Blue Daughter of the Red Sea: A Memoir

Preface

Preface· xi · E      . I gather all my equipments and set to work. I read to learn. I write to learn. I travel to learn. I socialize to learn. But I still have not learned to understand.This is how and why the project of writing a memoir started: I wanted to learn to understand. I began jotting down excerpts from the past. I made phone calls to distant lands. I visited the ghosts. I interviewed strangers. I talked to friends. I went to therapy. The people that I had considered dead in my heart came back to life.The umbilical cord that attached the past to the present, the mother to the child, the citizen to the gypsy, and the home to the strange land found its way to me. Blue Daughter of the Red Sea is not a complete book. It is a book of fragments. It is a book of revelation but it is also a book that has learned to silence. It is a book that has sat in the drawer for years before and after composition for fear of damaging repercussions. Blue Daughter of the Red Sea is the child of ambivalence, torn between two worlds. It is the child that knows silence but prefers to put its foot in its mouth. It is the child that leaves home to find home but gets lost in between. It is the child that does not belong anywhere or to anyone. Blue Daughter of the Red Sea is the story that finds voice in the embers of memory, in the face of melancholy and in the turbulent waters of solitude. Did I learn to understand ? Maybe, only a little. However, the reader might not understand this book entirely. She and he will run into many holes that I did not fill, either for lack of memory or simply because I chose not to. I have ever been envious of people who tell their stories without reservations. Their pasts seem to flow as waterfalls that have beginnings and endings. My past is a mystery that lacks cardinal points. My past is also history that belongs to other people as much as it belongs to me. I have tried my best to protect myself, my angels, and my demons by disguising everyone under different names and in some cases continuing to keep our secrets as I’d always done. I hope you all enjoy the read; and whenever you stumble into a hole, use your imagination. ...