In 1929 my grandfather took the train that runs along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa in the historic Palestine, to the city of Beirut in Lebanon. He did so to catch a ship taking off to Brazil, the New World. There was a strong wave of migration to the new world, even though the only way of traveling at that time was by ship, and this took over three months to reach the port of Rio de Janeiro.
Once at the new land, officials referred to my grandfather as the Turku, even though he was, in fact, Arabic. They did so as ...