Catnap time

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Standing in the centre of the Wellington railway station foyer she stood searching the faces of people rushing by. Like a solitary rock in a fast flowing river, unnoticed by the torrent of human turmoil that buffeted around her. The boy sitting on a bench to the side of the foyer watched forlornly as his mother screened each face that passed by, hoping to glimpse someone she knew.

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First Holy Communion

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After an hour or so she gave up and made her way to the train platform. The boy followed a few paces behind. Boarding the carriage she crumpled into a seat and rested her head against the window. The boy did the same in a seat across the aisle two seats behind her. The train filled with passengers and began its journey. The boy watched as the guard shuffled from seat to seat clicking tickets in the swaying carriage edging ever closer to the listless woman. The guard reached out expecting to be handed a ticket, clippers at the ready.

‘Tickets please. Tickets please,’ he repeated, annoyed.

The woman lifted her head and stared at the guard for what seemed like an endless time.

‘I don’t have a ticket, or the money to pay for one,’ she said, glaring at the guard, arms folded in defiance. ‘Nor does my son,’ she said, pointing behind her to the boy.

The boy closed his eyes blocking out the silent travellers craning to hear but pretending to show no interest. The clack­ing of the train wheels became deafening in the silence.

‘Well you’d better give me your name and address,’ he said, policeman-like, pulling a pencil and pad from his pocket.

At Petone mother and son alighted from the train, the boy acutely aware of the incredulous stares that followed their departure as they slowly made their way along the platform to the street. A cold blustery wind blew in from the harbour as the pair, the boy a few paces behind, wearily began the long walk to Days Bay in the falling dusk.

She stood for a long moment outside the church in Jackson Street, her shoulders bent under the weight of the long and exhausting day. Her auburn hair shone brightly between the beret pulled down over her head and the wide collar of her coat in stark contrast to the haggard face and pasty complexion. She moved with a shrug to continue the journey then glanced over her shoulder to the boy. He was staring at the ground, unmoving, oblivious to her concern. His coat, much too large for him, hung in folds belted around the waist, one sock up, one down, cap askew atop the mop of untidy hair. He hadn’t spoken since meeting her after school at the station. He had just followed her without complaint or question, isolated in a cocoon of silence.

Pushing the loose fringe under her beret, she straightened her shoulders as much as the aching would allow and strode towards the building beside the church. The housekeeper finally opened the door after repeated knocking by the woman.

‘Can I help?’

‘I want to see the priest please.’

‘He’s just going to have dinner, is it urgent, could you not come back tomorrow when it’s a little more convenient?’

‘Not really, I have to see him now. Please ask him to see me. Please.’

‘Well alright, come and wait in here,’ she said, pointing towards a small room off the passage. ‘Whom shall I say is calling?’

The waiting room of the Presbytery was sparse and devoid of smells, except for the faint odour of incense. A picture of the ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ hung on the wall; a candle glowed softly on a small altar beneath the frame. The boy dragging his school bag shuffled to the wooden pew beside the altar and slumped onto the seat. Closing his eyes, his chin fell to his chest. Fatigue engulfed his body in a blanket of exhausted sleep. Through a numb haze he began to comprehend murmurings in the room.

‘You’ll have to go to your own Parish and ask for help, I can’t give you money,’ said a gravelly embarrassed voice.

‘But it is too far away and I have no way of getting there, I only need 10 shillings till I get paid tomorrow so I can feed the boy, he hasn’t eaten today. I don’t have food in the house and we still have to get home,’ pleaded the woman.

The boy struggled to open his eyes, the lids were stuck closed. The light burned into his pupils as the lids slowly prised themselves apart watering the vision of the two figures standing in the centre of the room. The priest dressed in a black suit had his hands thrust deep inside the jacket pockets, the buttons tearing at the fabric that stretched around the girth of his fat belly. The boy noticed his shiny bald head and thick rimless glasses that pressed into a puffy red nose. His pudgy face glowed crimson at the audacity of the unkempt woman.

‘But I don’t know you, are you a Catholic?’

His mother renewed her request, without emotion it seemed, her voice a monotone, not a plea, just a statement of fact.

‘I was a novitiate at the Home of Compassion before I had a breakdown and was forced to leave, I’ve never asked for money before, but surely in the name of Jesus you can—’

‘No!’ He interrupted, agitated, his face glowing. ‘I don’t know you; the church just can’t give out money to anyone who comes to the door. You should go to your family for help!’

The housekeeper in an apron wiping her hands on a tea towel strode into the room and in an impatient tone, said, ‘Father, your dinner is getting cold.’

She glanced momentarily towards the woman, then to the priest and then finally to the boy. Within that imperceptible time her demeanour had changed from anger at this bedraggled woman, to confusion at the flustered priest, to sympathy at the obvious distress of the child. Her tone changed.

‘I am sorry Father,’ she said, ‘when you’re ready, I’ll … whatever.’ She left.

A silent whimper only noticed by the boy escaped the resolve of the woman as she stared at the floor. Her shoulders slumped slightly as she turned towards the door. The look of despair in his mother’s eyes embedded itself into his memory. It was the look of dispassionate despair when the emotions have exhausted the gauntlet of feelings and the ability of the senses to register pain. All that is left is robotic numbness.

In the late hours of the night they reached the old house embedded into the side of a hill overlooking Days Bay. It was overhung with trees which blocked out the sunlight. The ground surrounding the house was continually wet and muddy from the water that leached from the clay bank. There was no electricity in the house except for one naked light in the sitting room. In one corner a sewing machine sat on a table cluttered with dirty dishes, unfinished dressmaking and newspapers. The wooden floor was an untidy mess of unpacked boxes, unwashed clothes and bits of furniture. In the centre of the room a tattered armchair sat close to an old kerosene heater that doubled as a stove to cook on. An ash­tray overflowing with ash and cigarette butts perched on one side of the chair, on the other, bits of notepaper and letters.

The woman slumped into the chair and pulled her coat around her shoulders. The boy sat shivering on the floor hugging his knees to his chest to keep warm. She picked up a box of matches from the floor and leaning forward tried to light the heater. Again and again she struck a match putting the flame to the dry wick till she had used all the matches. He knew there was no kerosene in the heater. The useless attempt to create warmth just seemed to epitomise her hopeless­ness. She folded her arms and rested her elbows on her knees and rocked slowly back and forth staring blankly at the cold lifeless heater. The boy watched his mother sink into depression, the silence the only dialogue between them. After a while he rose quietly and felt his way along the dark passage to his bedroom. The room had a dank odour from the moss growing on the walls. He crawled under the damp blankets without taking off his clothes, and curling up into the foetal position pulled the covers over his head to block out the smell of rotting wallpaper. When he woke in the morning his mother had gone. He wasn’t worried; he knew she was walking to work in Wellington.

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Excerpt from  ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?‘

He inquired, “Where have you been?”

God smiled deeply and proudly pointed downwards through the clouds
“Look, Michael. Look what I’ve made.”

Archangel Michael looked puzzled, and said, “What is it?”

“It’s a planet,” replied God and I’ve put life on it, I’m
going to call it Earth and it’s going to be a place to test Balance.”

“Balance?” inquired Michael, “I’m still confused.”

God explained, pointing to different parts of Earth. “For example,
northern Europe will be a place of great opportunity and wealth,
while southern Europe is going to be poor. Over here I’ve placed
a continent of white people, and over there is a continent of black
people.. Balance in all things.

God continued pointing to different countries. “This one will be
extremely hot, while this one will be very cold and covered in ice.”

The Archangel , impressed by God’s work, then pointed to an island and
said, “What’s that one?”

“That’s New Zealand , the most glorious place on earth. There are
beautiful mountains, rivers and streams, lakes, forests, hills, and
plains. The people from New Zealand are going to be handsome, modest,
intelligent, and humorous, and they are going to travel the world. They
will be extremely sociable, hardworking, high achieving, carriers of
peace, and producers of good things”

Michael gasped in wonder and admiration, but then asked, “But what
about balance, God? You said there would be balance…”

God smiled, “Close to New Zealand is Australia. Wait till you
see the idiots I put there…”

When the volunteer fire fighters appeared on the scene, the chemical company president rushed to the fireman in charge and said, “All our secret formulas are in the vault in the center of the plant. They must be saved. I will give $50,000 to the fire department that brings them out intact.”

But the roaring flames held the fire-fighters off. Soon more fire departments had to be called in as the situation became desperate. As the
firemen arrived, the president shouted out that the offer was now $100,000 to the fire station who could bring out the company’s secret files.
But still the fire companies could not get through

From the distance, a lone siren was heard as another fire truck came into sight. It was the nearby Taneatua Maori rural township volunteer fire company, composed mainly of Maoris over the age of 65.

To everyone’s amazement, that little run-down fire engine roared right past all the newer sleek engines that were parked outside the plant. Without
even slowing down it drove straight into the middle of the inferno.
Outside, the other firemen watched as the Maori old timers jumped off right in the middle of the fire and fought it back on all sides. It was a performance and effort never seen before. Within a short time, the old timers had extinguished the fire and had saved the secret formulas.

The grateful chemical company president announced that for such a superhuman feat he was upping the reward to $200,000, and walked over to personally thank each of the brave fire fighters.

The local TV station caught the thank you on film and asked their chief, “What are you going to do with all that money?”

“Well,” said Hohepa, the 70-year-old fire chief, “The first thing we gonna do is fix the brakes on that f@cking fire truck

Who journeyed so far.

I heard the dream,

All was well.

Not so, today.

Gone. For so long.

Some flames refuse to flicker;

Love burns the soul.

Still, time turns,

Shifting horizons, shifting dreams.

In the end,

Fate will win.

Always.

-Anne Frandi-Coory

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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Doreen Marie Frandi

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.

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Just getting in to the Elvis groove here

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Now, gyrating pelvis - how does that go again..............

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Kitten in a basket, anyone?

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Zak & Gabe

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

Zak thinks he’s so clever climbing up there. Just as well he only goes out in the garden with us, because he is a house cat. 

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The bird life is safe. We think.

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Uh oh! Sizing up the leap!

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Bugger! The birds are up there now!