Tag #127408 - Interview #98039 (Izak Sarhon)

An acquaintance introduced us [Suzi and me].  There was a sort of café called “Haylayf” in Harbiye [a district in Istanbul between Sisli and Taksim]. We met there.  This was one year after I came back from Israel, in 1948.  Then we met and decided to get married.  She was Jewish of course, because this was a normal thing then.  We got married at the Zulfaris Synagogue [the building of the Jewish Museum of Istanbul today] in 1949.  There was nothing extraordinary about the wedding.  It was a normal synagogue wedding.  It was summer, and after the wedding we went to the house of my parents in Taksim.  A couple of our friends and relatives came.  We had drinks and ate sweets.  In the evening, at around 8:00 p.m., we went to the Belvu hotel in Fenerbahce and stayed there for 2 or 3 days.  Nobody came to the hotel with us that night.  We were alone.  After that we went to a summer house we had rented in Caddebostan [a summer resort, now a residential area on the Asian side of Istanbul].  After the summer, we went to live at my parents’ house in Taksim, Abdulhak Hamit street.  We lived with my parents and sister, Anjel for four years because of economic reasons of course.  Then, after four years, it had become a bit difficult to live with the parents, and my wife did not get along with my sister, so we moved out and rented our own house in Kurtulus.