Interview with Zina Abraham: From
Afghanistan to Florida
Bal Harbour, Florida
December 21, 2021, January 19, 2022

I THINK WE ALL HAVE A MISSION

Interviewed by Annette B. Fromm¹

Zina Abraham is a remarkable woman whose life had taken her across several continents. She is an elegant, graceful, and well-spoken woman of a certain age. We recently had two lengthy conversations in her comfortable home in Bal Harbour, Florida, where she shared many anecdotes about her remarkable family and unusual life. As she has taken charge of so much in her eventful life, so she took charge of our conversation.

Her life, as she tells it, can be divided into chapters. First are the unusual circumstances of how her parents met and were married, followed by the trials her mother went through with a new baby in the early time of marriage. Next is her life as a young woman in Afghanistan, then with family in neighboring Peshawar, still part of British India. Sometime after her return to her family home in Kabul, her mother took Zina and her siblings on an overland journey to Tehran in order to reach the new state of Israel. How she took the reins of life unfolded after settling in Israel.

Note: Mrs. Abraham told her story with few interruptions rather than following a formal interview. A few questions punctuate the flow of her narrative. As she talked, she frequently returned to or recapped life events before continuing. I have added some notes taken from a forthcoming memoir/novel based on her life to clarify some of her story in addition to an excerpt from the memoir.

I. Her Parents Meet and Their Early Married Life

“From the beginning, where I was born? My father is from [the city of Marv in Turkmenistan² close to Iran and Bukhara. Because he was a merchant, he moved several times, but settled as an adult in] … Herat. Very, very religious Jews lived there. My father [Hasid Abraham] was [a] merchant; … selling and buying [karakul furs, fabrics and diamonds] …

“In one of his trips [in Afghanistan],³ he met a couple in the railroad station with a very pretty woman and my father goes and asks this gentleman, ‘[Does] your wife have a sister?’

“This gentleman said, ‘Yes, she has three to four sisters.’

“[At] … the railroad station … they gave him the city where they lived, which is in part of Russia. It’s called Uzbekistan … its Tashkent …

“My father took all the information and he takes his mother … they lived in Herat … which is not an easy trip to do. … He took his brother’s wife [Zipor, she was Bokharan] and my grandmother. So they went to look for the family … in Tashkent. Unfortunately, the family was sitting shiva ... my mother’s grandmother passed away.

“They found the excuse to go, to pay a shiva [call]. They arranged [for] the two of them to go [to] this family. They went to the family and to see my mother over there. My mother [Devorah] was already a grown up woman and she was educated and she was working. She was not there when they came. So they had to wait … till my mother comes … from there it started.

“It was the Bolshevik time and my mother’s father was in the prison because he was rich. They [the Russians] came and they took everything and they put him to prison as well.”*

* The following excerpt expanding Mrs. Abraham’s brief recollection about her family comes from The Merchant’s Daughter, a forthcoming memoir/novel written by her daughter, Dahlia Abraham-Klein.

Their family fortune was in decline, and their money brought them unwanted attention from their non-Jewish neighbors. Devorah’s father worked as a merchant, making frequent trips to Moscow. He had drawn the attention of Stalin’s intelligence task force, the Joint State Political Directorate–the “OGPU,” the secret service of the Soviet Union. The “OGPU” targeted Devorah’s father in their attempt to “purge society of religion.” His status as a wealthy Jewish man, trading in gold, travelling frequently to Moscow made him a prime target. He was apprehended on a trip from Moscow and sent to a Siberian prison.

The “OGPU” offered Devorah’s family one chance to free him—the price was the entire family fortune. Family was everything, so the decision required no deliberation. Panicked, the family dug up all of the gold and silver that had been hidden around the property for emergencies such as the one that they found themselves in. Most Jewish families knew better than to rely on banks—essentials were kept at home, often hidden, so that it was readily accessible in times of need. Persecution was more a matter of when than if. Their foresight proved essential. Unfortunately and predictably, the OGPU was not good on their word. They confiscated the family fortune and Devorah’s father would remain in Siberia for the rest of his life.

It had been three years since his arrest when Hasid found himself sitting across from Devorah’s mother Bracha, nervously slurping from his tall glass tea cup and willing himself to find the right thing to say.

“They met my mother, and then my mother start[ed] going out with my father. They went out like for one month, and they got married. In one month they got married.

“In one month, my mother became pregnant and my father had to take her back to Afghanistan. She didn’t have her papers ready … so they told my father, ‘it takes three months for the papers [to] be ready.’ My father said, ‘I’m not staying here three months. I’m going back to my country. And when I come back in three months and I take my wife.’

“After three months he comes back to see the family. He brought with him some diamonds, some rhinestones. That was his business, bringing something, selling something else, going to the next station. He brought with him something and then he showed this to the brokers, the people who come around, who are buying. One of the brokers saw it. He said, ‘Ok, I’ll think about it.’

“Then my father felt a little bit uneasy. He was thinking, something is going on here. He was afraid and he didn’t stay. He left the country and he went out of the country back to where he had to go. So, my mother [was] still in Russia … They come in looking for my father and my mother said, ‘I don’t know where he is.’

“They took my mother and put her in prison. She was in prison, pregnant with me. I was born in prison … My mother was [a] very educated woman and the nurses, the people who worked around her, had [a] lot of empathy toward her. They helped her a lot, they guided her. Eventually, they let my mother go, but after I was six or seven months [old].”

AF - After this, Mrs. Abraham’s mother was able to leave Russia to join her husband in Afghanistan. Her narrative continued.

“So, my mother goes out of the prison and she comes to Afghanistan … They arranged for my mother to come. Another lady similar [to] my mother’s background also with a child had somewhat the same story. These two ladies, they were in prison and they sent two horses to take them out. They started going to where they have to go to Afghanistan. Two ladies, two horses and they go part way with the horses … And after a while by train. Then the car. Yes, they arranged for them the car and they go to Afghanistan to Herat …

“They lived in Herat … maybe for six years; they lived [there] for many years. And then that is where the family was born. It was a very old fashioned, strictly, strictly Jewish culture. They wanted to have [a] little bit more modern …. Then they decided that they wanted to go to Kabul, [where it was] a bit more modern and they can find [a] better life. …”

AF - I asked Mrs. Abraham about contact and relationships between her parents in Afghanistan and her mother’s family in Russian Uzbekistan.

“They used to send letters to [them] through messengers. My mother used to give the messengers and she used to send back the messengers.

“My mother spoke Russian, completely, fluently. So she’s writing in Russian. My father was writing in Hebrew letters in Afghani language. But Russian is a completely different language. So my father learned Russian. So they could understand each other. …”

AF - She added a bit more about life in Herat, then continued to her family’s life in Kabul.

II. A Young Woman in Afghanistan and Elsewhere

“I don’t recall [Herat] very well. But [in] the city of Herat they had the location for the Jewish people. Most of the Jews, like you see here, where they want to gather, they live together. …

“[My father] had a shop to improve and people come to buy from him and they used to go [to] people’s places to sell. So this went on for many years and then …”

AF – Did you go to school?

“In Kabul⁴ they didn’t want us to go to [the] non-Jewish school because they were afraid that, you know, that we should get mixed up with non-Jewish. So we had a tutor at home come in to teach us how to read the Torah … not mathematics … not anything else. Just to teach us to read the Torah, Tehillim [Psalms], stuff like that. So that’s what they had. They didn’t want the girls to go. But later on … [there were] places that the girls could go but the parents they didn’t like.

“You know in Afghanistan they married children ten, eleven, twelve years old. They make the engagement. Some of them are in the stomach even [when] they make the engagement. We were asking why they do that. They say the non-Jew [would] come, then say, ‘We want your daughter or son.’ They [could] say they’re already engaged.

AF – The next step in young Mrs. Abraham’s life was a short sojourn with family in Peshawar.

“I was like twelve, thirteen years old in Afghanistan and I was always curious. I want[ed] to go places. I want to do things. My mother had a big family,⁵ she could not make a move. I had an uncle and his wife, her name is Zipor. [It was my father’s brother’s wife.] She had a family in Peshawar and she had one son with her like four, five years old and she wanted to go see her family in Peshawar.⁶

“At this same time, my family, my cousins were in Peshawar, too. I was always curious. I said that I want to go also to Peshawar. They asked my aunt if I can go with her [and] my aunt said, ‘yes.’ My aunt took me to Peshawar by … the bus. You sit in the bus. You stop [at] this station. You stop [at] that station. There was no kosher food, there was nothing. We had to take the food ourselves, what we wanted to eat. It took a few days. Then we went to Peshawar.

Young Zina in Peshawar, ca. 1945

“I had my uncle living there. I went to live with them … [Later], I got married to their son [Yehuda].

They had children, mostly a little bit older than me … I lived with them and I start going to the school in Peshawar. And then I start little bit learning English there … I lived there maybe ten months, eleven months, and then my aunt went back and I stayed there. I said I’m going to study in Peshawar … They said, they [had] four, five children. They didn’t want to take another one, and so I had to come back to Afghanistan.

“They went to India.⁷ It was one step better. They had some business over there. They stayed there a few years. And from there, they decided to go to Israel. They said they wanted to go to Israel …

“I went back to Afghanistan. They went to Israel, my family, which [included] my cousin, who became my husband later. … At the time he was eighteen or nineteen years old. And he was [a] very outgoing person. And he didn’t even look at me, I was twelve years old. And he had girlfriends. He had friends; he had a lot of older activities. He had his own things to do.

Then he was a little older than me and … I went back to my country, in Afghanistan.

AF – When you returned to Kabul, what was your role in your home or did you continue your education?

“We continued just having lessons in the house … and some activities with friends. And they had, they brought us tutoring to learn.

“When I returned, it was a nice city for the Jewish people at the time ... My father had a business, he was doing well. And then, we stayed in Afghanistan.

III. The Journey to Tehran and Israel

“Then Israel became ours, independent. I was 14, 15 years old and those countries … used to get the children married very early because they were afraid they could get some non-Jewish connected with Muslims. My mother said, ‘I don’t want to stay in this country. My daughter(s) get married, I leave her behind.’ She didn’t want to do the same thing she did in her family. She left her family behind. And my mother decided that she doesn’t want to stay in Afghanistan anymore. So she said, ‘I’m not staying here.’

“They went to Israel. So after a few years, we decided that we want to go to Israel [after the independence of Israel].”

“My father said, ‘I cannot go because I have a lot of business I have to take care of. I have partners. I have to get my money. I have to collect my money. I have to arrange, then I can go.’

“My mother said, ‘I cannot stay. So I’m leaving.’ So they had [an] arrangement, the first bus [leaving] from Afghanistan.⁸ … She left my father and she took the children and one in her stomach. In the bus we were about forty people. … There was no plane, there was no hotels that you can go to. So, they took the bus. It was a whole bus, full of people. It was the first bus that was going from Afghanistan to Iran. … And she took us; we had to go to Tehran. … We were the first bus from the community … the bus took maybe forty, forty-five people. And my mother decided that she doesn’t want to stay in Afghanistan anymore. She was afraid the children would get mixed up with the non-Jewish and she already had seven children, [and] she was pregnant. She said, ‘I’m leaving.’

“From Afghanistan we went step-by-step [through] many, many different cities on the way. Anywhere there was some Jewish family, we stayed, they took us in. We stayed with them. They prepared kosher food for us. They were very strictly kosher people. They would not eat anything out.

“They had stations, stations, stations, stopping. Anywhere they were going there was [a] Jewish family living. They stopped there and they informed the Jewish family. They made some food preparation, kosher. [We] also went [to] their homes, maybe [to] sleep one night or two nights. They invited us and we had a shower. We couldn’t … shower in the bus … They divided us among the people and we went there. We made our shower and they cooked for us some food. And we started to go …

“So we go to the next city. The community arrange again for the people to take them, take shower, and take care of them. Then we take the next step. … So step-by-step we went to Tehran. We had to wait in Tehran, till the airplane comes to pick up the people. The only place they could pick up was Tehran.

“We waited two days. But some people waited for long time. If they had no money, the government had to supply the money. But thank God we could supply our own ticket. So we got to Israel.”

AF – Where did you go in Israel?

“In Israel we went to Tel Aviv. My grandparents, my family, cousins, uncles, many of them, they lived in Tel Aviv. …my father’s family. They went in the beginning of maybe ’35, yes.⁹

“What made them to go? They were in Afghanistan, they knew this was not the place for them. You know, they wanted their children to have more Jewish … education. …”

AF – You were about 14 or 15 years old. Did you go to school in Israel?

“I didn’t go to a grade school. But we took a tutor, yes, we took a tutor to teach me how to read and write in Hebrew. And also I knew a little English. So I continued with my English. But it was not a class that we could go [to]. … I was the in-between age, so I just took some lessons. … In Israel … I started taking Hebrew classes and I was one of eight children. I’m the oldest, so like two or three of my sisters, we arranged, they went to the kibbutz.¹⁰ They took them in the kibbutz. … And then my mother, she had a baby, last one. Her name is Bracha.

The family photo, L to R: Devorah, Ziporah, Zina, Hasid; (top) Rosa, Moshe, Yaffa, nd.

“Then the time came, I was maybe 16, 17. I had cousins [who] were always the policemen on me, controlling where I’m going, what I’m doing, where I am. I had, [a] lot of exciting life …

IV. Zina Marries and Moves to India

Then came the time … for getting, you know, serious. … One of my cousins [Yehuda], … used to live in India. He came to Israel. Then, the family preferred that I get married to somebody that we knew.

“I knew my cousin already from my young age. … when I was in India. When he came to Israel, he had a lot of girlfriends in India … But his parents said, ‘We want you to come to Israel. And if you like somebody here, yes, if not you go get married whoever you want.’ The parents had on their mind that I was the one that they wanted for him.

“So, we see each other and we like each other. He was a very nice, pleasant person. And my family was for it. They give me to encouragement. So I decided that I [would] get married. So we got married in Israel.

“The wedding was very special, yes. The same night that I got married¹¹ … we had the bar mitzvah of my brother [Moshe]. We made a little party for him separately. And I had an uncle [Shlomo], he was about 35 years old, [wasn’t] married yet. He met a girl [Tamar] also from my background, from my country. He wanted to get married, as well. We decided we make two wedding[s] in the night. It was actually my wedding. I kind of invited them to be guests of my wedding. The couples, my uncle, and me [and], my husband, he was my cousin, we got married [on] the same night.

Zina and Yehuda wedding, January 1963

“I wore regular white wedding dress [that I sewed myself]. My mother was very modern …. And then we were married. We went to [the] honeymoon, we went to Haifa. We went to all different places for a whole week. Then we come back and we stayed a little bit longer. Then he said, ‘You know we have to go from Israel.’ He has to go to India. So I went to India with him.

“I lived in India, Bombay. A lot of Jewish people lived there at the time. They had the shul. They had a lot of Jewish people. We became friendly with them and I started studying whatever I wanted to do. I went to do many other things. I wanted to learn to dance Indian dance. Like a movie star, you know. I always wanted to learn more and more, whenever I had a chance. That’s what I did.

“India was a very nice place. I had lots of friends, from different parts and then … you go [on] outings. You do different things.”

AF – What business was your husband in?

“My husband was in export/import in the beginning. … Later they also introduced the gem business. They were buying rubies, sapphires, diamonds, buying and selling … This is how they went and that was the business because they were not educated to have any profession. They did not want to be just working people, so that was the best thing. The whole family did the same thing, that’s the beginning of the life, the gem business.

“From there … my father started textile business. He used to get the merchandise from Japan or from different parts. Selling to the local [market], he had a shop. People came to buy from his shop …

AF – Where were your children born?

“The children born? One in India, her name is Shirley, my oldest. And the rest of them [were] born in New York. Three in New York, one in India.

AF – Did you follow naming traditions to name your children?

“Naming children is mostly in some families, their grandparents, or their aunts and uncles. Somebody, they … want to remember, so they take the children’s names. My name actually was my grandmother’s name, Zuleika. They called me Zina. Zina is actually in our language ‘beautiful,’ the little child. So they called me Zina. That’s how the name came.”

AF – And your own children?

“… I used to go to a lot of movies and I saw Shirley Temple. I said I’m going to have a child, I’m going to put Shirley, Shirley Temple. But actually, it’s my mother-in –law’s name, Rachel. So we put Shirley because I love the name Shirley.”

V. A Final Move to the United States

AF – Why did your family move to the US?

“Why [did] they move to the US? Because they know the US had more future for them. I had a brother-in-law, he was very active going to the American consulate. … He went to the American consulate and they used to exchange for dollars to the money from Afghanistan. They bring their dollars they want to change to money from Afghanistan. My brother-in-law, he knew some English. He took some private lessons. And he became to know some people in those places.

“… At some point, he met a couple that was Jewish from America. When the time came, they decided that we don’t want to be in Israel, because [in] Israel they had no profession to do any business ... So they decided that they wanted to come to America.

“… All this happened in Afghanistan. He became to know about [the United States]. Then they went to Israel and they stayed in Israel. Then after that, we decided that we wanted to go to America. So we knew already about America and we start life there.”¹²

AF – How was life when you first came to New York?

“When we first came to New York, thank God, we were able to have a good living. So we had a house. … We lived in Queens … Forest Hills, Rego Park. We had a three family house and we lived there. My mother-in-law¹³ on one floor, my sister-in-law in the second floor, and the top floor was like a guest room. A lot of people come and go. We used to entertain them. Give them room to stay, where they find place to go.

“After us the [Afghan] Jewish families started coming, they all knew that we went. We were the first bus leaving from Afghanistan [for Israel] and after that. Then when we came, a lot of Afghani Jews came to Israel and from Israel to America. And we lived in America up till now.

AF – When did you move to Miami?

“When my son got married … he used to come here very often for business. On one of his trips, he met a girl that he liked. And they got married. And I said, ‘Ok, whatever he wants.’

“We came for the wedding. We saw the place, I liked it very much. So they got married. I went back to New York. It came to a time that I didn’t want to be in New York anymore. He was here already. I said I want to be here. One day, I had a friend, she’s from Mexico, she came to this building. She took an apartment. I came to visit her and I saw this building. I said, ‘This is the building I want to be in.’ When the time came, I said we’re going to buy an apartment in this building. That’s when we bought our apartment.

“After me, a lot of my friends came, about 4-5 families living in this building from my background …

VI. Various other topics

AF – And your father never left Afghanistan?

ZA – He didn’t leave right away, but he came to Israel [ten years after we arrived]. And then he went back one time and my mother also went back. And then after a while he decided it was enough in Afghanistan. So he came to America. He lived in America, started a business, making a living to live.

AF – You talked about your family that stayed in Tashkent. How did you stay in touch with the family in Russia?

“… My mother used to correspond with them, with her parents and her siblings. And then sometimes people used to come to bring some messages. So they didn’t have 100%, all the time, but they knew about each other. But they didn’t have too much connection, because they were afraid to connect [with] outsiders …

“I went to visit them because my mother always spoke about her family, that she had a family in Russia, that she left her family. … So came to a time that I decided that I wanted to go to Russia. So I said to my husband, ‘I want to go to Russia.’

“We went to Russia.¹⁴ I saw my [mother’s] siblings, my grandma, old lady, eighty years old, my cousins. I have my cousins, 4, 5, 6 cousins, uncles. We met with everybody. One of the time[s] my cousin told me [they] very much want to go to Israel. ‘But I have no way, they don’t give me [a] visa to go to Israel from Russia. If I take the grandma, then they’ll give me visa because I have an old lady, maybe from Russia.’

“So I said, ‘Ok, take Grandma with you. We guarantee [that] we help you in every way.’

“She listened to us. She took the grandma with her husband and two children and she went to Israel … We helped them out. The grandma was here for many years. She was already old. And then she passed away in Israel and she [was] buried in Jerusalem [near] my mother. This was something amazing that you don’t find a place in Yerushalayim so easy. But we had a lot. We bought a lot. Then we said ‘Grandma needs a place.’ We gave the place to Grandma and it was three to four [places] from my mother. My mother died after her. And so she was buried in Jerusalem. We had in mind that my grandparents were buried in Israel, so everyone, whoever could, would be buried in Israel … my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, my husband

Zina's grandparents with Afghan Sefer Torah, Tel Aviv ca.1963

AF – When did you start getting active in Jewish philanthropy?

“I was active even when I was in India, yes. There was WIZO.¹⁵ WIZO was very popular in those countries. They always have meetings. They have, you know, activities. So I start helping them, doing what I can do, to learn what’s going on. That’s how I became to know about WIZO …”*

*The following excerpt is from the forthcoming memoir/novel, The Merchant’s Daughter, written by Mrs. Abraham’s daughter:

“In fact they asked me to take a group of women [on] their first trip to Israel as a tour guide, because I was from there. That’s when I took my daughter, Shirley, to Israel to visit my family and left her with them while I toured Israel with WIZO.”

AF – You continued being active in Jewish philanthropy. What kind of activities did you do?

“We have a shul, Sephardic shul, yes. We used to go to the Sephardic shul. I start helping them out, doing things with them. Then they took me as the president of the sisterhood. I used to do a lot of things, a lot of parties, collect money… We did that part. And then keep on going, up till now.

“So, I think we all have a mission. I said to myself, I was the first born.”

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1 Annette B. Fromm is a museum specialist, folklorist, and lecturer in Romaniote and Sephardic studies and associate editor of Sephardic Horizons.

2 According to Dahlia Abraham-Klein, Mrs. Abraham’s daughter, at the time of his birth Turkmenistan was part of the Russian Empire after being conquered by them in 1884.

3 This meeting in the railroad station took place in 1933.

4 The Abraham family moved from Herat to Kabul when Zina was about three years old.

5 By that time, the Abraham family had grown to have six children, Yaffa (b. 1938), Moshe, the first and only boy (b. 1939), Rosa (b. 1941), Tamar (b. 1945), and Hanna (b.1947).

6 The young Zina went with her aunt to Peshawar in 1945. At that time, Peshawar was still part of British India. It became part of Pakistan when the new state was created in 1947.

7 Zina’s Aunt Rachel and family moved to Bombay in the period around the creation of the two new states, Pakistan and India.

8 This journey was taken in 1950 when Afghanistan legally allowed immigration to Israel.

9 Mrs. Abraham’s paternal grandparents and some of the extended family had immigrated from Afghanistan to Tel Aviv in the 1930s.

10 Zina’s sisters Zipporah, the second eldest, and Rosa went to the kibbutz.

11 They were married in January, 1953.

12 Zina, her husband, and two daughters moved to the United States in the late 1950s.

13 Yehuda’s mother and brother left Bombay for New York a few years before she came with her family.

14 Mrs. Abraham and her husband went to visit her family in Tashkent.

15 She joined WIZO while living in Bombay in 1954.