Me

My high school graduation picture

Closing in on 70 years of life on earth, I’ve lived my growing up years through high school in the North East – mostly New York in a single family home, and then travelled to the South for college and medical school – Nashville, & Louisville, followed by the west coast for residency and fellowship – San Diego, and finally to live in Honolulu, Hawaii, where perhaps this is to be my final resting place - now approaching 40 years of residence.

My family – father, mother, and sisters - came in stages to settle in New York from Ramallah, Jordan starting nearly a century ago (now occupied Israel – but was undoubtedly a 3^rd world country at that time).  They came to seek prosperity, fleeing their homeland and abject poverty.  They survived weeks of rocky seas and relentless seasickness on the transatlantic “passenger ship” that carried hordes of refugees stuffed like cattle into close quartered compartments. 

My parents possessed a strong survival instinct, but only a second grade education, amounting to a dubious pedigree for success and upward mobility.  My father had $24 in his pocket.  They taught themselves how to speak English, and my father somehow miraculously taught himself how to write and read.  And with strong family values and an indefatigable, persistent work ethic, they made a life for themselves and their children, emerging into the middle class without handouts or entitlements that are now routinely and carelessly doled out without the asking.  A little more info about my father is available: http://easad.blogspot.com/2012/01/olive-mart-in-casablanca.html

I was the one child born in the United States to my parents that lived.  A subsequent child, Nadia, was born with Down’s syndrome to my aging mother – nearing 50y/o at the time. Nadia suffered from some type of Down’s Syndrome related congenital heart disease, I’m guessing Endocardial Cushion Defect, which took her life in infancy – at around 3 months.  But my mother was no stranger to children dying in her presence.  Pregnant 11 times, she had only four living children to show for it - three older sisters (oldest is 88 y/o) and myself who remain alive today – but that is a story for another time.

I was not born into luxury but my life was never wanting of anything or anybody.  I had the same prospects as everyone else who lived in Long Island, and maybe the rest of the country, and thankfully I had enough sense and drive and luck to take advantage of those opportunities. 

But it is truly frightening to think what my life would have become had my parents not decided to relocate to America.  To be sure, it’s easier to acknowledge what I would not have become – being born of poor second grade educated parents living in a third world country! 

I most certainly would not have become a physician specialist or an accomplished university professor. I most certainly would not have married a southern debutante from North Carolina or had two children educated at Duke, University College London, University of Pennsylvania - daughter and Princeton - son.  And I most certainly would not be writing a blog about my life in the comfort and safety of my beautiful historic home in Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii.  The truth is that I would probably be dead by now considering how miserably Middle Eastern Arabs have integrated into Israel, and the constant drama and vicious bloodshed that we now view almost daily in the news.  God only knows what I would have become, but I thank him for sparing me the occasion.  

But I have not escaped the Middle East altogether.  In the more peaceful times of the past, I have been to my parent’s hometown in Ramallah twice in my life, once for a family visit and a second time at my parents’ wish to select a bride – at least this was my pretense for another trip to the Middle East.  And to their dismay, I was not successful…ha ha.  I also travelled to Israel when I visited an Israeli girl, Nana, who I met travelling through the fiords in Norway during one summer of my youth.  That was indeed a great trip, remembered in fine detail even now, 50 years later.

But I also had my relatives to contend with in West Hempstead, Long Island, where I lived, and others in Detroit, San Jose and San Francisco that I infrequently visited.  While I had little in common with the cousins, nephews, nieces, uncles and aunts who had emigrated from what we called “the old country”, their behavior and demeanor was pretty consistent and predictable.  Very few were educated to any degree, most aspired to own their own grocery store as their highest goal, produce a handful of children to educate whom would hopefully make a better life for themselves than could be accomplished back in the Old Country.  Many were hard workers, as well as hard drinkers. 

My relatives were lucky, along with my family for leaving the Middle East before the turmoil and/or repressive governments had beset and befallen just about every country in that region. 

We Americans take for granted our freedom.  We take for granted clean water, electricity, paved roads, fresh fruits and vegetables, commodities at our disposal, safe transportation, freedom of movement, speech, choice, and religion, fundamental property rights, police protection and the list goes on.  These rights are unfortunately not always uniformly distributed although the pendulum has recently swung too far off center to the detriment of society.  And there are too many guns that are in the hands of the mentally ill, those too young to be in possession of one, and those who are quick to sport their weapon at the slighted provocation.

But even the worst of the worst in America pales in comparison to the inexorable horrors facing humans every day - living in many parts of the developing world including the Middle East.  How capricious and arbitrary it is that I could be no more or less an Arab then millions upon millions of others but not have to fear for my daily existence.  I am no more intelligent than the next man, I am no more gifted, I am no more imaginative, no more alive, no more deserving. 

Through luck, circumstance, and perhaps the grace of God, I was born and live in America.  I remind myself of this fact every day……….   and this serendipitous gift that was bestowed on me by my mother and father.