Memoir by Sarah Al-Edwan

It was April 15th, 1992 at 6:00 pm exactly. I entered this world and there was no turning back. I was surrounded by family, and friends, and my father. My father and his screaming best friend. My father and his screaming best friend who told my mom it was her fault. Her fault that I was a girl. My mother swooned me into her arms, and held me dearly. She was my savor that day, just like she is now. She tuned everyone out, and just focused on me. Sarah Najat Al-Edwan. Her beautiful baby girl. Well, beautiful if you subtract the big cone head I possessed. But don’t worry, I grew out of that. Even with my father’s best friend screaming in the background, I’d say from the stories that I’ve heard, my birth was a delightful one. Now that I’m older, my grandmother has given me a series of journals she wrote documenting moments in my life, that I one day may not be able to remember. And thus, I give you- my life through my grandmother’s eyes.







Book One





I was brought home to a large family, that of my two aunts Silvia, and Lori-ann, my grandmother, who I call Nana, and my grandfather who I call Bampie, there is also my mother and my father, my great grandmother, Nana Mitchell, and of course the nine hundred cousins that multiplied daily on all sides of my family. Nana spent a lot of time describing the family I live in, who was loud, who worked were, who spent their time doing what. She wanted me to know, I guess how our family was when I first entered this world. And I’m thankful she did because as of now, everything is different. About 15 pages into the pink, worn out old journal she kept all her thoughts for me in something terrible happened. Something my nana described as a heartbreaking moment. My father was packing us up and moving to Jordan. Yes, Jordan in the Middle East. A 16 hour plane ride from our close nit family. Our family who would never move away from each other because we were so intertwined. The whole Milone Clan was devastated, not about losing my father, but about losing the ones they loved most. Me and my mother. I had just entered their world and I was already leaving them. Due to my father’s heritage, and religion, and his stubborn attitude witch would prove later on to be a huge burden in my life, my nana wondered if I was every going to come back. “Just a summer” he told her, but for all she knew she would never be able to look into my chocolate brown eyes again. I guess in a lot of ways my family resents my father, not for just taking me away like he did, because –yes obviously I eventually came back. But for the heart break he caused me. The problem is though, that half this heart break is things I’ve read about heard stories of, and I loath him at the thoughts of what he’s done. But it just occurred to me, I never really did his side of the story did I? The rest of the time I spent home before leaving my nana swooned over me, talking about how funny I was, and how I grew by the minute. She would rock me in her arms, in her great grandmother’s rocking chair, and sing me to sleep. The part of the journal where I was a wretched million miles away, I will not share with you. I will just tell you that my grandmother’s heart break brought me to tears. Devastated me.