Amīnāh Mubārik was a passenger on Titanic.
Background[]
Amīnāh Iskandar Nāsīf Abī Dāghir was born in Hardīn, Syria in 1887. This place is now part of Lebanon. She was the second child and first daughter of the Iskandar family. Her father was Jirjis Nasif Iskandar and her mother was Kattūr Hannā. Both born in Hardīn as well. Amīnāh had one elder brother: Jirjis. born in 1881. Her first younger sister was Sīlānah, born in 1894. After her came Emeline in 1897. There were also three younger brothers, named Shibble, Zouk and Zahi.
Her father moved to the United States to settle in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Amīnāh married Jirjis Mubārik Bū Tannūs at a young age. Amīnāh gave birth to two boys: the first was Jirjis in 1904 and the second was Halīm, born in 1907.
Jirjis Mubārik moved to the United States in 1908, with his brothers to start a new future there as there was poverty in their village. They settled in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He opened a small grocery shop and befriended another Syrian immigrant, Antūn Mūsà Yazbak.
In 1911, Jirjis missed his wife of course, and his friend Antūn Yazbak was still single. As they were making good money, he felt it was time that Aminah and his sons were brought over. Therefore, Antūn sold his shares to the Mubārik brothers and drew money from a bank as he was employed by Jirjis to while he would search for a partner himself. He made the promise to guide Amīnāh as it was practical since Antūn could speak English. Jirjis would change his name to George Moubarek later.
Amīnāh’s father had arranged for her younger sister to be the chosen one to wed Antūn. Antūn went over to and fell immediately in love with Sīlānah and their wedding followed soon.
As Antūn and Sīlānah planned their honeymoon, Antūn held his promise and took Amīnāh, Halīm and Jirjis with them on their voyage to the United States. First, they went to Marseilles where they heard about the incredible new ship, the Titanic, which would start her Maiden Voyage in April. As they had to wait a month. They spent some time in Southern France with the newlyweds.
Titanic[]
On April 10, the group was in Cherbourg. This is where Titanic arrived in the evening. They went onto the magnificent ship with tickets for Third Class. Amīnāh was 24 years old at the time. She also had a cousin, Thamīm Tannūs, who boarded with her child As’ad and her brother Bashīr or Charles Thomas as he was named in America.
On April 14, late at night, Amīnāh was rudely put out of her sleep when the ship had hit something. It turned out to have been an iceberg, which Titanic couldn’t avoid completely.
On April 15, after midnight, it was now clear that Titanic was sinking and the lead crew of the ship felt that they should evacuate so they readied the boats. Meanwhile, down below in steerage, the family gathered and Sīlānah with Antūn helped taking Halīm and Jirjis onto the ladders to get them up to the Boat Deck. They arrived late and many boats were gone. Chaos had arisen and according to Sīlānah, pistol shots were fired. It’s likely that Amīnāh had followed Sīlānah into Collapsible C, but it isn’t certain. Another story said that one of her boys ended up in the water and were picked up later. Either way, she lost sight of of them and was searching in a state of total distress. She was then grabbed and rudely shoved into a lifeboat. It could’ve been either C or D. She was convinced that one of her boys was drowned.
Her brother-in-law was held back by the crew and was lost when the ship went down at 2:20 A.M, much too the grievance of his young bride, who kept faith that he was alive until she was in New York.
After the sinking[]
At 4:00 A.M, a ship came to the aid of the surviving people in the boats. It was the RMS Carpathia that had answered Titanic’s CQD distress call. The ship spent the morning gathering everyone and taken them aboard. To their relief, the sisters were re-united with Sīlānah being happy that the two boys were okay too.
The Carpathia steamed to New York and was there on April 18. Amīnāh and Sīlānah had to be taken to a hospital were they were treated for their exposure and shock. Thamīm Tannūs was also there. Antūn’s brothers were the first to have made their way to the big city, after the tragedy had hit Wilkes-Barrow, where the women were ready to moarn. The father of Amīnāh and Sīlānah hasted to New York as well.
The family stayed in New York for a month because Amīnāh's two boys, Halīm and Jirjis Mubārik, had to stay in the Bellevue Hospital as they had contracted measles. Then, upon their release, it was finally time for the family to go to Wilkes-Barre, where Sīlānah stayed with her father for a while.
Later life[]
The Mubarīk family choose their city of residence to be Clearfield in Pennsylvania. This is where Amīnāh lived for her remaining life and changed her name to Armenia ‘Minnie' Alexander Moubarek. Her off-spring was expanded and she soon had a total of six children. A daughter and three sons were born: Roy in 1916, James in 1917, Daniel in 1918 and lastly, Areal in 1919.
In the early 1920s, Minnie suffered from tuberculosis. In the hope that things could improve, they let her go back to Syria. It didn’t seem to have helped much, as she was not recovering and died in Hardīn in 1922.