Remembering

Betty Iskander

My beloved grandmother, Betty Iskander, passed away this week at the age of 91. My memories of her will always reside in her kitchen in her red house on Hollis Lane, where she cooked and entertained with a fury. Through food, she showed her love to family and her many friends. Her postcards to me from locales around the world were often filled with more details about the food she ate than the places she visited.

In front of my grandparents' Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., home

She also inspired in me a love of travel and openness to meeting new people. When she met my grandfather, an Egyptian native who had literally just arrived in the country, she accepted him unconditionally even though she had little knowledge of the world outside her New Haven, Conn., hometown. They married in 1948, had a daughter (my mom) and after my grandfather finished his graduate work at Springfield College, he moved his young family back to Cairo. My grandmother had to adapt to a new culture so different from her own and learn how to get by in a new language, which she later described as "kitchen Arabic."

With my mom, on-board a ship back to the U.S., 1951

They moved many times over the years, living in Pittsburgh, Pa.; Amman, Jordan; Beirut, Lebanon, among other places. No matter where they were, my grandmother's genuine interest in other people helped her overcome language and cultural barriers, and make many friends. I was lucky to travel with my grandparents on many occasions -- to Disneyland as a 6-year-old, to Washington, D.C., and most memorable, to Egypt in 1999-2000 to meet my grandfather's family. 

Egypt, 1999

Along the Nile River, 1999

 She lived an extraordinary life, but remained modest. She was nurturing to the core, caring for my grandfather until his death. She was a loving wife, a doting grandmother and a proud great-grandma to G.

Meeting G at her home in New York, 2009