Tag Archives: Anne Frandi-Coory

THAT DAY

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Poem That Day and Image © Copyright To Anne Frandi-Coory

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Was it those intense blue eyes

with the power to hypnotise?

Perhaps it was the gentleness

of your manner, the fineness of your hands?

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The caresses that soothed

the spirit we created

around us for all to see

the moment our eyes first met

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I think we both knew that day

the future was ours to take

If we but had the courage

to embark on a perilous journey

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The passion consumed us

and we were willing to succumb

who knew how it would end

up where we belonged

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Many obstacles were thrown our way

our love withstood them all

just to be together, was all we asked

no need for others’ company

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I had wings to fly with your love

the wind beneath

you willingly supplied

I could soar with you by my side

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Letters To Anne Frandi-Coory

April 1, 2012

Letters and Cards To Anne Frandi-Coory, OUR ITALIAN ANCESTRAL Short Stories

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Excerpt from ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?; A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations Of Defeated Mothers’

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The following letters were written by Anne Frandi Albert to her niece, Anne Frandi-Coory, following the death of her mother, Doreen Marie Frandi. Anne Albert died in 2001 shortly after writing the last of several 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.

***This page is ©copyright to author Anne Frandi-Coory. All Rights reserved 1st April 2012. No text or photograph can be copied or downloaded from this page without the written permission of Anne Frandi-Coory.***

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Doreen Frandi, Maria Frandi (mother of the other 3 women) Betty Gentz, Anne Albert

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Letter from Anne Albert 2

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.

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Doreen’s Debut in the dress she made herself

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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” – Anne Albert.

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Letter from Anne Albert 3

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Whenua Tapu cemetery, Wellington, New Zealand

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Right To Write: Abuse Of Women & Children In My Family History

March 8, 2012

ITALIAN CONNECTIONS, LEBANESE CONNECTIONS, OUR ITALIAN ANCESTRAL Short Stories

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***This page is ©copyright to author Anne Frandi-Coory. All Rights Reserved 8th March 2012. No text or photograph can be copied or downloaded from this page without the written permission of Anne Frandi-Coory.***

Anne Frandi-Coory 2010

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Since I wrote ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?’ in 2010, a tell-all book about life within immigrant Lebanese and Italian families, I have received thousands of hits on my blog. Some relatives’ views are critical of my baring family ‘secrets’ for all to read. Some refuse to read the book. Most descendants of the people, places, I write about, along with the photos that have come to light, are appreciative. The majority of readers say they empathise with what I have to say in the book; that it has influenced them to be more tolerant of mental illness, and to understand more deeply, the emotional harm that can be caused to children, when they and their mothers are constantly abused, vilified and demonised.

The very personal memoirs I write about, including my own, are told with heartbreaking honesty because sometimes you have to shock readers into the realities of life for those women and children who are abused, neglected, and who have no safe haven.

There are times in life, in every culture, when marriages fail, parents die or become ill, families fall on difficult times. Everyone understands this, and we have to make the best of it. However, when physical and emotional abuse is meted out to innocent children by their own family, then that is entirely another matter. The same is true when children witness that same level of abuse toward their mothers. The post traumatic stress that grips these vulnerable children, can be every bit as devastating as that suffered by children who have lived in the midst of a violent war.

Anne Frandi-Coory at Catholic Mercy Orphanage for the Poor in Dunedin, New Zealand

This is the premise of my book. Motherhood and childhood can be difficult enough, but when you are alone, with no family support, life is precarious. I researched my paternal Lebanese and maternal Italian family histories extensively for the book, but nothing could have prepared me for the soul destroying stories I uncovered; the brutality of husbands and fathers, the sexual abuse, the hypocrisy and heartlessness of the Catholic Church. Not to mention the fateful abandonment of children by their mothers. But the most fundamental insight I gained from all the research, is that, like ripples in a pond, the ongoing psychological effects are transmitted down through succeeding generations. As one of the reviewers of my book wrote:

“What is ironic is that she [Anne] uncovers the rich cultural history of these families and the fact that such wonderful traits and traditions were all but lost to modern generations as her family tree fractures again and again.”

Someone has to be brave enough to tell the truth. Powerful families can leave children they do not favour, on the scrapheap of life, with no prospect of being accepted into other good families within their community, either through marriage or friendships. They are ‘tainted’ goods, and have to break all family ties just to survive. Few people who have not experienced this life event can comprehend the courage it takes to wipe all your extended family from your life, even an abusive family. It can take years for the emotional scars inflicted on such children, to heal. An adult deprived of a loving childhood has to learn how to play, to make lasting friendships, in effect, to be ‘socialised’ at the same time as healing is taking place. It takes enormous amounts of energy and soul searching. This is vital if they are to become a contributing member of the community they eventually choose to live in. Some of us make it, many of us don’t.

The answer isn’t just in education, although of course this is important. The answer lies in the memoirs left behind, the minutiae of everyday lives within abusive families, because if we don’t read our negative history, whether it’s family, country, or world history, how are we going to know what changes to make so that what happened in the past, isn’t perpetuated into the future. Very often, personal stories can be the motivation to change behaviours and even laws. Because when we read these survivors’ biographies, we are in a way, walking in their shoes, reliving with them all the abuse and trauma. I know that it can take decades to change entrenched cultures. But even one person can make a difference, in one lifetime.

Published in The Australian Writer issue #377 December 2012

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‘Switched At Birth’ by Frederick J. George -A Book Review

February 24, 2012

ADOPTION & SEPARATION, BOOKS In My Non-Fiction Collection-REVIEWS

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SWITCHED AT BIRTH

by Frederick J George (or James F Churchman)

Who is this man?

As a book lover I have been given many wonderful books, including biographies. One biography in particular stands out for its poignancy, Switched At Birth by Frederick J George in 2007.

Frederick George and James Churchman were switched at birth; we will never know the full story behind the switch. However, what we do know is that the respective mothers of Frederick and James loved their sons as they would their own flesh and blood.

It has meant much to Frederick that his biological mother, Helen Churchman was still alive when he discovered the truth of his birth. One of the things she was able to tell him was that although she never consciously doubted that James was her own son, she remembers remarking to the nurse a few days after the boys were born, ‘I think I may have Mrs George’s baby’ and that both women laughed. Mrs Churchman’s ‘son’ James had a thatch of black hair, while Mrs George’s ‘son’ Frederick was blonde like Mrs Churchman and the rest of her family.

In 2010 I had my own book published “Whatever Happened To Ishtar?” which like ‘Switched At Birth’ is about life in an immigrant Roman Catholic Lebanese family in Dunedin, New Zealand, during the mid to late 20^th Century. At the time I wrote my book I knew nothing of Frederick’s story, although I knew of the large extended George family, and often saw family members around the streets of Dunedin. For various reasons, I didn’t know any of them well enough to engage in conversation. I had no knowledge of the Churchman family, even though James’ and Frederick’s families lived in close proximity to one another. This, as it turns out, is one of the most poignant aspects of the whole saga, but also one of its saving graces: at least the boys grew up together and knew their biological parents, albeit superficially.

In the book, Frederick recalls in detail his life growing up with the George family. His has mixed feelings about his ‘father’ John George and his volatile temper, (Not I might venture to say, unusual in Lebanese men). He further writes that the subject of his ‘suspicious’ parentage only ever came up within his immediate family when his father was angry about something Frederick had done that had displeased him. Then he would accuse his wife, Ngaire, of sleeping with another man when she conceived Frederick because he ‘sure doesn’t look Lebanese!’ Ngaire George, who was not Lebanese, would respond good naturedly and tell her husband not to be so ridiculous.

As fate would have it the George boys and the Churchman boys were good friends and hung around together playing sport and engaging in other social activities. The main difference between the Churchman and George families, apart from ethnicity, was religion; Presbyterian and Roman Catholic respectively.

The boys from both families were involved in the hustle and bustle of family life and the issue of the blonde boy in the Lebanese family and the black- haired boy in the Anglo-Saxon family, by and large remained unquestioned, at least publicly. But privately, Frederick writes: ‘I used to have these peculiar feelings …of being in another world, or in someone else’s identity’. He goes on to say ‘Actually, I was in someone else’s world, and so was Jim Churchman…he was in the world I belonged in and I was in the world he belonged in.’ James told Frederick that he used to have those same feelings. Ngaire George often said to Frederick, ‘You live in your own world!’ … ‘She was right, I did’.

Both mothers genuinely believed that each of their boys’ odd-one-out complexions were some sort of throwback to their genetic roots. Frederick writes of the many coincidences and parallel life experiences of members of the two families, and they are compelling, in hindsight and in light of knowledge of the switch.

Years later, the suspicion of a switch at birth became an urgent issue for ‘James Churchman’ (the real George boy) when he became seriously ill. In his fifties, he had a severe heart attack. This was particularly significant, because there was no history of heart attacks in the Churchman extended family, but there was in the George extended family. While James was recovering in hospital, he asked his best friend, Frederick’s Lebanese brother, to contact Frederick who was then living in the US and ask him to organise a DNA test for himself, while he James would do the same. The tests proved beyond any doubt that Frederick and James had been switched at birth.

As you can imagine, the news was life-changing for both families, but particularly for the men themselves. The saddest thing for James was that he never knew his biological parents intimately and never would. Out of both sets of parents, only Helen Churchman was still alive when the test results were revealed, and she was then in her eighties. James often spoke to Ngaire George when he called on her sons, not knowing who she was in reality.

Frederick says at the end of the book that he is left wondering what life would have been like with his biological family. What had he missed out on, if anything? How different would his life have been? Questions that will remain unanswered.

-Anne Frandi-Coory 24 February 2012

Photograph

February 7, 2012

DRAGONS, DESERTS and DREAMS

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Poem PHOTOGRAPH and Photographic Image © Copyright To Anne Frandi-Coory

– All Rights Reserved 7 February 2012

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My poem **PHOTOGRAPH* *

Dedicated to my Lebanese father, Joseph Jacob Habib Eleishah Coory

Photograph

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A fleeting encounter

like an unopened rose

remains eternally

inside a withered heart

never to blossom

on a summer’s day

never to slowly fade.

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Time mellows into memory

his face, his voice

cushioning past intensity

once a storm

now just a photograph

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The man who was but shouldn’t have been

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My father Joseph, a long awaited first son, was a very sick new-born who wasn’t expected to survive. But against all odds, he lived. However, so certain were his parents that he would not survive, they neglected to register his birth. He spent the rest of his life, prone to illnesses. He ate a very limited diet and for all legal matters used another Lebanese man’s birth certificate, whose surname therein was spelt ‘Coori’. When I discovered my father’s fake birth certificate with the misspelled name and the wrong birth date, I assumed that the department of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Dunedin, had made the mistakes. During my extensive research into my Lebanese family tree and history, the truth was laid bare. – Anne Frandi-Coory.

BELOW: Joseph with his beloved dog, Tim, outside 103 Maitland Street, Dunedin, New Zealand, where I lived with him during my early teens.

Joseph and Tim 103 Maitland St Dunedin

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DRAGONS DESERTS and DREAMS

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2nd edition (2020) Dragons Deserts and Dreams

Available now in Kindle e book and paperback

HERE at AMAZON BOOKS

Sands Of Fate

January 16, 2012

DRAGONS, DESERTS and DREAMS

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SANDS OF FATE

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Painting and Poem Sands Of Fate © Copyright To Anne Frandi-Coory

painting by afcoory – acrylic on canvas 91cm x 91cm

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Read my poem *Sands Of Fate*

here in DRAGONS DESERTS and DREAMS

2nd edition (2020) available now in

Kindle e book and paperback

HERE at AMAZON

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Dedicated to all those women whose voices cannot be heard

Bipolar Disorder: Broken Lives

January 11, 2012

Mental Illness

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Excerpt below from WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ISHTAR? A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For generations of Defeated Mothers. Read more about my book HERE: https://frandi.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/publicaton-of-whatever-happened-to-ishtar/

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***This page is copyright to author Anne Frandi-Coory. No text or images can be copied or downloaded from this page without the written permission of Anne Frandi-Coory.***

Painting below, by Anne Frandi-Coory – acrylic on board and framed.

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Doreen Marie Frandi

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 electroconvulsive therapy (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 in Dunedin 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.

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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Anne Frandi-Coory’s mother Doreen Marie Frandi and her two younger sisters

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

December 22, 2011

LEBANESE CONNECTIONS, OUR LEBANESE ANCESTRAL Short Stories

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Excerpt from ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?; A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations Of Defeated Mothers’

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***This page is copyright to author Anne Frandi-Coory. No text or images can be copied or downloaded from this page without the written permission of Anne Frandi-Coory.***

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Granddad Jacob, that’s an amazing spiritual journey….

Jacob Coory (Fahkrey), my grandfather, as I remember him. (photo: Wendy Coory Gretton)

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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 Fahkrey (Coory) on his arrival in New Zealand c.1898

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L to R: Amelia, Jacob with Phillip on his knee, Michael, Joseph (Anne Frandi-Coory’s father), Elizabeth, and standing at rear is Eva holding Neghia

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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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National Geographic Map of Ancient Middle East

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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 descendants are of short, stocky build with strong 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 of 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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The Roman Catholic Church aligns itself with the Maronites (the religion of my grandparents) in the mountains of Lebanon:…

More Here: THE MARONITES IN HISTORY

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More…..Walking Around Lebanon With 2Famous

My Lebanese Heritage: Cultural Gold

December 15, 2011

LEBANESE CONNECTIONS, OUR LEBANESE ANCESTRAL Short Stories

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Excerpt from ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?; A Passionate Quest To Find Answers For Generations Of Defeated Mothers’

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***This page is copyright to author Anne Frandi-Coory. No text or photograph can be copied or downloaded from this page without the written permission of Anne Frandi-Coory.***

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[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’)

Anne Frandi-Coory’s paternal Lebanese grandparents, Jacob and Eva Coory (Fahkrey)

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.

More….Walking Around Lebanon With 2famous

About your Lebanese Family, Anne…

December 9, 2011

LEBANESE CONNECTIONS, OUR LEBANESE ANCESTRAL Short Stories

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Updated 30 June 2015

Comment on my post dated 9/12/2011, from David Anthony in America:

To Anne Frandi-Coory: – What a touching note. [from post: My Father, Joseph Jacob Habib Eleishah Coory].

Anne Frandi-Coory

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David writes: You mention Aramaic: I have a little story for you…

About 30 years ago, about 1978-1980, my jidoo [grandfather] was visiting my house when a distant cousin from Lebanon visited. My jidoo’s parents came to America in 1892. He was raised speaking what he and we thought was Arabic. He spoke it fluently- after all, it was what was spoken in his household growing up.

Well, when my cousin, who recently came from Lebanon fleeing the civil war, visited, they (my cousin and my grandfather) both spoke to each other in [what they thought was] Arabic. They couldn’t understand one another. My cousin said my grandfather wasn’t speaking Arabic, but a language much older. He said it was like an Italian listening to Latin.

So I came to find out that my jidoo didn’t really speak Arabic. The language he spoke so fluently was ancient Syriac- as you know, a version of Aramaic. The “Arabic” words I picked up as a youth tended much more towards Aramaic. In fact, many years after my jidoo passed away, a very good friend of mine from Zahle told me that the few Lebanese Aramaic words my dad and I spoke had a strong northern (Ehden) accent.

Just one other note: Anxiety runs rampant in the Lebanese side of the family. For some, the levels of anxiety run so high that it’s disabling. I’m wondering if there’s a similar issue in your family.

Two reasons; 1) Lebanese boys were forced to sit in the back of all classes. Italian and Irish boys sat in front. 2) As my dad had terrible nearsightedness, and he wasn’t allowed to sit in the front of the class because of his skin color, he could never see the blackboard. In order to take any notes, he’d copy notes from the student sitting next to him. When he got caught by a nun, which was often, he’d get sent to the Principal for copying notes. The Principal would tell him to put out his hand, which would then get beaten pretty badly.

Finally,one day, when he was in 8th or 9th grade or so, he came home with such a beaten hand that my sitoo [grandmother] noticed. After she insisted he tell her what happened, my dad then explained what happened. Right away they went and bought him his first pair of glasses. After that, he could see the blackboard better- and his grades went sky high.

But the damage was done. By tenth grade, he left school to work in a factory, partly driven, I’m sure, by the beatings.– David Anthony.

A very old photo of my grandmother, Eva Coory’s mother and brother, taken in Bcharre, Lebanon.

Dear David

How wonderful to hear your story. Yes, Aramaic is derived from an ancient form of Syriac and is now spoken only by small pockets of Syrian peasants and by Maronites in Bcharre, Lebanon. It was also the language that Jesus spoke. I did much research into my grandparents’ history and the history of Lebanon in general. My grandfather’s ancestors moved to the hills of Lebanon (Bcharre) around the 14th Century, from Iraq.

It is uncanny how similar are our fathers’ stories. My father, Joseph, was also beaten by the Catholic Brothers at school, and finally one day he ran home and refused to return to school. He was also shortsighted and told me he was often beaten because he couldn’t speak English, only Aramaic!

You may be interested in my book ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?’ A personal story, but which also delves deeply into the ancient history of my ancestors and the Aramaic language, which was eventually swamped by the advance of Islam and Arabic, which became the lingua franca of the Middle East. BTW, Zahle is a name that pops up in my grandfather, Jacob Habib Fahkrey’s family tree.

Anxiety runs deep in my family tree as well. In both the Lebanese and Italian sides of my family, volatile personalities reign. My children have inherited the tendency to anxiety, although nowhere near as intense as preceding generations. Of course, both Lebanese and Italian peoples express the whole range of emotions vividly, which can sometimes be quite intimidating to others.

I agree with you about the blatant racism that thrived in those times. Once again, both my Lebanese and Italian ancestors experienced this.

I would love to hear more of your story.

Best wishes,
Anne

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Read more here:My Mother Was A Catholic Nun

Doreen’s Children….

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Poem PHOTOGRAPH and Photographic Image © Copyright To Anne Frandi-Coory

– All Rights Reserved 7 February 2012

My poem *PHOTOGRAPH *

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2nd edition (2020) Dragons Deserts and Dreams

Available now in Kindle e book and paperback

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2nd edition (2020) available now in

Kindle e book and paperback

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Granddad Jacob, that’s an amazing spiritual journey….

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**2nd edition Dragons, Deserts and Dreams (2020)**

My poem **PHOTOGRAPH* *