Bannūrah Ayyūb-Dāhir was a passenger on the Titanic.
Background[]
Bannūrah Ayyūb-Dāhir was born on March 15, 1897 in Kafr 'Abaīdā, al-Batrūn, Syria, part of the Ottoman Empire. This place is now the Lebanon. She came into a family of Maronite christians. Her father was Ayyūb Dāhir Dāhir and her mother was Mārī Yūsuf.
She had at least two brothers, named Dāhir and Yūsuf. In 1911, Dāhir was staying with an uncle who lived in Columbus, United States. Yūsuf was a resident of Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. Bannūrah now wanted to go there as well. She went in March 1912. She was 17 years old when she was given in the care of Sha'nīnah Shāhīn Abī S’ab Wihbah from Tuḥūm. as she did not know or understand English and left her parents behind in Lebanon. Sha'nīnah was widowed and had lost one of her sons. She wanted to return to her home in the USA and promised to see that Bannūrah’s needs were met along the way.
The two women were with their cousins John Thomas, his son Tannūs Mu'awwad, Gerios Yousseff and Tannūs Dāhir. Their first part of the trip was on the back of a donkey and their route led them to Beirut, where there was a ship at the port that would go to Marseilles in France.
Titanic[]
On April 10, Bannūrah’s group were in Cherbourg where she was on the Titanic with Sha'nīnah and the rest, boarding the ship in the evening at about 7:00 P.M. She had a cabin in Third Class, well belowdecks with other Syrian migrants and many of them were nearby. Apparently her roommates were John Thomas and Tannūs Mu'awwad. Titanic left Cherbourg later in the evening to set about on the rest of her Maiden Voyage.
On April 14. it was a quiet, cold Sunday night when Bannūrah and the others were asleep in their cabin. What had been such a positive experience for Bannūrah and her crowd, now quickly turned on its head when the ship had a fatal moment when she could not get around an iceberg without having her hull sraping against it on starboard side. The lookouts hadn’t spotted it on time. Water flowed in freely within seconds from several small gashes beneath the water line. That didn’t seem to have shaken up Bannūrah at all, who had to be waken up instead by others. Her cousins wanted her to get out but they did not see any further cause for concern, nor did the young girl.
She wanted to go back to bed, when stewards had told John that everything was alright and John was reassured. Moments later however, Bannūrah saw water in the cabin and hallway and rose from her bed again, waking her cousin. She must have had her cabin in the front part of the ship. She roused John as well. He then discovered that Tannūs had gone out of his own and was not in the cabin. He then told her she should go up and leave him searching for Tannūs.
She still stayed and helped out Tannūs, who later came back from an entirely different stairwell. She knew where John had gone and upon seeing Tannūs, she pointed him into the direction where his father had just went. It's not known whether the Mu'awwads found eachother, as that was the last she saw of them.
Sha'nīnah didn't believe the stewards and took her by the hand to get out of there. She didn’t let her out of her sight for any moment. The gates hampered their progress. As some handsomely dressed gentlemen came down, they made way for the girls and helped them up to the safety up the higher decks. It’s not impossible that they were First Class passengers going out of their way to still save lives when they knew they couldn’t be saved themselves. Because of their efforts, Shanīnah and Bannūrah could get to the Boat Deck.
It is most likely that Sha'nīnah and Bannūrah ended up at Collapsible C. It was then their cousin, Gerios Yousseff, who offered them to the sailors to be taken into the wooden craft. When he was sure they were in the lifeboat, he said his goodbyes and disappeared into the crowd. All the male relatives of Bannūrah became victims in the sinking as they had to stay back. Titanic was gone at 2:20 A.M.
After the sinking[]
It took a while before they were on board the safety of the rescue ship, Carpathia, which had come in reaction to Titanic's CQD distress signal and had arrived at the scene at 4:00 A.M, collected most of Titanic’s boats and all of her surviving passengers and crew. The steamer brought them to the port where Titanic was supposed to go first: New York. It was April 18 when she was moored, delivering those who were left from the tragedy, to the mainland of America.
They took a picture of Bannūrah and Sha'nīnah together with other survivors, which contained Second and Third Class passengers. The two women were then nursed by a friendly Jewish orginisation: the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, who made sure they received their basic needs, clothing, food and a secure space. They had a whole warehouse to their disposal. Upon release, the two women went their seperate ways. There was train that headed to Columbus. She took it and parted ways with Sha'nīnah. Then, she stepped out at her destination.
It didn’t work out with her uncle in Columbus, as he had lost his son and didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Luckily, she could travel further and decided to take the train to Owen Sound instead, where more family was living. Another woman took her in. More great news for her was that in this place, she met the love of her life.
Later life[]
On September 11, 1912 she became the wife of Michael Deyoub. He was Syrian from origin and stemmed from Batrūn. He had been in the USA for a long time now, since 1902. He had the profession of moulder.
The first three children of Bannūrah and Michael were: Mary, conceived in 1913, later named Samaha, Thomas in 1915 but he tragically died in April 1916. That year, George was born. All three were delivered when they lived in Windsor. They had a new adress in 1917: the were situated in Detroit, Wayne, Michigan. Futher children arrived: three boys, Peter in 1920, John, born in 1924, Ferris, born in 1925, followed by two girls, Margaratte, in 1929, next was Sarah in 1933. She was the last.
Bannūrah changed her name: she would go through life as Banoura from now on. Her parents remained in Syria while Banoura never visited her native country ever again. Throughout her life, she was a proud Catholic. She didn’t go out to sea but still enjoyed being on a boat once in a while on the lakes of Michigan.
Michael changed jobs and soon they made their living through him working in a factory for the Ford Motor Company. He was responsbile for the car’s radiators and received weekly payment.However, he once lost it to a gambling game one week and Bannurah did not take this lightly. To prevent any future trouble, a story goes that she had the audacity to vist the Rouge Assembly Plant herself after taking a bus. She even spoke directly to the Mister Henry Ford himself if there was something in it for her, that he could arrange for the wages to be sent to her personally from now on.Her bald move literally paid off and the enveloppes came every week.
Banoura regarded Titanic as a topic she rather didn’t say too much about. When she saw the 1953 movie ‘Titanic’, because her children took her to the cinema, it made quite a few tears flow.
In 1956, she had to continue life on her own, as her husband Mike died.
Deyoub herself was still living in Detroit when she passed away in her seventies on December 3, 1970. She has a tombstone in Mount Olive Cemetery, simply put in a few words how beloved she was as a mother and as a wife.