'Traveling Through Memories' for VIE October

“Africa was a long time ago and large chunks of my memory lay dormant. When my eldest granddaughter Anna was born, memories began to return. When I cared for her, I saw flashes of my life when I was her age. Sometimes I thought these memories could not be real. But they came, some strange and unsettling, and pieces of my past returned. When Anna turned four, I wanted to tell her my stories. She brought back my girlhood feelings.

I was born in Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East. Naturally I don’t remember Beirut, or anything about Libya either. I cannot recall Tripoli or Benghazi where I lived when I was two and three, respectively. My memory starts in Somalia. When Anna tells me her favorite color is pink and she wishes her house was painted pink, I know exactly what she means.

I lived in a pink house – pale pink surrounded by a walled garden covered with bougainvillea vines. The house sat on top of the highest hill in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. I don’t remember the Paris of the Middle East but Mogadishu was Paris to me. The whole city lay below our house and I could stand outside the gate and watch everything. Camels walked through the streets. The world’s most beautiful women balanced pots on their heads and babies on their backs, and the Indian Ocean shimmered in the distance.”

Read more about Suzanne’s childhood memories & reasons for sharing them in the latest issue of VIE Magazine HERE!