Letters To Anne Frandi-Coory

The following two letters were written by Anne Albert to her niece, Anne Frandi-Coory, following the death of her mother, Doreen Marie Frandi.  Anne Albert died shortly after writing the second of the letters to her niece, but if she had not met her niece at Doreen’s funeral. the two would not have known each other and there is so much about Doreen’s life that her daughter would never have discovered.

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To my niece, Anne Frandi-Coory [1995 & 1996]

Dear Anne

I just wanted to tell you how much it has meant to me to meet you at this time. It has taken some of the bitterness out of your mother’s death, for me.

Knowing you, I now realise that her life was not all tragedy, for if she was responsible for giving life to someone as warm & caring, & beautiful as you are, it was instead, a triumph.

I intend to type the story of her life as I know it, and will send it to you.

Your mother was a gentle woman. The mental illness took away the potential she had, to be all that she was capable of being. That was the tragedy of her life.

Try to think of her each day for a minute or two; of her life, and your love for her. That way I am sure her spirit will begin to live with you.

Many loving thoughts, Auntie Anne.

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As promised, Anne, here is your mother’s story:

Doreen was such a beautiful child that on the ship which brought her, her brother and parents to New Zealand, a genuine childless couple offered her parents money to allow them to adopt her.  Doreen had a cloud of bright red curls that framed her pretty face.  How different Doreen’s life would have been had the adoption gone ahead.  Life within the Alfredo Frandi family was an uneasy one, so inclined was he to uncontrollable bouts of violent rage, during which he would throw furniture around the room and punch holes in doors.  Often it was his wife, Maria, a pale and nervous woman,  who felt the force of his fists.  Maria was in a perpetual state of acute anxiety and her concern about their lack of money exacerbated this state.  Alfredo was a labourer and work was hard to come by.  They had four children they could barely feed and clothe so any subsequent  pregnancies were aborted  with a knitting needle.  Unfortunately, as the oldest daughter, Doreen was needed to assist with the cleaning up after these procedures.  Maria had no conception of the trauma this was causing her daughter, and which was to haunt Doreen for the rest of her life.

When Doreen was sixteen years old, I was born, but I have never quite known why I was not aborted.  I can only suppose that my mother may have been experiencing symptoms of the menopause and may have been unaware of the pregnancy in  time.  So unexpected was my birth, that an apple crate was all that my parents had to lay me in.  Doreen was thrilled about the new baby and set about lining the crate with material and making it look pretty for me.  This was the beginning of Doreen’s devotion to me which was to last all her life.

Doreen was a very gentle girl and she was a help to her mother in caring for  the younger children, but she loathed house work of any kind.  She was adept at shopping for bargains and was a very good sewer.  Catholicism began to influence her life early on, as it brought her a peace and beauty so missing from her home environment.  Significantly, the nuns at the convent school she attended, recognized her potential for a vocation and one nun, Sister Anne, encouraged Doreen all she could to think about entering the convent.  As Doreen approached womanhood she exhibited no interest in boys or other worldly things, so firmly were her sights set of becoming a Catholic nun.  Alfredo was dead against his eldest daughter becoming a nun and turned the house upside down to show how much he detested the very idea.  This turmoil only made her more determined, and after a short time working in a department store and following her debut at the annual charity ball, for which she made her own stunning gown,  Doreen entered the convent.

Initially Doreen loved her life as a nun, but after almost a year of doing nothing but housework, she asked if she could train as a nurse.  Her wish was to care for severely handicapped children.  However, her request was greeted with profound disapproval because to actually ask to be able to do what one wanted, was against the very  strict rules of the convent  as well as a denial of the vow of absolute obedience.  Doreen was severely reprimanded and as a result sunk into a deep depression.  The nuns could not understand Doreen’s depression;  they believed that if you had a true vocation faith was enough to protect you from such things.  They then put pressure on Doreen constantly questioning her commitment to her vocation.  Doreen became hysterical which appalled the nuns, and they subsequently demanded that her mother remove her from the convent.  They could not know that bi polar disorder was manifesting itself in Doreen and would consequently ruin her life.

Doreen recovered very slowly from her first breakdown but she was devastated that her vocation was at an end and that she had broken her vow to God.  Doreen did  finally find acceptance and there followed a succession of jobs, which began a pattern set for the rest of her life;  employment interspersed with breakdowns.  In the 1940’s not much was known about bi polar disorder nor were there any satisfactory drugs available at the time.  Doreen was then subjected to countless ECT treatments without anaesthetic which really amounted to torture.  Around this time Doreen’s Aunt Italia, Alfredo’s only sister who was then 70 years of age, decided to take more of an interest in her niece. Italia  regaled Doreen with stories of the privileged   life the Frandi family lived in Italy before they arrived in New Zealand [Italia was born in Pisa, Italy in 1869]. Aristodemo, Italia’s father, had to flee Italy because he was a political agitator alongside Garibaldi, and Italia showed Doreen the fine silver and linen they had brought over with them.  Italia also dazzled Doreen with stories about the family riding in a grand carriage and people bowed with respect for them. Whenever  Doreen  was in the manic phase of her illness, she had illusions of grandeur, and would repeat all that her aunt had told her about their previous  life in Italy.  In these early stages of her illness, Doreen would spend money she did not have and would charge up accounts to her Aunt Italia and sometimes even stay in expensive hotels, all charged against her aunt’s name.  Following these episodes Doreen would then sink into the depths of depression. 

Shortly before the end of the war Doreen joined the Air Force.  It was while she was in  the Force that Doreen met the father of her first child, Kevin. Phillip Coory  neglected  to mention that he was already married with a young  son, Vas, until Doreen informed him  that she was pregnant.  Phillip Coory  believed at the time that that was the end of the matter and he had rid himself of her, but then his brother Joseph came on the scene.  Joseph was a kind and simple man, who did his best to make Doreen happy.  Sadly, his family conspired  against Doreen from the outset; perhaps they did not approve of her good looks or the way the marriage came about.  The marriage ended in disaster;  Joseph was not her intellectual equal and her illness would have been extremely difficult to live with. About three years after their marriage Anne was born and eighteen months later, came Anthony.  Following a severe bout of  bi polar disorder, the children were taken from her and placed in an Orphanage for the Poor in South Dunedin.

The permanent loss of  her children caused Doreen great anguish from which she never really recovered.  In later years she had contact with her daughter Anne, but Doreen was never able to accept that the child did not blame her mother for her abandonment.  Years later, her youngest son, Anthony moved to Wellington to live, but that feeling of guilt never left her and obviously prevented her from having an emotional relationship with her son, although he did make a futile attempt at it.  Doreen and Kevin lived a life of great hardship and near poverty, with Doreen frequently suffering nervous breakdowns, which culminated in her being  admitted to Porirua Psychiatric Hospital.  Kevin had to learn to deal with his mother’s extreme mood swings from a very early age which made his young life intolerable at times.  I have no idea how she coped during those years but I am sure that sometimes  she must have prayed for death, yet through it all her faith in God  never wavered and carried her through until the day she died.

At the peak of her loneliness, Doreen met a man, Edward Stringer, and spent a night with him.  Of course, given her luck, or lack thereof, it ended in pregnancy.  During the weeks after the birth of her daughter, Florence, and suffering from depression, Doreen signed adoption papers for her daughter.  Sometime later, Edward and Doreen met up again, and with the sole intention of getting her daughter back, she married Edward.  Heartbreakingly for Doreen, it was much too late; the adoption was quite legal and binding. Once again life had defeated Doreen and during a severe bout of mania, Edward left, unable to cope with his new wife’s disorder.  From this, there followed a period of dreariness, when Doreen and Kevin lived in a state house at 56 Hewer Crescent Naenae, Lower Hutt in Wellington, and she obtained a reasonably stable job in a factory close by.  At least the disorder left Doreen in peace for an extended period, in which Doreen developed a love of cats, and she had up to six at one time or another.

Kevin started up a very successful restaurant, Bacchus, in Courtney Place in Wellington.  Doreen was employed by Kevin in the kitchen of the restaurant, and she appeared to enjoy her time there.  Sadly her mother died on 10 March 1980, which caused Doreen to have another nervous breakdown.  Following her recovery, Doreen retired from work and moved into a council flat in Daniell Street, Newtown in Wellington.  During this time, she appeared to me to be doing no more than going through the motions of living.  My heart ached to see her like that, with no apparent interest in anything.  Kevin’s bankruptcy and his consequent  permanent move to Sydney, took the utmost toll on her spiritual well being.  Doreen then lapsed into a serious bout of her  disorder, suffering yet another complete nervous breakdown, and she was admitted once again to Porirua Hospital for a considerable time.

I have no doubt whatsoever, that it was not only Doreen’s manic depressive illness that had such a destructive effect on her life.  I sincerely believe that she carried guilt feelings from her experiences as a young girl,  witnessing  her mother’s self inflicted abortions, made worse by Doreen’s Catholic beliefs.       I realized this to be true, with great clarity, when I visited her at the hospital during her final stay there in 1995. She led me out into the hospital gardens, and pointed to a bed of purple pansies in bloom.  “There you see” she told me with infinite sadness, “there are all the little babies”

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The very least Doreen's children could do for her.

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See ‘Pansies’  [for my mother]

More:  ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar? – A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations Of Defeated Mothers’

Bipolar Disorder: Broken Lives

Whatever Happened To Ishtar?           (Excerpt 8)

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Doreen Marie Frandi. (Painting by AFCoory)

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Several times I had offered my mother the airfare to come and visit for Christmas, or at some other time, but she always refused. She was always in my thoughts, as I knew she would be missing Kevin dreadfully; this son who’d been everything to her for most of her adult life.

I visited her  a couple of times, as I longed to talk to her and ask her about her life, but she barely spoke. By then, her bipolar disorder, the drugs and the electro-convulsive treatment (ECT), had taken their toll on her mental faculties. For, as any person with experience or knowledge of this disorder will tell you, the cure can be worse than the disease; vitality and creativity are sucked dry and emotions are flattened – their whole personality, the person they are, is suppressed.

Once when my daughter Gina and I visited my mother in her little council flat in Newtown, we just sat quietly with her. In an attempt to extract some response, I asked her mundane things like what she was eating, what pills she was taking, anything to make conversation with her, but it was very difficult. She did explain, however, that the pills she was taking ‘stop me feeling anxious all the time’. Her emotionless voice filled me with sadness; her response was to please me, a rehearsed phrase. My heart ached to just take her in my arms and cuddle her, but whenever I had tried to do so, it was like cuddling a piece of wood. Gina and I had planned to spend the day with her, but Gina left for about two hours to visit a friend nearby. My mother and I were left sitting in her pint-sized sitting/dining room, she chain-smoking all the while. I tried again.

‘Do you have any photographs we could look at?’

‘No’ was the soft reply, ‘I sent them all to my sister Betty in America’.

Whenever I think back to that day and her answer, I feel like weeping. She answered my question as though I was a stranger of whom she felt apprehensive. I always got the impression she was anxious I would suddenly confront her about her abandonment of me, so I tread very gently. As we sat on her couch, waiting for Gina’s return, she suddenly turned to me in a cloud of smoke and said in an unusually confident tone, ‘You have a lovely daughter, Anne’. That was it. She turned away again and reverted to her state of narcosis; her fallback position, puffing away while gazing fixedly at nothing in particular.

The years of ECT and powerful mood-control drugs had eliminated every shred of my mother’s vibrancy that I remembered as a child. That bright red hair, that dazzling smile that had once propelled me to obsessively search for her everywhere among the crowds was gone.

ECT was introduced into Porirua Psychiatric Hospital in 1944, where it was used without anaesthetic on patients suffering from acute depression or ‘over-excitability’. My mother was admitted there again and again from the late 1950s onwards, sometimes in the throes of psychotic delusions. Towards the end of her life she would admit herself, looking for comfort and safe haven from the relentless demons which never allowed her any solace in her life, not even at the end of it. When Gina returned from visiting her friend, my mother decided to make us a cup of tea, and as she pottered in her cupboard of a kitchen, Gina said to me gently, ‘Mum, she is never going to love you’. My heart broke again. I didn’t want to hear that, not even as a woman fast approaching middle age. But I knew in my heart that she was too terrified to love me, or anyone else for that matter, except Kevin. She knew the terrible cost and she’d lived her life with the overwhelming guilt of it all.

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I loved my mother dearly, and if not her physical being, which, sadly no photographs of her and her children together can bear witness, and without remembered mother and daughter cuddles, then certainly, through a deep primal memory of her, which is still with me today and often overwhelms me. I emotionally clutch my childhood memories, of fleeting visits with her in Dunedin that my father secretly instigated, and the ones when she would creep somewhere to snatch a moment with me, no matter how fleeting. What haunts me is that radiant smile that had a way of spreading over her face and crinkling up her eyes, all framed in wild red hair. I wonder, how did she manage that smile while living in her hell? Those must have been the only fleeting joyful moments in a lifetime for her.

From Canaan, Mesopotamia, Damascus to the Hills of Lebanon, Speaking Aramaic. Granddad, That’s Some Journey!

Whatever Happened To Ishtar? (Excerpt 7)

My extensive research into the murky past, which was partly buried in the Aramaic language and ancient names, reveals how much I didn’t know about my paternal grandfather, Jacob Habib El Khouri Eleishah Fahkrey. Nevertheless, my limited personal contact with Jacob left a significant impact. I deeply mourn that he died before I ever had the chance to talk with him about our extremely rich genetic and cultural heritage. If only I’d known as a child that he was such a valuable resource for our Lebanese family history. But then, what child can really comprehend such a thing? That, beyond their narrow sphere of existence, a family history has been woven as intricately as any tapestry, replete with human drama, personal tragedy and war, set in countries at opposite ends of the world. As a child my whole world stretched no further than a few urban blocks in Dunedin – The Catholic orphanage at one end and the Coory family home at the other.

Jacob and my grandmother, Eva, both spoke a Semitic language, an ancient form of Aramaic. Jacob’s forebears most likely descended from an ancient tribe of Israelites originating in the ancient Canaan, now known as Israel and Jordan. From there, some Canaanite clans including, I believe, those of Jacob’s distant ancestors, migrated to the rich and ancient area in the plains of Mesopotamia, close to the life-giving Euphrates River. There is linguistic evidence the Semitic tribes first arrived in Mesopotamia around 4000 BCE. The Aramaeans (speakers of Aramaic)  were a nomadic tribe when they first encountered Mesopotamia. Over the centuries they gradually moved in a westerly direction then south down the Euphrates River, eventually settling in to form kingdoms. The consolidation of the Aramaeans into settled kingdoms allowed the re-establishment of the trade routes through Palestine (Philistine) and Syria, and allowed the temporary Israelite expansion. Some of the Aramaean tribes continued to migrate west across Mesopotamia, their fortunes greatly improved due to the relative stability of the settlements in the area.

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Jacob & Eva Fahkrey (Coory) with some of their children. My father, Joseph, is seated on the right.

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The Bible mentions the Aramaeans and links the Israelite Patriarchs with them. The ancient Israelites had to profess their faith by pronouncing ‘my father was a wandering Aramaean’. It was probably during their settlement in Mesopotamia that the clans mixed with the seafaring Phoenicians, recorded there as early as 2300 BCE. The first key port of the Phoenicians was at Sidon in Lebanon. For the remainder of the pre-Christian period, around 300 BCE, Mesopotamia was safely in the hands of the Seleucids (Greeks) while the two-millennia-old Babylonian civilisation was dying. Since the turn of the millennium, both socially and linguistically, Aramaeans had been penetrating Babylonia; their tribal systems overtook the cities, and their language eventually superceded the ancient Akkadian.

Some of the native Syriac dialects, as well as ancient Hebrew, merged with Aramaic, one of the Semitic languages which has been known since almost the beginning of human history. The Semitic languages, which include Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian, Aramaic and Ethiope, were first glimpsed in ancient royal inscriptions around 900-700 BCE. The Aramaeans introduced their language to Syria when they settled there during the second millennia BCE. The Persians gave Aramaic official status, and throughout the Greek and Roman eras it remained the principal vernacular language. Babylonian and Persian Empires ruled from India to Ethiopia, and Assyrians employed Aramaic as their official language from 700-320 BCE, as did the Mesopotamians. The Aramaic script in turn derived from the Phoenicians, who most likely extracted it from the Canaanites. Writing derived from Phoenician, began to appear in Palestine around the tenth century BCE.

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Map of Ancient Middle East & Beyond (National Geographic Magazine)

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Click on map to enlarge

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There is general agreement among scholars that the linear alphabet had its beginnings somewhere in the Levant during the second millennium BCE. The Etruscans were the first among Italic Peoples to adopt the linear alphabet script and it spread rapidly throughout the Italian peninsula. The Phoenicians and the Etruscans had close trading and religious ritual links. These days, Aramaic is only spoken by small Christian communities in and around Lebanon, and in a small Christian village in Syria. The word Aramaic derives from the word Aram, fifth son of Shem, from which the word shemaya (semitic for ‘high up’ or ‘mountain’) is derived. Around 721-500 BCE, the ancient Hebrew language of the people of Palestine was overtaken by Aramaic, and much later the message of Christianity spread throughout Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia via this Semitic vernacular. Aramaic survived the fall of Babylon in 539 BCE and continued to be the predominant language. But Arabic spread and gradually took over as the lingua franca in the Middle East, around the thirteenth century CE. It seems reasonable to assume that, as speakers of this ancient language and in conjunction with their familial names, the Fahkrey forebears were originally members of a Judaic tribe, the Canaanites, who, over the centuries, mixed with other ethnic groups such as Hittites, Phoenicians, Akkadians, Greeks, and Macedonians to name a few. The word Fahkrey probably derives from the Aramaic word fagary, which means ‘the solid one’. There is plenty of evidence to support this, as Jacob and his descendents are of short, stocky build with strong and thick arms and legs.

Many Canaanite menhirs (religious rock emblems) have been found in Lebanon and Syria. It’s interesting to note that at Baalbek, in the mountains of Lebanon, there is evidence of sacred ritual prostitution (male and female); a long-established Phoenician institution, associated with the cult of Astarte, the Goddess, also called Ishtar (Esther). Within the Phoenician realm, the great mother goddess Ishtar/Astarte was venerated in caves and grottos. A number of these sacred caves later evolved into sanctuaries dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Adoration grew into a cult, elevating Mary to the status of ‘Protectress of Lebanon’. My paternal family’s stocky build, soft round features and fairer complexion add a little mystery to their ancestry in a region where many inhabitants have dark features.

We have very little archaeological or written evidence, and so much of this history is conjecture. What we do know is that the Greeks overran and were prominent in the Levant from at least 1200 BCE. The Romans invaded in the first century BCE and Roman rule strengthened after this time. Judea later became a Roman province. And there were other ethnic groups which invaded the area from time to time in between. Ancient Damascus played an important role in the destiny of the Fahkrey tribe. Around the ninth century BCE, Damascus’s political and economic strength enticed both Palestinian Kingdoms , Israel and subsequently Judea, to seek alliance with it. At the time there was a direct and vital communication route between Tyre in Lebanon and Damascus via the Beqa (Bekka) Valley.  In 64 BCE Damascus had become part of the Roman Empire and thrived as a city-state, converting to Christianity very early on in the Christian era. The leaders of the Roman Empire would later see the infrastructure of the Catholic Church as a beneficial conduit of power for their vast empire and name it as their official religion…

During the 630s CE, Jacob’s distant ancestors were on the move again towards Damascus, ahead of the Muslim armies rampaging across the Arabian peninsula. Muslim armies attacked and eventually occupied Damascus in 635 CE, then converted Syria to Islam. Those tribes living in and around Damascus would have been familiar with the safe haven of Bcharre in the hills of Lebanon. Damascus is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world and was once a central sphere on influence and prosperity. Around the fourteenth century our Fahkrey ancestors moved on from Damascus and up into Lebanon’s protective mountains….

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More…..Walking Around Lebanon With 2Famous

My Lebanese Heritage: Cultural Gold

Excerpt 6  from      Whatever Happened To Ishtar? 

[My paternal grandfather] Jacob Habib Eleishah El Khouri Fahkrey tells us in his diary that he was unhappy about going to live in his grandfather’s house when he was seven years old. His grandfather, Eleishah,  had great expectations of him for the future. Eleishah was a very holy and hard-working man who was attached to the [Roman Catholic] Saint Simon Monastery. Even within the peasant classes, selected men could become priests and marry as well. Eleishah’s status afforded Jacob the heredity right to anglicise Fahkrey to Coory (guttural Khouri meaning ‘priest’)

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My grandparents, Jacob & Eva Fahkrey (Coory)

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Eleishah’s education of Jacob included teaching him to read and write in four languages and he planned to later school him in the art of translating Assyrian into Arabic. In his first years, Jacob bent to his grandfather’s wishes, working hard at his studies and fully expected to become a priest. The languages he studied were French (his second language) Latin and Greek, and under his grandfather’s dedicated tutelage, Jacob wrote and spoke fluently and eloquently in the ancient Syriac language, Aramaic, Bcharre’s native tongue. This language was, at that time, spoken mostly by Syrian peasants. The religious ideas of the Syrian and Italian peasantry were similar, confirmation of the integration of ideas and beliefs along the charted trade routes between Italy and the Fertile Crescent. Later, once Jacob had emigrated, he made the effort to learn English. The Arab world was a multicultural mix of language and peoples; Jacob’s heritage and talents reflected this. In retrospect, it’s sad to think that Jacob could have achieved so much more for his family and descendents if he had moved out of his cultural and priestly comfort zone.

In any event, Jacob changed his mind about following in The Family tradition of priestly services, but, cautiously at first, made the announcement that he would like to marry. It was not until his marriage to Eva (Khowha) Arida that he told his grandfather he did not wish to follow him into the priesthood, which made his grandfather very angry. Eleishah did not speak to him for sometime afterwards. Jacob’s rebellious change of heart may have had something to do with his frequent sojourns into Beirut with friends, in which he experienced the forbidden fruit of city life away from his grandfather’s strict philosophical and priestly instruction.

Other events transpired to influence Jacob’s fateful decision. When Jacob was twelve years old, his father, Habib, and uncle Tunnous El Khouri, visited Australia and New Zealand. His uncle eventually returned to New Zealand and bought a vineyard there. The family talked often about the exploits of this adventurous uncle and the young fertile country he had travelled to.

…The Fahkrey family in Bcharre must have been heartened then, following their earlier disappointment, by Jacob’s acceptance of their choice of a bride and the wedding was arranged to take place on a Sunday. Within a few months of their betrothal, the young couple had secretly planned to set sail for New Zealand after their wedding. This plan was obviously instigated by Jacob. I don’t believe that Eva fully understood what she was getting herself into, because her early life had been very different to Jacob’s. Eva had spent her early life cooking, cleaning, and praying, and was only 15 years old on her wedding day.

Jacob and Eva’s wedding ceremony was performed by Eleishah Fahkrey, who was still unaware of his grandson’s intentions to abandon his religious training and emigrate. Eleishah spoke after the ceremony, saying how proud he was that he would soon have a priestly grandson. The wedding ceremony lasted fifteen days, truly reminiscent of the pagan love feasts which so scandalised the early Christian Church. There was much celebrating and drinking, and many guests spent the nights sleeping under trees. Soon after the wedding celebrations had ended, Jacob and Eva continued with their plans to migrate to New Zealand to make their fortune, hoping to then return to Lebanon.

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More….Walking Around Lebanon With 2famous

 

My Father, Joseph Jacob Habib Eleishah Coory

Whatever Happened To Ishtar?  (Excerpt 5)

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Wherefore hidest thou thy face?…Wilt thou harass a driven leaf?    Job xiii: 24-25

….But you should also be proud that your mothers and fathers came from a land upon which God laid his gracious hand and raised his messengers.  – Kahlil Gibran, I believe in you (1926)

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When I was a child, my father’s was the face I searched for whenever I heard heavy, non-nun-like footsteps echoing on the highly polished floors of the orphanage. I was always and forever tuned into the sound of footsteps. A nun’s footsteps sounded lighter, stress-free, and somehow patient, like they themselves were.  It was as if they had all the time in the world to get where they were going, praying as they went.

Once I was alerted that a nun was on her way, I would strain my ears for the accompanying rhythm, in tune with a particular nun’s footsteps, of the rosary beads clinking with the heavy crucifix hanging from a belt around her waist. I would know who she was before I saw her face. A visitor’s footsteps, on the other hand, were usually more purposeful, more intent on their course. Perhaps it was someone wishing to get the visit over with, to leave as quickly as possible. The fact that there were many children living there didn’t make the place any less sombre. Colours were an unnecessary luxury. ‘Interior décor’ was a phrase out of place and out of mind in that institution. My father, Joseph Jacob Habib Eleishah Coory, rarely visited me and I learned very early on not to expect to see anyone other than the Sisters of Mercy, day in and day out. Occasionally, a priest would visit the orphanage but I rarely had any significant contact with them. They were, as far as my child’s mind could fathom, so close to God and so holy that they would not want to bother with me. The nuns reinforced this perception by their subservient attitude whenever a priest or bishop made an entrance. But when my father came to visit me, I would feel a strange kind of comfort, almost a feeling of surprise, at the sight of him.

All through my childhood, I would reach out for his emotional support. and in his emotional immaturity, he would reach out for mine. As young as I was, I always sensed that he needed me as much as I needed him. In this way, we both survived my childhood. Perhaps it was my concern for him and his whereabouts when he left me that caused me so much anxiety. He could never stay for long and his leaving always caused my insides to churn, which I never really learned to deal with. A Catholic orphanage  was not the sort of place where your emotional needs were attended to. The most important thing here was the health of your soul. My father always seemed harassed and a bit lost, so eventually I avoided scenes of tears because it would only upset him. I had no idea what was happening to my father on the outside of the orphanage but it didn’t stop me from picking up on his moods and demeanour. Children like me become very adept at internalising emotions and hurts. But there were times when the dam burst, causing me to scream and yell so much that the nuns would lose their patience and lock me in a cupboard or a small room. There was always that air of emotional fragility about Joseph, my very being attuned and attentive to his every nuance. Too soon I would become the adult and he the child. Perhaps this was why I took so long to deal with my own emotional needs.

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Joseph with his oldest & youngest sisters, Elizabeth & Pearl

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Jacob and Eva Coory’s firstborn son, Joseph, followed two daughters, Elizabeth and Amelia. But sadly Joseph was not the healthy son his parents longed for. His sickly entry into the world was one of the reasons he suffered ill-health all of his life. According to his father’s diary, written in his native Aramaic, Joseph almost died when he was a newborn. He was so ill during his first two years that his mother wrapped him warmly and tightly and waited for him to die. Joseph suffered ill thrift all through his baby and toddler years because he could only suck small amounts of milk, sometimes bread soaked in milk. I was later to discover that Joseph’s birth had never been registered so there is no doubt that his parents expected that he would die. From his childhood to his death, he never ate a balanced diet, ever. He existed instead on bread and cheese, some fruit, and endless cups of sweet milky tea.  He was a simple man who attained the literacy levels only of a twelve-year-old. But he could speak English and Aramaic fluently. He left school at the age of nine and refused to return because of the beatings he says were meted out to him by the Christian Brothers. As a young boy he only spoke comfortably in Aramaic, so language was definitely a barrier to his learning. It has been confirmed by his cousins that his parents refrained from disciplining him because of his fragile health and that he, quite literally, got away with doing almost whatever he wanted to do at home. He in turn clung to them for the rest of their lives and he never left The Family home at 67 Carroll Street in Dunedin, where he was born.

No Place to Fit, No Place To Belong

Whatever Happened To Ishtar? (Excerpt 4)

My father never forgave me for abandoning him for another man, and turned his affections to his dog, Tim. As he often told me, dogs never let you down. He also told me more times than I care to remember that Kevin never let him down either. But the crushing blow came when it filtered down through the Coory grapevine that ‘Joe is more concerned about his dog than his own daughter!’ This was particularly evident after my car crashed into the swollen Waitaki River. I was hospitalised and the dog went missing for two weeks or so. Being the brunt of The Family’s cruel derision was nothing new and this titillating piece of information spread quickly through The Family ranks in Dunedin and Wellington. I’m sure it was dined on for many years. But I dealt with it the way I usually did – I buried it in order not to have to face the awful humiliating truth. I didn’t realise at the time that my father, at sixty-four years of age, was showing the early signs of the dementia which would eventually drag him into a kind of spiritual terror. Only with the benefit of hindsight do I now see that my father always behaved oddly and was immature, but I didn’t have a good yardstick with which to measure his behaviour against other fathers. I saw the terror in his eyes near the end but of what I didn’t really know.

I know that my father never wanted me to grow up and become a woman. Look what happened with my mother – she broke his heart. The night I asked my father not to come into my room any more after I had got into bed, was a milestone for both of us. When we were living together, he would come in to take the clips out of my long hair and dolls out of my bed. He used to worry that the clips would dig into my scalp and that the dolls didn’t give me enough room to sleep properly. I could sense his hurt on that last night, although he didn’t utter a word. His movements slowed right down. My momentous leap into this forerunner of maturity took several nights of thought about the kindest way to let my father down. I was fourteen years old. It was as though a line had been drawn in the sand. I would continue to grow and mature while my father would remain childlike, stuck within the confines of his extremely narrow and dogmatic thought processes.

There would never be a place or a family for me to fit into but eventually I learned to live with that, at least until I had my own children. After that I felt as though I belonged somewhere. I never really felt at home in any particular country or city – I still don’t. As a child and young adult, I couldn’t vocalise my feeling of displacement or disconnectedness. I knew I was different, but as hard as I tried to educate myself and learn the social mores of those around me, I never seemed to catch up or find my own niche. I was in my forties when I realised that it wasn’t my imagination playing tricks on me and that I wasn’t going ‘mad’ like my mother. I even asked a psychologist if I would one day go mad or have a nervous breakdown.  He replied, “If you were going to go mad, you would have by now.’

I understand now that The Family treated me as an imbecile because they truly believed me to be of subnormal intelligence, and, because of my odd behaviours, I was a difficult child to love.

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Joseph Coory (He was 46 when I was born)

Institutionalised

Whatever Happened To Ishtar? (Excerpt 3)

I looked into the bassinet to see this tiny little baby’s head, a sleeping boy who was somehow connected to me. I loved babies, and, although I had barely passed babyhood myself, I often helped the Sisters to care for the new babies. This duty, combined with my introduction to Anthony, had a profound effect upon me, so much so that I transferred the role into caring for my dolls until I was fourteen years old. I always felt them to be real and if I was parted from them I worried and fretted. Looking back, I wasn’t aware of any emotion connected to my introduction to Anthony. I guess I wasn’t consciously involved in my mother’s pregnancy and so had no understanding of this connection to her. There was no explanation or reference to my mother. I can’t  imagine now what her life would have been like, having to give up her newborn baby and little daughter. Compassion for the human condition was woefully lacking in this institution of ‘Mercy’, such an ironic name. But it wasn’t exactly in abundance among the Coory family either, so perhaps we were no worse off.

Anthony and I were always together in the first five years, becoming emotionally attached to each other. The emotional intensity of our lives was heightened when our parents called in one day to take us on an outing. It was an extremely rare event and I am sure that The Family was unaware of it because they forbade Joseph any contact with my mother (partly in case she got pregnant again). I know this because she herself told Kevin. I believe this was the only time Doreen and Joseph were ever with us three children together on an outing. While I don’t remember seeing my mother that day, I do recall Kevin, Anthony and my father at a St Kilda playground. It was situated close to the orphanage and was adjacent to the beach, making it a popular family spot.

I remember distinctly the large metal horse we rode on and the long wooden swing that several children could ride at once. I never knew if that day was real or not – until many years later when my father gave me a photograph from that day. Oh how I treasure that rare photo! I assume my mother took it as, tragically, she is not in it. It reminds me of the cliché, ‘art reflecting life’. Kevin remembers that we took a taxi out to the beach. It must have cost our parents a fortune in relation to the meagre amounts they earned. Kevin was then living at the boys’ home at Waverley and they would have had to pick him up and then drive over to collect Anthony and me from South Dunedin. Kevin told me that he was so happy that day because we were all together.

But it was short-lived. As we neared the orphanage on the return trip, I got upset that my father was going to leave me once again (I have no recollection of being upset about my mother). But what is most vivid in my mind is three-year-old Anthony’s utter distress. Kevin was dropped off at Waverley first and spared the heartbreaking scene, although he was sad the day was ending. He also hated the repeated abandonment by our mother. How my heart aches for that lonely little boy, being constantly left behind and on his own in a loveless home for boys. He could have been living comfortably with his father and extended family but for his ill-fated choice.

At the orphanage I was instructed by a nun to take little Anthony to the toilet but he didn’t want to leave our mother. My emotional antenna was bristling. I knew something was amiss, that they wanted us out of the way. Anthony was becoming distraught, clinging to his mother so she couldn’t disappear again. There was a row of children’s toilets at the orphanage which I proceeded to drag him to. Once again I had been asked to perform an adult task. Anthony and I came out of the toilet and saw Joseph and Doreen, our parents, had gone. Anthony began to scream and wail, tears streaming down his small, pale face. I had never seen such heartbreak and distress in a child (and wouldn’t again). I became alarmed at Anthony’s distress. I felt anxious and guilty, unsure of how to comfort him.  I remember being surprised at how loud he screamed. His distress was such that no-one could console him. As I searched the faces around me, I got the impression  that on-one was upset by my brother’s distress. The nuns just carried on with their usual business, bustling us along in a no-nonsense way. No-one thought to comfort this tragic little boy.

When boys at the orphanage in South Dunedin reached five years of age, they were sent to the St Joseph’s Boys’ Home at Waverley, on the Otago Peninsula. The red brick rectangular building looked more like a prison, with its concrete yard and metal fences. The home was in the middle of a large farm, which supplied meat and vegetables to the local Catholic presbyteries, convents and orphanages. The separation was quite traumatic for me and Anthony, although we never did discuss these events as adults. I was very anxious when I was taken to see Anthony after he had been moved out to the boys’ home from the orphanage at South Dunedin. Why did no-one see the trauma these little five-year-old motherless boys experienced? It can only have felt like a punishment being wrenched from their homes and siblings.

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Anthony & Anne

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Significant Others

Whatever Happened To Ishtar?  (Excerpt 2)

Two Aunts demonstrated on numerous occasions how much they hated my mother. It was transferred to me so that every time they saw me, it seemed to remind them of where I came from. Once, when I was seventeen , Aunt Maria and Aunt Neghia  physically attacked me in the street, pulling at my dress and shouting, ‘you are getting more like your mother every day wearing those clothes’. I was totally humiliated. I had been wearing a bright pink dress positively unrevealing with a hemline that fell well below my knees. But the dress did have see-through sleeves so perhaps that is what set them off. The irony of the whole affair was that I was unaware of my sexuality and simply picked clothes for their colour. Living in a convent doesn’t give a young girl a sense of chic. One only has to look at photographs of me to know this is true. I was one of the few girls in my teenage peer group who was still a virgin, and at the time was actually afraid of aggressive, sexually active males.

I was finally dispatched on the road to hell by The Family when I had my thick dark hair cut, then bleached and dyed red. It was for a hairdressing competition, but obviously The Family was under the impression I had my hair dyed to match my mother’s natural colour. Perhaps, subconsciously, it was true. It offended their sensibilities so much that, on more than one occasion, family members crossed to the other side of the street and glared in my direction as they passed. They seemed to enjoy reading the humiliation on my face, as I blushed and kept to my path.

As a child I could never understand The Family’s (especially Aunt Maria’s) reaction to red hair. Aunt Maria even disparaged a rather chubby school acquaintance of mine who had red hair. It was as though nothing else about her warranted a mention, apart from the colour of her hair, which apparently relegated her to derision. Years later I read that, in Middle Eastern culture, red-haired women were considered evil temptresses who lured men into sin. In the Old Testament, Delilah reputedly had red hair and wasn’t a good role model. Historically, Middle Eastern women were confined to special red tents or huts during menstruation because the patriarchal society viewed it as ‘unclean’. Red hair was somehow linked to blood and it was viewed as a sign the girl child was conceived in unclean circumstances. I know that my grandfather belonged to an ancient priestly sect which had definite beliefs on these issues. So even if my mother had been perfect in every other way, they would never have forgiven her for having red hair. Nor would they forgive Joseph for marrying her in the first place. The ramifications from when The Family learned of their registry office marriage were far-reaching and led to years of heartache, deceit and abuse, the effects of which are still being felt three generations on.

The Family was right in one respect; my father never should have married Doreen, or anyone else. And he shouldn’t have fathered children. He just didn’t have the emotional maturity. I have always been in two minds as to whether or not I am glad he did father a child. Doreen may have had the makings of a good mother – her heart was in the right place – but she would have needed a strong husband and father for her children. Given her upbringing and mental illness, it seems highly unlikely that that was ever possible. No-one understood her bipolar disorder, which was proclaimed by The Family as simply indicating she was a ‘prostitute’.

‘It’s in the breed’, Aunt Maria often lamented about Italians in general. She made sure I knew all the ‘facts’ about my mother whenever I visited Carroll Street. The Family couldn’t take all the responsibility for us children and our emotional and physical suffering. I know this. But they could have made our childhoods so much easier. We could have achieved so much in our lives in spite of it. But it seems nobody that came into contact with us bothered to find out what lay beneath our damaged personas.

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No pretty, colourful clothes for me; heavy black convent attire marked me as a 'good Catholic, convent girl'

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From The Arab Mind,  Albert H. Hourani:

To be a Levantine is to live in two worlds or more at once, without belonging to either; to be able to go through the external forms which indicate the possession of a certain nationality, religion or culture, without actually possessing it. It is no longer to have a standard of values of one’s own, not to be able to create but only able to imitate; and not even to imitate correctly, since that also needs a certain originality. It is to belong to no community and to possess nothing of one’s own. It reveals itself in lostness, pretentiousness, cynicism and despair.

See more about  ‘The Arab Mind’

Homeless

Whatever Happened To Ishtar? (Excerpt 1)

As I summoned up the courage to do what I knew I had to, my eyes turned again to look at the disused building’s small windows, which were boarded up with yellowing ply,adding intensity to their derelict state. It was like looking at a familiar face, but with its eyes poked out. I took in my surrounds: rusty corrugated iron, stained concrete, wire netting and high walls. It was like a deserted prison camp. I wondered how a once noisy and busy place could now be so devoid of life. In some ways I felt a little sad because it was a childhood home of sorts. My eyes scanned the yard for the moving nun, the environment heightening my profound feeling of lonely disquiet, like I had suddenly arrived at the end of the world, with only this nun and myself in existence.

As the nun gradually moved closer, I approached her and asked quietly if I could see inside St Philomena’s. ‘I used to live there when I was a child’, I said. I waited for the rebuke, but she just motioned for me to walk with her as she continued her conversation with her God. Is she annoyed with my interruption? I wondered, child-like. After a few minutes she looked up at me with a patient look in her eyes.

‘Tell me your name’, she instructed softly. She bowed her head again, this time slightly over to the side I was walking on, a gesture that implied she was ready to listen. ‘Anne Coory’, I replied with inculcated reverence, scared stiff she may hate the name as much as I did.

Expecting her to ask for more information, I quickly went over the prepared details in my mind, nearly missing her almost whispered offering that her name was Sister Joanna and that she knew of my brothers and I. With all the children who passed through this place, what was it about the Coory children’s time there that a young nun, over forty years later, would know of them at the mere mention of the name?

After a few moments silence Sister Joanna, in a brighter voice, offered to show me around the other buildings, explaining that we couldn’t enter the dormitory itself as it was structurally unsafe. I began to feel more relaxed and comforted by Sister Joanna’s warming demeanour. This was the first time I had ever been able to have a conversation with a nun as an equal, woman-to-woman, and somehow this empowered me. The childish awe and reverence had been replaced with calm. I felt the unspoken acknowledgment of my troubled spirit quell my anxiety. Even childhood anxieties about the orphanage and nuns in general melted away as I walked and talked with Sister Joanna. As we rounded the corner of a red brick and wooden building, my subdued heart leapt into a frenzy again. I stopped in my tracks. I could feel the conflicts of my childhood flooding back, each memory pushing to surface ahead of the others. My eyes became misty and it seemed a major traffic jam was going on in my head in this moment of recognition and confusion.

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St Agnes' Nursery (Photo: afcoory)

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I had instantly recognised St Agnes’ Nursery, with its familiar row of wooden windows, three panels in each. I saw myself standing in my cot watching my father disappearing into the dark. It was almost mystical, as though I was on the outside looking in while seeing through that toddler’s eyes at the same time. I was transported in time and space and there I stood in my cot, watching through the windows until the darkness of the night enveloped my father and his wide-brimmed hat. There were many cots crowded around mine in the nursery, not in rows, but haphazardly. I remember having the distinct feeling of being alone, perhaps because I was the only baby awake. I remember why I felt anxious, ‘what is the misty dark that’s taken my father?’  Familiar knots wrench my stomach and I feel my aloneness as a physical ache. The dark is forever terrifying. Back then, I had no way of understanding those emotions, but now, tempered with maturity and understanding, I could give voice to them. It was uncanny that, with this long recurring dream actually materialising before my eyes in the here and now, I could feel a conscious, psychological healing taking place.//

More information about  ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?;A passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations of Defeated Mothers’