Well Said!

  By Helen Said, Melbourne, Australia With the White Australia Policy back in the media spotlight, I have decided to share my personal story as a person from a Greek-Egyptian ethnic background. My parents and older sister were born in Egypt and were part of a Greek speaking ethnic minority. They left Egypt as refugees from the Second Arab-Israeli War. As Greek-Maltese British Subjects living in Egypt, they had been placed under house arrest, following the tri-partite British, French and Israeli invasion, and ordered out of the country, under threat of imprisonment. My family arrived in icy London in the winter of 1956, carrying two suitcases of light Egyptian clothes and five worthless Egyptian pounds. My parents have always been grateful for the kindness relatives and strangers showed them when they were broke and homeless, and this motivated them to later become refugee advocates in Australia. But back in 1950s London, when my parents were refugees, there were some who were...

  by Helen Said, Melbourne Australia My grandmother (Yaya) moved to Australia when I was a teenager. Upon arriving at Tullamarine Airport, Yaya proudly announced to me and my sister that she read three English newspapers every day.  Yaya was born in Libya and learned to speak seven languages. She was the granddaughter of the local Greek Orthodox Priest. She grew up as a Greek speaker in Constantinople (Istanbul) and attended the local American Ladies College, where she learned English. She married a Greek-Maltese British Subject. My grandfather (Papou) found work with the occupying British Army shortly after the First World War, and accepted a transfer to Egypt upon marrying Yaya. Yaya and Papou raised their family in Egypt where my grandfather continued to serve the British NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) for the next 45 years.  In widowhood, living in Australia, Yaya developed dementia and lost her ability to speak all of her languages except her native Greek...