218 · Alanna E. Cooper
brother died here ten years ago, and his sister moved with her family to
New York. Everyone is gone now. There is no one left to visit his grave.”
Those making the decision to immigrate know this story of abandon-
ment well. They hear it when they visit the cemeteries, and they hear it
at memorial services. An eloquent orator summarized this message at
one of the many such services I attended: “A man does not die when his
heart stops or when he closes his eyelids. A man does not die when he
is wrapped in a shroud or when he is put into the grave. He dies when
his grave is [left untended and] grown over with grass.” Admonishing
people not to leave their deceased behind, he pleaded with those who—
despite the warning—would choose to go anyway. “Do not forget the
graves of your deceased,” he cautioned, entreating people to return often
to visit those whom they have left behind in the cemetery.
Abandoning the deceased is a serious issue that people took into con-
sideration when deciding whether or not to emigrate. When I asked fifty-
six-year-old Uri, for example, if he planned to leave, he was still unsure.
“Well, you can’t just up and go so quickly. I have relatives who have left
and a neighbor who plans to, but our ancestors are buried here in the
cemeteries. We have a history here.” In my conversations with Boris on
the same topic, he lowered his head as he spoke about his reluctance to
leave the site of his father’s burial, and he wondered if he might move
his father’s remains with him to the United States. Dora, on the other
hand, had resolved to emigrate, but not without regret. “All of my family
members are buried together. We are leaving these graves behind.” Some
elderly people expressed fears about their own burial in a foreign land.
Several told me they were afraid to leave because they had heard that in
Israel and the United States their remains would be scattered rather than
given a proper burial. Despite reassurance that the deceased are buried in
cemeteries in Israel and the United States just as they are in Uzbekistan,
there was no alleviating the existential dread of dispersion. With the rup-
ture of the tightly bound connection between history, place, community,
and personal identity, the individual would, in fact, come undone—even
without the physical scattering of the body’s remains.
In sum, the powerful pull to emigrate—exerted by the living branches
of the family tree—was countered by the tug to remain. Eventually, the
Bukharan Jewish population in Uzbekistan did become dislodged, its
branches and leaves scattering in the winds of social and political change.