Very Varaklani in Latvia

We could almost hear a fiddler on the roof as the small van pulled into the village of Varaklani, two hours outside of Riga, Latvia. This is where, pre-pogroms, my ancestors once lived, and we have the black and white photo of several robust peasant women stacking hay with long pitchforks to prove it.

The day was sunny and warm, and traces of history in the air were faint. Did I have an overwhelming déjà vu? An internal diving rod pointing my footsteps sharply one way or another? Nothing—just a cool mindfulness that this was a brief home to my family.

Because homes to my family were always brief—continually at the mercy of changing czars, changing conquerors, and changing times. And the only reason that my mother, her new husband, my sister, and I had any orientation here is that we had gotten hold of a homemade movie about the village made by a woman whose family was also from Varaklani. This was thanks, if you can believe it, to the Tulsa, Oklahoma Jewish community, most of whose families had Varaklanian roots.

In English thick with Russian vowels, the woman narrated as the camera bumped along streets desolate with winter. A man on a horse cart passed by, and the camera’s eye came to rest on a dirt road, which she might have called, “School Street” or “Mule Street.”

This is where we have to go, we told our guide. This is where the synagogue is and the cemetery. We had seen it on the DVD—a small house with boarded up windows.

In the summer sun, that two-story house sprouted happy green weeds at its feet and was nestled in among fruit trees. We all marveled that the woman had chosen a winter month for her trip.

As we stood there snapping photos of the house, a couple men outside stared vaguely at us, a weird influx of camera-toting American tourists. I could barely restrain myself from snapping them - their old bicycles leaning against the synagogue, their etched faces a constant torment to my camera lens. Of course my mom took their photos. She is obsessed with faces and street signs when she travels, and she wasn’t shy about it, either.