Tag #126723 - Interview #78141 (Bina Dekalo)

When she was 19 years old, my mother was married to a banker in Odrin, who was thirty years older than her. In the first year of their marriage she gave birth to a girl, Bella. After the birth she came down with a mysterious illness, similar to sleeping sickness, and her husband returned her to grandfather Mordohay. He decided to take her to Jerusalem, to the places sacred for the Jews in order to heal her. In Istanbul, where they were about to board a ship, they met a physician from Vienna, who asked my grandfather some questions and advised him to cancel his journey and visit his hospital in Istanbul. He started treating my mother by drawing blood from her arm and she started to recover very quickly. After a month she was completely well. My grandfather paid the physician generously. They were very happy and went on a holiday in some resorts in Turkey. After they returned to Odrin, the first thing my mother did was to go and see her husband and daughter, whom she hadn't seen since the delivery. It turned out that the banker had found another woman and had even bribed the authorities to marry them legally. Yet, my mother sued him for divorce. The banker paid a big compensation and so, at 21, my mother got divorced, without any rights over her daughter, but with a big sum in the bank. After my mother divorced, she returned to live with her father.