Brenda Fawkner nee Abusombra was prompted to write after attending a function where a Palestinian couple spoke of the heartache and sadness they felt and the effect on their families in Gaza. 

“It awoke memories of my childhood, My father came from northern Palestine, now the Golan Heights, and the story is a personal reflection as an adult looking back on my childhood  immersed in the Lebanese community in New Plymouth.  My mother was of English heritage and all the visitors to my home were either her family or our Lebanese community”. 

It was an epiphany.  “You know,” they said, "we can't watch the news any more. It's too sad.and it makes us cry.”

As they were speaking, a conversation from six decades ago came back to me echoing those same depths of emotion that brought tears. My mother was recounting a visit with my father to his homeland. The first time in sixty-five years. We had heard of this beautiful place where he had grown up, the land of ‘’milk and honey”, on the Golan Heights in Northern Palestine. The anticipation had grown as he drew nearer to his village and the home that he remembered.

They arrived. The village had been wiped out and there was nothing there.

“He cried," she recalled. “Cried for the elderly parents whom he had deserted as a young man of 18, leaving them bereft. He cried for the guilt that they had died with broken hearts.”

 The 20-year-old me, heard the story, but it didn't really resonate.  My father embarrassed me. He spoke in broken English, he was emotional. He got angry when he couldn’t understand something or if someone spoke too fast. When I went shopping with him, I wanted to disappear as he always had to bargain and he cried in public.

I remember asking my mother, as a young child. “Why didn’t I have a boy Daddy?   Why was he different from other Daddies?” Goodness knows what she thought!

He was 50 years old when I was born. After five sons; a daughter, he told the neighbourhood,. He danced the Dabke, waving his handkerchief. He adored me. It was overwhelming. Too much.

 The young me heard the story and pretty much wrote it off. I was frustrated with him and his friends. Whenever they were together they went on and on about what had happened and was still happening. They wouldn't let it go. Finally, I just came out with it.

‘’You know Dad, there’s another side to the story, these people needed a home, no one wanted them, where else could they go. Think of the Holocaust.” I'd just finished reading Leon Uris’s book Exodus. His body language warned me. His eyes sparkled with anger and he exploded.

Yes, younger me you deserved that. Yes, I didn’t understand.

 Mother had cautioned me.

 She told me “My friends have warned me that when children leave home for further education, when they came home, they think they know it all.”

 I still feel squirmy inside me now, remembering. How could I?

I’ll share a secret, what our family did so that they would feel accepted in this culture. They took advice and translated our name from Arabic. All my young life though, I was reminded that I was different whenever I wrote my name. I was ashamed of one of them  because I thought it  sounded ugly. Its meaning is star and it was my Setti’s (my grandmother’s name).I usually left it out.

 How could you, young me?  How cruel you were.  I’m crying now.

We were hidden in plain sight, safely ensconced in an ordinary house on an ordinary street. So ordinary I was taken aback  when  Tukapa Street was described as looking like a pair of dentures ! Thankfully ours was the bottom set and our Maunga  watched over us.  Every day it Informed me whether I’d need a raincoat or not.  Every day Stan Riley drove his tram by my house at regular intervals in Westown. Every day I’d sit on our stepped concrete wall in front of the grass verge, in my safe place.

Come now with me into my long kept secret world, my home.

“Ahalan Wa Sahlan! Ahalan Wa Sahlan”, my father greets you. (My first Arabic words as a babe).

 I think now, why haven’t I taught my children.

 This is how we welcome our guests. Arms are wrapped around you with warm hugs and kisses on your cheeks and yes men included. I hear you gasp, what has just happened? You have stepped into a culture within a culture. You are now transported to another world. A world of generous hospitality.

“Come come, you must eat.” Before us is a feast, koosa,olives malfou mahshi, kibbeh, maujadara, baklava. “Please please, you must have more.”

I’m jolted back to the present.  I listen to their story. They are open, they are vulnerable but they are not strangers, they are my sister and brother. I reveal myself to them and see warmth and love and understanding in their eyes.

 ‘’Why did you change your name? It's not difficult.” they say.

Here we are in New Plymouth, informed this week that New Zealand is the 4th most peaceful country in the world? I emerge from the cocoon. It has taken decades. Are they talking about someone else's story?

No, it's mine.