Suzette Sciammas née Yafet was born on February 1, 1930 to Salomon and Rashel Yafet at 15 Yeldeğirmeni Sokak in Kadiköy, Istanbul. The warmth of the smoldering hearth rose slowly to the third floor of the traditional Ottoman brick home where Rashel gave birth. Suzette was the second of three children, younger to brother Isak and older to sister Charlotte. At home, the family spoke a combination of French, Turkish, and Greek, emblematic of their Karaite Jewish cultural heritage. Their cosmopolitan neighborhood was sprinkled with a mixture of Islamic mosques, Jewish temples, and Armenian Christian churches.

As a child, her clan of 10 cousins Emeline, Berber, Izak, Necla, Emel, Zeki, Marcel, Marguerite, and Charlotte played in the orchard behind their home. They were a musical family, with Isak playing the violin and Suzette and Charlotte playing the piano. Suzette attended the Osmangazi elementary school, one of Istanbul’s historical schools established in 1902, located down the street from her childhood home. When they reached high school age, Suzette and Charlotte commuted daily across the Bosphorus Strait on the public ferry, traversing Asia to Europe to the Şişli neighborhood, to attend Notre Dame de Sion school, a Catholic girls school with instruction in French. After high school, Suzette spent one year living in Hamburg, Germany, hosted by a German family whose son Peter lived with her family in Istanbul. During that year she traveled to Sweden where she picked strawberries during harvest time.

Having been courted by a variety of suitors, she held out for Giuseppe Sciammas, a man three years younger, also a Karaite Jew, from Egypt. Giuseppe, who had been living in Paris, composed a letter to Suzette’s father Salomon, requesting permission to visit the family and court Suzette. They were married on December 26th, 1960 in Istanbul, in a Karaite ceremony, in the company of her family. When he was offered a position with the British motor company Leventis, Suzette and Giuseppe relocated to Lagos, Nigeria. During that time, she employed her French language skills to work as a translator and secretary. Giuseppe worked as an automotive technician, increasingly taking on additional supervisorial responsibilities.

After seven years, they gave birth to their first son, Ruggero, on October 24th, 1967. Suzette had traveled to Wimbledon, England in the late stage of her pregnancy where she lived in a home for expectant mothers prior to giving birth. Within a few years, Giuseppe was offered a position with FIAT motor company which transferred the young family to Kinshasa, Zaire. Expecting her second child, Suzette returned to Istanbul to give birth to a son, Carlo. She shared this late stage of her pregnancy with her sister Charlotte, who was also expecting her first child Engin.

After 12 years in Africa, Suzette and the family moved to Torino, Italy, the headquarters of FIAT motor company, and they lived in a flat in the center of the city. Thereafter, Giuseppe travelled on his own to Ontario Canada where he hoped to relocate the family. After three months, Suzette and the two children crossed the Atlantic to join him. Suzette conceded to Giuseppe’s wishes that he be the primary breadwinner and that she tend to raising their children. As an immigrant, she struggled, not knowing any English, often anxious about interacting with teachers and other parents in the childrens’ school. In Giuseppe’s career trajectory, the family moved frequently, first to the Chicago area, to Southern California, and to the northern New Jersey area. When Carlo and Roger reached their teenage years, Giuseppe’s employer, FIAT, decided to end their operations in North America and offered to relocate the family back to Italy. Suzette and Giuseppe decided to remain in the United States and they moved to Southern California. This meant Giuseppe was out of work, and Suzette seized on the opportunity to begin a career of her own. She secured a job as a file clerk in an area hospital, when she gained new skills, developed more confidence, and built strong relationships with her colleagues.

Giuseppe and Suzette continued to travel often over their lives, seizing the opportunity to feed their souls with new cultures and interactions in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Suzette remained working at the hospital for over 30 years, retiring at aged 84, only when she was forced to as a result of her deteriorating health due to a cancer diagnosis. Suzette passed away on July 13th, 2015 in her home, at the age of 85, a gentle warrior always eager to seize life’s opportunities, find humor in the everyday of life, having raised two sons, and as a grandmother to three grandchildren, Nicolo Baraka, Luca Habib, and Naelle Slade.

Send to someone

Share this obituary with others

https://everloved.com/life-of/suzette-sciammas/obituary/

Copy