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Immigrants' Daughter, The
A Private Battle to Earn the Right to Self-Actualization
Mary Terzian (Author)
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This book is an Award-Winning Finalist in the Multicultural Non-Fiction category of the National Indie Excellence 2007 Book Awards contest.
The Immigrants' Daughter is a protagonist's struggles in Cairo, between 1936 through 1953, to survive in her parents' adopted land, while World War I is still living memory and World War II becomes reality -- a most intensive period in Egypt's history.
The protagonist's parents are escapees from Turkey, living in the shadow of genocide. ""What shall become of us?"" is a repetitive concern of the community. Recent transplantation threatens entrenched traditions, the loss of ethnic identity and the stability of family life. Impending World War II and family tragedy compound the tensions of living on foreign soil.
The early scenes depict Mary's childhood and local community life in multicultural Cairo. She is unaware of the insecurities surrounding her. Baby brother arrives at the same time as King Farouk's daughter, entitling the family to a small gift. Papa is happy that the boy brought kismet with him. Mary feels rejected. ""Does Papa love me?"" She resents the discriminatory attitudes that favor boys.
The unexpected death of Mary's mother throws the family into disarray, aggravated by the arrival of Stepmother soon thereafter. The new ""administration"" creates religious and cultural friction within the family and discord with the relatives. Mary's, and her older brother Kev's, tensions with their parents intensify, influenced by external factors -- emotional support from relatives, mass repatriation of Armenians and Egypt's struggle for independence. Frustrated by Father's exercise of hinterland rules in modern Cairo, Kev joins the emigrants' group to communist Armenia, thus ""breaking Father's spine.""
Under pressure from relatives, Mary is sent to an English high school, run by Irish nuns, for continuing education. English books widen her horizon, plant the seeds for emancipation, and ""rape her mind"" per her Father, with strange ideas. Her burning desire for education -- a possible key to independence -- is at cross-purposes with Father's vision of a docile, dutiful housewife. In the meantime Israel's independence, the onslaught of Palestinians into Egypt and the uprisings against the British occupation create a sense of insecurity within the European communities. The teenage years, fraught with struggle for an identity, develop Mary's sense of self that ill agrees with the predetermined role reserved for women in the Middle East. In public life emancipation has permeated the Egyptian Woman's consciousness as well.
Graduation, work and earned income offer some relief from oppression but her Father's rules of conduct do not bend. Younger brother, now a teenager, confirms Mary's convictions of inequity about parental controls governed by whim, intimidation, subjugation, inflexibility and force where necessary.
In search for identity, Mary struggles to find equilibrium between loyalty to tradition and need for freedom. Father's dictatorship and Stepmother's indifference push her to the ultimate insult of her leaving home, despite the stigma attached.
At twenty-one Mary strikes out, to flail her wings at the Young Christian Women's Association's shelter, before floating through life on her own. She works abroad for a while, immigrates to the United States, and visits Cairo twenty-five years later, as a career woman, in charge of her life.
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