You’re right.
She looks Eastern or Central European. At 87 she probably suffered as a girl either under the Nazi’s or Communists/Russians.
Yep, tons of Russian Communists in Syria while she was growing up. And the Nazis probably were the ones who made her learn to speak Arabic. (For the historically impaired, Syria was a French mandate (given some autonomy in 1936) which was taken by the British in 1941. Britain had to invade again in 1945 to deal with DeGaulle's Free French forces.)