that her father’s surname was Suhami, Esther Suhami, that’s what my mother’s documents said.

My mother was a simple woman. Many said that she had gypsy roots; she had black hair, and when she died she didn’t have one white hair. She was a very good mother, she loved all of us. She loved mostly the boys, me and my younger brother, even though she was teaching the girls what to do in order to become decent ladies.