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Thirty years ago, when I was a teacher of English as a Second Language at the Migrant Women’s Learning Centre, a student with an engaging smile and a steely determination to learn joined my class. Marie Younan was an Assyrian migrant who had been in Australia for twelve years. She had never been to school, was blind, and had only recently acquired spoken English and basic literacy through braille.
Marie quickly formed friendships as one of a delightful group of women who had come from many parts of world and met for three days a week in the Return to Learning class. Here they were studying language and literacy whilst sharing their lives and having fun together. Whenever a new or unfamiliar word came up, we would practise using it and I would write it on the white board, spelling out each letter so Marie could key it into her braille machine. With each new word captured, her face would light up with joy.
Marie told me about the day when as a small child, she discovered she was blind. Her story stayed with me over the years and is written, almost word for word, as the first chapter in this book.
We kept in touch after we went our separate ways. At a reunion in 2013, we teachers decided that we would partner with past students to record their memories of the MWLC and subsequent lives for a centenary publication of the TAFE college.
As soon as Marie began telling me her stories and I began to record them, I was hooked. She is a mesmeric storyteller; I was drawn into her world as she told me about her years in Syria, Lebanon, Greece, and Melbourne. We agreed almost immediately that we would continue to work together to write her life history into a book, as had been suggested to her by her braille teacher, Ben Hewitt.
Interview (Marie and Jill) with Jacinta Parsons on ABC Melbourne Radio Afternoons 19 October, 2020. Listen here.