Tag #124208 - Interview #97985 (Samuel Coyas)

We then rented an apartment in a house that belonged to an Armenian named Araksi, on the same street. The apartment had two rooms. We had a wooden divan, a table, and a few chairs. I would sleep in the living room, while my brother slept in the same bed as my mother. We didn’t have electricity; our only means of lighting was a gas lamp. We had running-water and would use a brazier for heating. We would heat the water, and wash ourselves in the wash-basin at home. Sometimes we would go to the hamam [Turkish bath]. My mother would wash the clothes by hand on a wash-board, and would do the ironing with the iron, which she warmed on the brazier. She used to cook our food on a coal stove called ‘furfur’ [‘ornaya’ in Ladino]. The ‘furfur’ was either fixed at the kitchen counter or was portable. It looked like a 10-kg oil can. First clay, then coal was placed in the stove. And a heat resistant grill was placed at the very top of the stove so you could place a pot on top of it. After lighting up the coal, the fire was fanned to keep it going.