Surprises can be found in the family tree

When bereaved, we have a lot of time to think and reflect, and I've done more and more over the years since Baheej died. For some reason, it's a way to keep anchored and it's even fun.

Most of us have some surprises or special stories back there in the family tree. Of course one doesn't have to be bereaved to indulge in this pastime of family research. Just on Baheej's side alone, there are many stories of adventure and exploration.

For instance, in the early 1900s, many Christian Arabs from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine in the Holy Land (what is present-day Israel) emigrated to Brazil and Argentina in the wake of political and economic turmoil during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Baheej's grandmother Leah's eldest son, and two more of Baheej's uncles, did just that. All three were young men at the time, with basically “only the clothes on their backs.”

Two went to Brazil and one to Argentina. They thought they were coming to the U.S., but the boat going to “America” turned out to be South America.

Uncle Jameel went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and established the first Arabic language newspaper in South America. He became quite a literary figure there. There are many writers and poets in Baheej's family, including himself. So that's interesting to me. This seems to run in the family, similar to the way musicians run in some families. Probably a mix of genetic skills and socialization.

First Baheej, and then I, started traveling to South America, with Baheej exploring and finding relatives, and me working. Actually Baheej found one uncle and quite a lot of cousins. His Uncle Victor Warwar arrived penniless and became very wealthy by slowly establishing businesses there — first small ones, then large. By the time Baheej met Victor he was living in his own penthouse overlooking Copa Cabana beach in Rio. So Baheej met all his Brazilian cousins and their families, and traveled extensively around Brazil with Victor and the family.

Later Victor even came to visit us a couple times here in Sleepy Hollow, which was great fun. He used to come to the U.S. every so often on business.

One of Baheej's Brazilian cousins was named Jameel Warwar after the literary uncle in Argentina. But this Jameel turned out to be a famous detective in Brazil; he was actually called “the Sherlock Holmes of Brazil.” He worked undercover in very inventive disguises, and they say he always caught his man. He was very well known. And like Sherlock has said, Jameel told Baheej that there is no perfect crime.

Anyway, Baheej spent a lot of time with his detective cousin, who traveled with two body guards when not in disguise. Jameel showed Baheej all around Rio, and introduced him to more relatives. Jameel only spoke Portuguese, so one of the bodyguards was the interpreter. It worked.

I may not have all the relationships — e.g. cousin or uncle or aunt — quite right. In large extended families as Baheej's, they are indeed all related but the terms cousin, uncle, aunt are used across generations whether first, second, third or by marriage or direct lineage. And the hamula (extended family) has several branches — Khleif, Warwar and others more distant but still related. So this was all an adventure of discovery.

My own family had plenty of stories and adventures, too. They were Swedish and Irish immigrants, so we had plenty of rags to riches stories, successful business people, trail blazers, etc.

My great-grandfather Jim Hicks on my mother's side was a toddler inside a covered wagon when the U.S. government opened the Oklahoma Territory to settlement, and his parents “ran the Cherokee Strip” and claimed land as a homestead, which became a wheat farm still owned by my own grandparents when I was growing up. They were sooners who jumped the gun and claimed the first appealing land they could, in north central modern-day Oklahoma. A great injustice to the Cherokee nation, whose land it actually was. My brother Nic devoted all his graduate school research to the mistreatment of American Indians.

Actually Jim's son, my grandfather Howard, was a real frontier-type cowboy growing up, when riding horses to town was the only mode of transportation. Mom's hometown of Blackwell, Oklahoma, had dirt streets and wooden planks for walkways when Grandpa was young. He and his young friends rode horses down those wooden planks, making lots of racket “just for fun.”

The Jesse James gang was reportedly once camped on the land down by Thompson Creek. It was still the “Wild West!” People were surprised when my maternal grandmother, Jesse, who was a schoolteacher and a Presbyterian, married “one of those wild Hicks boys.” So it was …

Even my town of Brainerd, Minnesota, had some wild times in the early 1900s. The First National Bank there was robbed and shot up by a gang led by Baby Face Nelson in 1933. This was before my time, of course, but bullet holes were still pointed out to local children and visitors!

So the point is: You never know what one can find in a family tree or local history. Sometimes it can be quite revealing. No wonder DNA testing, www.ancestry.com and books on local history have become so popular! We should write down some of these family stories for future generations.

I sure wish I had asked more questions when my grandparents were still alive, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20. Happy exploration!

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at www.dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan.