Boulos and Latife

I Spoke to my dad about how his Grandfather Boulos Geryas Khoury met his grandmother Latife Sawaya as she wasn’t from the Derdghaya. In those days the villagers predominantly married from their own villages.

Her family were farm hands and were working in a nearby village named Mazraat el Twairy which is between Srifa and Ghandouriye. This village was run by a rich Christian family called Bayt el Machahbar.  Boulos met Latife there and they married in Derdghaya.

Boulos worked as a builder and was working for the Machahbar family when he met Latife. The Sawaya family are originally from Kfarhouna near Jezzine and were working in Mazraat el Twairy as ploughmen.

Later when my Grandfather Najib was about 3-5 years old maybe even younger, Boulos travelled to America to raise money to buy some camels. A man that owned a couple of camels in those days was considered well off. Camels were used like trucks are used these days for transporting produce between ports. This was in the early 1900’s. No one can give me an exact date and I can’t find his immigration papers in America.

In America he died working on the rail road’s from the cold in winter. Around that sort of time frame a lot of the villagers were either moving to America permanently or going there to work for a year or 2 and coming back with the money.

After Boulos passed Latife was left as a single mother. Unlike today where single mothers are looked after, woman had no way to earn a living so she remarried fairly quickly. She married a man Daoud Zarka. Together they had another 4 children. My grandfather was still very young, around 5 years old.

Daoud Zarka from what I understand also died young. My father tells me he was either drafted into the Ottoman Army not as a soldier as he was Christianbut virtually as a slave. He died during that time or was killed when Derdghaya was attacked by bandits in 1919.

Latife lived a long life of 105 years having many grandchildren