Tag #123836 - Interview #97983 (Janet Arguete)

My daughter was a very good student starting in elementary school.  According to her father, her grades had to be 9’s or 10’s all the time.  It was that way anyways.  After finishing Saint Benoit French Junior High, she entered Notre Dame de Sion [French Catholic schools].  My daughter became engaged to Eliya Barokas before she turned 18.  I can say she was obliged to get engaged, to say it more correctly.  My husband investigated and found my daughter’s spouse from the commercial circles.  As you can understand, she married through matchmaking in 1965 at the Neve Shalom synagogue.  We went to Lido in the evening, very few people, no friends, there were limited amount of people from the family. Of course my daughter’s matchmaking was not like mine.  My son-in-law would come, pick my daughter up and go out.  On their first meeting, Eliya came and picked my daughter up.  We went out, they in front, and us in the back.  Later they stayed engaged for 1.5 years, and had opportunities to meet each other during that period.  One day before the wedding my husband told me that we were having our son-in-law as a live-in [“mezafranka”: to help curb the expenditures for the newly weds, the girl’s family takes in the son-in-law and takes care of all their needs].  He had decided this without asking me, as was the case in a lot of other occasions.  Even if he asked, I did not have the luxury of expressing my opinion.  I wasn’t asked my opinion very often.  Of course this upset me a lot.  But because I did not know otherwise, this seemed right to me.

I rearranged my house for the newlyweds.  I allotted them the main room and bought a new bedroom set.  They lived with me for three years, summers and winters, and 5 years only summers.  But my son-in-law is truly a great kid.  He had asked for the dowry before getting married.  These procedures were not looked upon warmly then.  Some said “Albert loko sos tu dota se da de antes?” [Judeo-Spanish for: Albert, are you crazy, dowry shouldn’t be given before the wedding].  My husband said “Si me las komyo las paras ke me las koma, ma a la ija ke no me la keme” [Judeo-Spanish for: if he burns through my money, let him burn it, but my daughter let him not burn].  I cut up a very beautiful fabric for the wedding and took it to a tailor.  The fabric was a little expensive.  I did not know how to tell my husband.  But he liked it too and did not say much.  My husband in the meantime started becoming successful in commerce.  He dabbled in a lot of stuff like textiles, and dry goods and notions.  In the end, he was in the underwear business before he retired.  He used to send undershirts and underwear to Anatolia.