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Blogs by Mary Terzian
Politically Homeless 7/30/2015 7:02:26 AM
A young woman's struggles to acquire higher education by choosing her own path for emancipation against established protocols, cultural upbringing and political turmoil, in order to realize her unreachable dreams. Until I graduated from the PEN USA Emerging Voices scholarship program in 2011 I had limited myself to articles despite pressure from my Toastmasters friends to write a memoir about my life. What could be so interesting about it? I was born to refugee parents in Egypt, in the Armenian diaspora. No, we didn’t travel on camels and I was not a relic from ancient history. Cairo was a cosmopolitan city. Yes, we spoke several languages there but I didn’t have much more to say. A book of four chapters? Dead end. Who would read it?
Nevertheless, backed with a PEN USA advisor, I gave it a shot. The four chapters extended to three hundred pages and beyond. “The Immigrants’ Daughter” was born in 2005. I cradled my brainchild in my arms like an inept mother unsure of what to do next. I tested its quality by submitting it to a Best Books contest in 2006. The day the contest results were to be announced I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and stuck by my computer to check the results. I gasped when I found it. My name was there, under multicultural non-fiction. I chose to keep it secret for a while. It could be a mistake, a misprint. It would be erased soon. I wanted to shout my good fortune from the rooftops but kept quiet for a few days, for fear the announcement might disappear any time. It didn’t. I must add I am an ESL writer so my fears were justified.
My memoir did not end there. The second volume rolled in. I was less of a cynic when I penned “Politically Homeless,” a young Middle Eastern woman’s daring Odyssey across three continents to realize her dreams. It was indeed adventuresome, including a flight with three dozens of chickens aboard a commuter plane, a crocodile dinner, another East to West journey across Congo on a plane commandeered by mercenaries - a very intense life during which I learned more and grew up faster than at any other period in my life. I invite the uninitiated to share my adventures at the height of political dissensions,from Israel’s birth to the Suez Canal crisis, from Khrushchev’s demise to the disintegration of the British Empire in African countries, and the emotional fluctuations of a young woman, in search of a niche where she can realize her dreams of becoming a writer.
