Chicken Legs

Here is one of the stories that Sylvia sent me:

In spring or summer 1965, [Linda] moved to New York City, and in late summer, I joined her there. We rented a small apartment a few buildings off Central Park West on 84^th. While Central Park West was an elegant address, ours was less so. The following spring, we moved to an even less elegant address on 81^st and Amsterdam – a dump, actually. The neighborhood was poor and comprised largely of Puerto Ricans, new immigrants, and poor students. She was on a first name basis with many of the neighbors and shopkeepers, and if I was recognized at all, it was only as Linge’s roommate. While I was generally received politely, she was always greeted with great warmth. People just seemed to take to her and enjoy her company. I suppose that this quality, in part, accounts for her talent as an anthropologist. She did receive one unfriendly epithet from some of the young men of the neighborhood when she ignored their attentions while walking down the street. "Chicken legs!" While this might be quite insulting to a women with thin legs, Linge had rather sturdy, heavy legs. She was very amused by this.

Janet, Carla, Aziza, Osman, and Sarah: Comments on this one, please. The Oldham legs called chicken legs.

HAHAHHAAAHAHAAAAAAHHAAAA!

Sylvia Luppert

Note: Before you read this wonderful email that I received today from Sylvia Luppert, one of my mother's oldest friends, I want you to know that it was much longer than what you see below. In her email, Sylvia included a number of stories, each of which merits its own post, so I removed the paragraphs that contained the stories so that I may turn them into individual posts. Other than that, I have changed nothing.

Sylvia, I cannot thank you enough.

Dear Jake,

I am so very sad to learn of your mother’s death, both for myself and for you and your brother and sisters. She was one of my oldest and dearest friends. Marshall Froker wrote to me after he received your email and he forwarded your email to me.

Linge and I first met when I began attending Antioch College in 1963. We called her Linge, and that is the name I’ve always called her. We lived in the same dorm. She was just starting her second year. I was from Spokane, Washington and felt like a country bumpkin next to her despite her growing up in Columbia, Missouri. Her intelligence, sophistication, and bluntness both frightened me and fascinated me. For reasons which I still do not understand, she took me under her wing. I followed her around like an acolyte. By the time I left Antioch the following spring, we had become fast friends. I suspect that our attendance at Antioch influenced us both throughout our lives. Certainly, my relationship with her was one of the most important in my formative years, and my experience at Antioch is inseparable from my friendship with her. I continue to try to evaluate the events in the world, both major and mundane, with a perspective I first observed in her. In many ways, she taught me to think. She was, of course, a brilliant thinker and one I could only try to emulate but not match. While she was truly a critical thinker she viewed the world and all of us in it with humor and humanity.

Our New York adventure ended and I went back to Washington and she went back to Yellow Springs. She eventually married Bill Curtis and moved to Chicago. In the summer of 1968, I moved to Chicago and in with Linge and Bill. I arrived the same day Martin Luther King was assassinated. She and Bill split up, but I stayed. By then she was an accomplished cook. We were roommates for about a year. She eventually moved to North Carolina where her mother was living, met and married your father and opened a restaurant called "Tijuana Fats." We continued to write to each other.

When you were about four years old, she came to Chicago to spend Christmas with me. It was the only time I met you because she soon got a position at the University of Alexandria, and you know the rest. I do know, and you may not, that you got her through some difficult times when she was first in Egypt. She bragged that you learned Arabic so quickly that she took you everywhere to translate for her. She even took you to the bank so that you, as a little boy, could conduct her banking. She also reported that your charm put her in good standing with the people she met.

I learned through letters of the births of Aziza, Osman, and Sarah. I was frankly flabbergasted by her having so many children. But she indeed loved all of you. She visited me once in Seattle, and I visited her twice in North Carolina. We spoke on the telephone, but not as often as I now wish we had. She always spoke of you and thought she had the brightest and most beautiful children that anyone ever had.

I loved your mother very much. While I suppose we are all unique in our own way, she was by far, unique and wonderful in the world. She was always a clear and deep thinker who I so admired. And she was warm and witty and so much fun to be with. I know my life was enriched by our friendship. Although the loss to you and Aziza, Osman, and Sarah is terrible, I hope you will appreciate your good fortune to be her children. She was fortunate to have you. As rich and interesting as her life was, I know that nothing in the world mattered to her as much as her children. And that, I think, says a lot about her and all of you.

Please convey my condolences to Aziza, Osman, and Sarah. I do hope that we will stay in touch.

Sylvia Luppert

Pictures from Leif

My mother's friend Leif Pareli sent me a number of scanned photographs that he took in Cairo in 1976 and 1977. Here is the first of them (yes, I intend to stretch this out as much as possible). This one was taken in front of the building at 3, Mohamed Sidqi Pasha St., Bab-el-Louq, Cairo. This is the same address where the story of the sparkler and the chicken man took place. The man in the back is my former stepfather, Nadir, for those of you who do not know him. The object in my hand is a Christmas present I received that year; it was a plastic calendar that operated mechanically by pressing spring-loaded buttons.



This one was taken within minutes of the first. The good-looking Nordic man is Leif himself. The picture must have been taken by Nadir.



Incidentally, Ragia says that everything mom is wearing in the photos, including mom's red suede jacket, is back in fashion. So is Leif's jacket!

The photographs were scanned by Leif. If you click on them, you will get the photos in the sizes that he sent me.

You can see Leif's website at http://home.online.no/~pareli.

Bechir Chourou

After multiple attempts, I finally managed to get in touch with mom's old friend Bechir Chourou, who lives in Tunis.

(As it turns out, Sarah had already successfully contacted him. Perhaps I should let Sarah know what I am doing, once in a while. This might be wise, considering that she has mom's address books, and the latest of her email archives. Duh!)

Bechir said:

"I have already heard about Linge (that's how I call your mom) - your sister Sarah sent me the sad news. I still can get over her passing away. With her went away the memories of my best years in the US, the best years of my life. I know that eventually we are all bound to die but somehow I always thought that we would depart together just as we have lived together for over 40 years. In fact I met Linge in 1966 when we were undergrads at Roosevelt U. in Chicago: it seems it was yesterday. I miss her and will miss her terribly."

and:

"Linge used to read everything I wrote, not only to correct my punctuation (she had to conclude that I was beyond redemption in that area, and I think she was right, but then punctuation is English is weird!) but, more importantly, to contest some of my ideas. Her comments will be sorely missed."

Bechir, whom I have not seen in more than 25 years, is partly responsible for some of my fondest memories, which took place in Tunis. I submit, as evidence of the generosity of this man and his family, that my mother and I lived at his mother's house in Tunis on three separate occasions, for several moths each time. This blog contains other stories about Bechir's mother, whose name I just don't know--she was always El-Hajja to me. Someday humanity just might evolve a language that contains words that can adequately describe the magnificence that was this woman's cooking.

This is the type of friend that my mother had. I should be so lucky.

Pavel and Maria from Urgench, Uzbekistan

Yesterday I sent an email to a number of email addresses I found on Mom's old computer, in an attempt to inform her friends that mom had died. I have since received a number of responses. All responses I received are special, of course, but here is one that is an especially good eulogy:

Dear Good Jake Lester!

My deepest condolences upon the untimely decease of Your beloved Mother. May Her Soul be blessed by God, and rest in peace in the eternal Heavenly House of God.
We all who knew Her deeply regret in our hearts and souls. Her bright good Image will stay in our hearts and souls all our lives. She was really the best Mother and Woman on earth.

I’m Pavel from Uzbekistan, Urgench city. Me and especially my niece Maria used to work with our dearest Linda in 1999-2000, 2003 here in Uzbekistan, Urgench city (the Province of Khorezm) in the World Bank development projects. She was very good to us, she was a very careful and generous boss, teacher for us, the one we’ve never met again. Sarah also knows us, for she also was here at the time.

Thank You very much for Your e-mail. May God be with You, and may he bless, help, protect, reward You and all Your family in all Your ways and endeavours wherever You are, whatever You do! Life is going on! Keep well and be a joyful and happiest human being on earth.

With best wishes and love
Yours faithfully,
Pavel and Maria from Urgench

What can I say? This is a wonderful email. I really want to meet Pavel and Maria now. The sweetness of the writing and the beautiful, generous words (let alone the fact that they were friends of my mother) give me the impression that they would be wonderful friends.

Red Dress Diva

Mom's friend, Leif Pareli, sent me a wonderful story about mom:

"There is quite a bit about our lives in [Alexandria] in [the email archives you found, but] not the episode when [Linda] asked me to be her escort to a garden party in the American consulate that she had been invited to. We arrived - last minute - at the main entrance and walked through a hallway opening up to the broad, impressive stairs leading down to the garden, which was already crowded with everybody that was anything in Alexandria. Halfway down the stairs she suddenly grabbed my arm and guffawed out this loud laughter, like I had just been telling a hilarious joke. Actually I had just been making small talk, but she got exactly what she wanted: Everybody turned around and looked at us, as we continued making our entrance down these operetta-style stairs - a VERY efficient way of getting everybody's attention!"

Mom, of course, was wearing a red dress. Classic Linda.

Information Scavenger Hunt

Today I spent many hours coaxing information from my mother's old computer in search of contacts and stories. The computer, I'm sorry to say, offered some pretty slim pickings. I did, however, manage to find a trove of her old emails, from which I extracted a lot of contact information to old friends of hers, including Susan Klein, Bechir Chourou, Leif Pareli, David Tavakoli, and quite a few others. Now I have to write all of them to deliver the unhappy news that mom is no longer with us.