Tag #127080 - Interview #78448 (Eli (Eliyau) Perahya)

My mother believed in the Evil Eye and she called it ‘aynara,’ a concise colloquial expression for ‘ayn ha-araa’ [mentioned in the morning prayers as ‘Please God to protect us from the malicious looks around’, literally bad eyes]. My younger brother, Albert, whom we lost as a very young child, was a beautiful baby. On a summer day on Buyukada while my mother was pushing him along in his baby carriage, a woman passing by came to her and said, ‘ke ermozo ijiko’ [what a beautiful boy] and went away. That same night, after a very sudden high fever, my brother developed quick-spreading meningitis, and in a short time he passed away.