Fri­day nights were reserved for Shab­bat din­ner with Mama For­tunée. That was the deal in my fam­i­ly when I was grow­ing up, for as long as I could remem­ber. No sleep­overs, no plans with friends — not on Fri­day nights, when we would make the dri­ve from our house in Westch­ester Coun­ty to hers in Glen Cove, a small city across Long Island Sound.

Mama For­tunée was what we called my grand­moth­er, whose Ara­bic name, Mas’ouda, meant the same good for­tune as it did in French. She was forty-one years old when she left Bagh­dad — where she was born and where our Jew­ish fam­i­ly lin­eage reached back some two thou­sand years — for the Unit­ed States in 1972, along with my grand­fa­ther, my moth­er, my aunt, and my uncle. Reset­tled in Queens as refugees, they moved to Glen Cove a few years lat­er. Much of the rest of our extend­ed fam­i­ly scat­tered across Long Island. It must have been jar­ring, for a fam­i­ly that only ever knew a fer­tile stretch of desert between two rivers, to live so close to the sea.

The jour­ney to Glen Cove felt like a pil­grim­age of sorts. After school, my mom would dri­ve us down the Hutchin­son Riv­er Park­way and across the White­stone Bridge, pass­ing high above the blue, glim­mer­ing water. We’d pick up my dad at a shop­ping cen­ter near his work in Queens, and con­tin­ue via the Cross Island Park­way, the Long Island Express­way, and Glen Cove Road, until we reached Mama Fortunée’s lit­tle white house on a qui­et, curved street. It had thick, dusty car­pets, and the cush­ions on the old din­ing-room chairs were still wrapped in the plas­tic pack­ag­ing from the fur­ni­ture store. There was a large, win­dowed den where Jews from the old coun­try would set up fold­ing chairs and gath­er togeth­er to jab­ber away about a place we kids had nev­er been, and a home we would nev­er know, in a Jew­ish dialect of Ara­bic that we would nev­er understand.

There was always traf­fic on the dri­ve to Mama Fortunée’s house. A dis­tance that was only six miles as the crow flies could take an hour or even two by car. ​“If only there was a boat,” we grum­bled, most­ly in a jok­ing way, on some of those nights. ​“If only there was a boat, we could just zip across the water!” One sticky Fri­day in July we were stuck in such a stand­still that my par­ents turned off the car in the mid­dle of the express­way. Sure­ly my broth­ers and I had been fight­ing in the broil­ing back­seat, because when my moth­er noticed an ice-cream truck idling one lane over, we all end­ed up with pop­si­cles passed through the open windows.

In high school, I did buy a boat, a cheap yel­low kayak from Wal­mart. I began explor­ing the Long Island Sound — most­ly around the Bronx and New Rochelle, near where I lived, and around Glen Cove, where Mama For­tunée did. She did not like the idea of a kayak, not in New York, at least. ​“He is too far away!” she would exclaim to my moth­er in her singsong Ara­bic-accent­ed Eng­lish as they wait­ed in the park­ing lot, watch­ing me from the shore. ​“Where is he going? Why is he leaving?”

Actu­al­ly, I was nev­er real­ly leav­ing. Mine were roundtrips; I always returned to the land wher­ev­er I put in. But each year brought new dis­cov­er­ies, and the jour­neys grew longer. In the sum­mer, if I stayed out until dusk, gold­en sun­sets back­lit the Man­hat­tan sky­line, and char­coal smoke rose from the city parks where Latin Amer­i­can fam­i­lies grilled din­ner. In the win­ter, there were seals. From my van­tage point, drift­ing on the water, you could make out the state­ly man­sions on Glen Cove’s coast­line, scat­tered amid green forests. Mama Fortunée’s house, small­er and fur­ther inland, sud­den­ly did not seem that far away.

Mean­while, we con­tin­ued — week after week, year after year — to dri­ve there on Fri­day evenings. At din­ner, my old­er cousin Daniel would say the kid­dush, stand­ing in the place of my late grand­fa­ther Papa Jamil, who had done so until he died sud­den­ly when I was a tod­dler. (Papa Jamil always wore suits, even while gar­den­ing, and said his prayers with a torn and musty sid­dur in one hand and one of his baby grand­chil­dren nes­tled in his oth­er arm.) We recit­ed the words aloud togeth­er even though most of us did not under­stand what they meant. But we were, in a sin­gle act, hold­ing onto some­thing. Mama For­tunée spent hours prepar­ing those din­ners. For the adults, she made Iraqi dish­es: kub­ba in pink beet sauce, fried sam­bousek with chick­pea and cumin fill­ing, and t’beet, the tra­di­tion­al Bagh­da­di Shab­bat meal of stuffed chick­en slow-cooked in a pot with rice. For the kids, she ordered Chi­nese take­out, know­ing it was what we pre­ferred. Kub­ba shwan­dar and Gen­er­al Tso’s chick­en sat side by side on the table.

One night, when I was around ten years old, a rare, unex­pect­ed tor­na­do swept through the area just as we were about to leave. My father and I were already in the car when it struck, along with tor­ren­tial rains and flash­es of light­ning. We could hear old trees crack­ing and falling around us in the dark. Final­ly we dashed for the house, slam­ming the door shut behind us. As we sat on blan­ket-cov­ered radi­a­tors to dry up in the warmth, Mama For­tunée encour­aged us to stay.

As the years wore on, and Mama For­tunée grew old­er, the din­ners grew small­er. Her sib­lings, in-laws, and friends were retreat­ing into the soli­tude of old age, and sud­den­ly I could count on one hand the num­ber of peo­ple around me who spoke Judeo-Ara­bic — that strange, almost bib­li­cal-sound­ing lan­guage that I used to hear so often. Mama For­tunée cooked less and less. One day, we found plas­tic wrap baked inside the t’beet, and while we said noth­ing of the dis­cov­ery, now I real­ize that she stopped prepar­ing food after that. Instead, we brought take­out con­tain­ers of kebabs and rice from a Per­sian grill down the road. ​“Did you remem­ber the Chi­nese food?” she’d ask, but by then my broth­ers and I were grown and wished she could still make the old Iraqi dish­es that we’d hard­ly ever tried, but that now, like so much else, remind­ed us of home. By the time she turned nine­ty, my grand­moth­er need­ed con­stant care, and we vis­it­ed her far more often than once a week to make sure she had what she need­ed. We drove her to the beach so she could watch the water and the gulls.

Some­time around then, late in the sum­mer of 2022, I decid­ed I would make the cross­ing while she was still alive. I set out on a Fri­day after­noon around 4:00, as we always had. The sun was shin­ing and the weath­er was calm. I put in at Larch­mont, lift­ing my yel­low kayak over a retain­ing wall to reach the water, and fig­ured on two hours for the six-mile ride.

But as soon as I left the pro­tect­ed har­bor, the wind picked up from the east. The Sound is like a fun­nel for an east­er­ly wind, and the swells came up side­ways against my kayak, knock­ing pools of water into the boat. By the time I real­ized the full extent of the trou­ble I’d got­ten myself into, I was too far to turn around. Speed­boats and jet skis mis­took my fran­tic ges­tures for waves hel­lo. I had a life vest, a whis­tle, and a phone — my fam­i­ly was track­ing my loca­tion from the shore — but mid­way across the water I lost recep­tion. For an hour or more, I was alone in the waves and the wind. Glimps­ing the White­stone Bridge in the dis­tance, for once I wished I was on it — wished I was a kid again, along for the ride.

By the time I neared Hemp­stead Har­bor and Glen Cove, the swells began to lessen. A fish­ing boat called The Klondike called out over their loud­speak­er to ask if I need­ed res­cue, but I waved them off, con­fi­dent that the worst had passed. At night­fall I made it to the Glen Cove shore, but I knew my grand­moth­er would be asleep by then. The world seemed frag­ile, and as I stepped onto land I found that I was shak­ing, unsure whether from phys­i­cal exhaus­tion or from fright. I found myself recit­ing the kid­dush from mem­o­ry that night, alone on the dri­ve home.