Times Past, Istanbul

The boy on the left is Ishi’s Great Great Uncle Moris, he is the reason for our recent trip to Istanbul. Moris has just turned 90 years old. The boy on the right is Great Great Uncle Marcel & the little one in the middle is Ishi’s paternal Great Grandpa, Dario. I love the matching pajamas & the boys’ thoughtful faces here. We are in Istanbul, it is 1928.

A little earlier I would say, the boys are in the garden of the family summer house in Büyükada, one of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara. The boys would have needed their scooters to get around, motorized vehicles are forbidden on the island!

The brothers as page boys in 1933. Great Great Uncle Moris on the left and Ishi’s Great Grandpa on the right. We are lucky that many images of the Gabbay family have survived the intervening years . Many of us collect vintage/antique photographs, there are Flickr streams, like Crafty Dogma, & blogs devoted to them, the images I am sharing with you today would enchant me even without the family connection. How wonderful that Ishi can glimpse a little of his Great Grandpa’s (whom he never met) childhood with his brothers in Istanbul in the 1920s & 30s.

On the train during the first leg of our journey, Ishi looks so expectant. It may be my imagination but I catch something of his Great Grandfather, Dario in Ishi’s face, perhaps it is the hair!

Even more wonderful that Ishi had the opportunity to meet one of the boys from the images above. This is Moris on his 90th birthday with Ishi, I can see the boy there still.