I met Michel when I was 17.
I had been going out with a doctor from Sutherland Hospital, which is a story in itself.
In November of 1971 I become ill with abdominal pains. These pains were non-specific and I found them hard to describe, the doctors at the hospital found them harder to locate and diagnose. The problem did not go away: it lingered over the Christmas holidays and was still with me when I went back tot school for my final year – an important year, as I was to sit the Higher School Certificate exams in October.
It was during this period I met the doctor –I can’t remember his last name, his first was Gilbran, shortened to Gib, and he was Lebanese, and lived in rooms at the hospital. He was a resident, a specialist in training. He was of average height, blondish, bulky in build, and he gave out a strong come hither message to me, even though I was sick. He managed to get through to me that I was to contact him.
I now know that his behaviour in approaching a patient in order to start a relationship was unethical and against the hospital rules and the code of conduct for health care professionals. It was very wrong of him to do what he did.
I contacted the doctor, Gib, and was invited to his rooms at the hospital. We didn’t really have anything in common, but I found him attractive and I believe he found me attractive, as he threw out a very unsubtle message regarding his intentions. We had sex on our first meeting. I recall the sex lasted for some time, and I remember my first orgasm – I was surprised as I did not know quite what to expect. I did not cry out or say anything and Gib continued to thrust. Later I found out from his comments to his friends (including Michel) that he considered me hard to please and slow to come to orgasm. It was really just a matter of lack of communication. His foreplay was abysmal and he was no Don Juan.
We never went out together, we always met in his rooms and our relationship consisted mostly of sex. We really had nothing in common. I was caught up in the glamour of the situation, “going out” with a doctor. He was only using me for sex.
It was while I was with him one day that he had some visitors, some Lebanese friends, included in their number was Michel. On this particular day I remember I was not wearing a bra, as I had spent the previous day sunbaking without a top on so I could get an all over tan. This backfired on me as the skin under question was very white so naturally it burned. I was in some distress and discomfort form the sunburn. I was wearing a flowery sprig dark coloured peasant blouse top with bright light blue hot pants (short shorts) and sandals. I thought I looked very nice.
The visitors and Gib talked in Arabic. Michel later told me they were discussing me – my prowess in bed, my seeming lack of ability to orgasm, the ease with which Gib manage d to get me into bed, etc.
I started a conversation with a young man, Michael, who was worried about his chances in the English test he was to sit for as part of his attempt to get Australian citizenship. I offered to tutor him in English spelling and vocabulary.
Our relationship grew beyond the teacher /student one and turned into a girlfriend /boyfriend one. By this time I had ceased to see Gib. We had nothing in common and I found sex with him boring. I was not attracted to him and I showed it.
It was in this period I had a one night stand with one of his friends. All I can remember about it is that he was a very large tall man in his thirties. I can’t recall how I managed to be at his place, alone, especially as I was unwell with this simmering problem. I do remember him having sex with me in the bedroom and him thrusting for what seemed like forever. It sounds as if I didn’t enjoy sex and indeed I often did not, as the men whom I chose as partners had no idea of how to excite a woman, as they had no foreplay technique to speak of. This one night stand was to backfire on me later.
Some few weeks after this my relationship with Michel moved to recognizably serious and we began to talk of a shared life together. This was in February of 1972. I was nearly 18 years old.
The problem with my abdominal pain continued to bother me and I began to lose weight. I went from about 65 kgs to 54 kgs in about 8 weeks, and was quite ill from the simmering pain in my lower right abdomen. All this time the doctors seemed nonplussed at the origin of the pain, and even made me submit to a gynaecological examination – a big thing for a teenage girl. The doctors said they could not find the source of the pain. In March, during a visit to the Gynae Clinic at the hospital, my mother spoke up forcefully and insisted the pain was appendicitis – a simmering appendix. The doctors conferred and decided that since they could suggest nothing else, they would take my appendix out. The pain was suggestive of appendicitis, but I did not react in the usual manner when they pressed on my lower right side –ie I did not scream out. This particular trait was to follow me through my life and cause a lot of trouble.
I had the surgery in March of 1972 and was found to have a sub-acute appendix which means that I did have appendicitis, the appendix was infected and was causing a simmering problem and was the cause of my problems. The surgery was not good as it was considered an emergency and was performed barely three hours after I had eaten – in my case a milkshake designed to bulk me up as I had lost so much weight. I vomited dreadfully after the surgery. It left me with a healthy respect for the rules of fasting prior to surgery.
I recovered well after the surgery and went back to school. I had missed about 8 weeks of the beginning of my last year and I had some catching up to do.
My relationship with Michel, as he was really called, moved to engagement. I spent my weekends with him. During the week I attended school and he went to work. On the weekends we visited his friends and made a few friends of our own. One couple I remember were saving for a house, and were so into saving that they split the matches in half before using them to light a cigarette. Of course it had not occurred to them it would have been better to give up smoking.
Both I and Michel smoked. I had started to smoke at age 16, and smoked about 10 cigarettes a day. The Lebanese regarded smoking as a social lubricant – to be offered along with tea or coffee when visiting. I must say that in general the Lebanese were quite welcoming to me. The issue of being Gib’s girlfriend was forgotten or so I thought.
A peculiar incident occurred one Sunday. We were visiting some of Michel’s friends, and the man with whom I had the one night stand was there. He started flirting with me, and I, believing that my status as engaged woman protected me, flirted back, naively believing there was no harm in it. We left them with me gaily saying goodbye. Michel was very silent. I soon found out why: he was furious because I had been flirting with the friend. I explained that I had merely been flirting, that it was nothing, he should know that. However nothing I said would calm him and he become more and more bad tempered, saying the engagement was off etc. Horrified, I grovelled. We parted that night without the issue being resolved, but to my relief the next time we met (with me grovelling over the phone to get to this point) he decided to “forgive” me. What I didn’t know at the time was that I had been set up – the friend and Michel had agreed to test me and I had apparently failed. What Michel didn’t realise was that flirting in Western terms has a different connotation, depending on the context, than it has in an Arabic setting. My own behaviour in grovelling was wrong, I see now.
Why I was so afraid to lose Michel I don’t know. I imagined I was in love with him; however it was merely lust, which has little foundation and dies quickly if not backed up with love. I should have walked away at this point. Michel was a means of escaping a bad home life and a step into adulthood – I was caught up n the glamour of getting married, even if I didn’t go overboard with white wedding dresses and bridesmaids like other girls who dreamed of their wedding from the time they are old enough to understand the idea.
We had not decided what to do when I had finished the Higher School Certificate. I applied for admission to teacher’s College, thinking that I would train to become a primary school teacher. This appealed to me. I didn’t think of going to university as our family had no money at all, and as my father had spent most of the previous two years out of work, there was nothing to draw upon, and I didn’t even consider it. I was hoping for a scholarship to teacher’s college. I had a scholarship for the two years of senior school which helped with my expenses – it wasn’t much, but it did help by paying for shoes etc.
To fill in time I applied for and got a job with the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac). I did not tell them of my plans. I was accepted, briefly trained in an induction day, given uniforms and sent to Jannali as a batch clerk. I could not believe my good luck in getting a job so close to home that I could walk to work. My starting salary was $45 after tax, and I paid 1/3 in board, 1/3 was to be saved, and the remainder was for me to spend.
Eventually I learned my job well enough that I was moved to Kogarah branch, after a short stint as a relief – where I was told to relieve at a branch in the area where someone was sick or on holidays and they needed someone to perform the batch clerk duties.
Kogarah branch was not a nice place like Jannali. For starters, the equipment was older. At Jannali I had (for the times) a sophisticated batch machine, at Kogarah I had only the machine that encoded the slips and an adding machine to add up the batches. My supervisor was a young man in his early twenties who harassed me sexually, touching me, making lewd jokes for my benefit, etc. I found him physically repulsive and his behaviour didn’t endear me to him at all.
By the time I received an offer to attend Teacher’s College somewhere in the country, Michel and I had decided to marry and had set a date, in August. I was not pleased with the offer, as it was too little too late. It was in the country and would have been very expensive. I would not hav been able to see Michel, as I would have to live in the college. It did not suit me at all as my expectations and view of the future had changed, with Michel firmly in the middle. I declined the offer, knowing that I could not study and be a married woman at the same time – Michel would make it hard for me to study if we married. My job was going well, and I had advanced at the bank. I had managed to learn my job as a batch clerk in very short tome and was now proficient at it, even being able to memorise the bank/branch codes with ease. I had also learned how to use a Sylvester telephone switchboard and an accounting machine. My career at the bank looked promising.
In April of that year, 1973, Michel went back to Lebanon, with the promise that we would marry when he returned to Australia. He was gone for three months. When he came back, in June, he brought with him two rings: a large very ostentatious diamond and white gold engagement ring and a wedding band in white gold and with diamonds set in to it all the way around. They were not my taste at all; I would have preferred a simple yellow gold band and perhaps a coloured stone engagement ring. I did not particularly like diamonds then, and now I like them even less. They are cold stones, brilliant like ice. The story of the wedding rings does not stop there, of course. Michel fussed over the rings, telling me to keep them safe. I never wore them on a daily basis, they were too big and caught on things, and I was never comfortable wearing them. What I didn’t know was that the rings were worthless. I had them valued when I separated from Michel in 1980 and found that the rings he fussed over so much were worth about $5 each. What I don’t know is whether he knew that they had no value or whether her himself was bilked. Perhaps I should hope that he was bilked.
We had found a garden flat in Bexley to live in, which was close to both our places of work.
We married in the Catholic Church in Sutherland, St Patrick’s, even though I had not attended church for years. Michel was a Maronite Catholic, that is like a “Roman” Catholic, but not recognising the Pope. The Catholic Church recognised Maronites with no problem. We married when it was still hard to marry someone of a different faith, not a non-Christian, but someone of another sect of Christianity, such as a Lutheran. Such marriages, especially according to the Catholics, were just not allowed, and any children of such a marriage were to be brought up as Catholics. These things were written into the marriage ceremony. Those were the days of the grossest bigotry. Luckily we didn’t have to worry about this.
I asked my school friend Debbie Holt to be my bridesmaid. I made my wedding dress, a plain empire line floor length shift in white polyester crepe with the veil my mother made for my first communion, and offered to make Debbie a bridesmaid’s dress. She asked if she could wear one from another wedding she had participated in, and I said okay. I was relieved as I had plenty to do, even though ours was a very simple wedding compared to most. I was married from home.
We bought flowers for the corsages, my mother made food for the wedding breakfast, and I invited my family. Michel hired the cars and photographer and bought the drinks. Michel had no-one on his side, so my brother Seppe was his best man. Somehow one of my mother’s cousins found out we were marrying and she came with her family. I barely knew them. I wondered who had invited them.
About two hours before we were to leave for the church, my father stopped me in the hallway and told me he believed the marriage would be a mistake – there was still time to call it off. Given that one of the reason I was marrying was to escape from home (although I did not admit that to myself for some years), and given that I could not imagine backing out at this last stage, I naturally said no. He shrugged and went on his way. When we were leaving to go to the church he gave me a drink of whisky, saying it would calm me down. I was, of course, very nervous. The drink did help. My father made the driver of the car drive us around the church block a few times before we arrived – he said a bride should arrive late, to give a sense of anticipation to the arrival. The wedding went well. We did not have nuptial mass, as it would have gone on forever.
I did not enjoy the wedding breakfast. I barely remember it. I remember being photographed in Forby Sutherland Park in Sutherland, and I still have few photos of this sessions. All other photos are lost. I remember having a photo taken with me admiring the beautiful shawl my mother-in-law sent me as a wedding gift. Apparently she railed at Michel for marrying a foreign girl, but eventually accepted the fact and sent me greetings with the shawl. Somehow the shawl got lost in the melee surrounding our departure form Lebanon a few years later.
Michel had told everyone we were going on a honeymoon, destination a secret, the next day. I didn’t know anything about this, and just as well, because it was a tissue of lies, a fabrication of amazing complexity, all done to impress everyone with his generosity towards me. He told me in the car on the way to our new home; I was stunned. I felt conflicting emotions: I knew he didn’t have much money, as he came back form Lebanon with nothing; because of his lies we could not visit my parents (as we were supposed to be on a beach in Queensland) and I was to pretend we had been and gone and had a wonderful time. I felt as if someone had taken a sweet away from me. I did not expect a honeymoon, and here he was telling me to pretend we had one! I would have preferred to say we had just stayed home! We had a week off work, which we spent quietly getting the flat in order. Already I was feeling a little as if I was in a bad dream. Perhaps my father was right – the marriage might be a mistake.
We left the party fairly early. I was told later the party went on for some time. The boys had “decorated” Michel’s car in the usual manner, and we left at about 9pm. My married life had begun.
I never spent a night with Michel before we married. Married life was a shock. I came equipped with the usual accomplishments that a girl should have: I could cook, sew, wash, keep house, indeed I could do a lot more than most young women my age, courtesy of being the eldest girl from a large family. I had a good understanding of what a married woman should be able to do and how to conduct myself. I had observed my parents’ (at times not very good) marriage, and had also spent time looking at other peoples’. I was an inveterate reader and consumed anything in my path, so understood a lot, I was intelligent and could work things out for myself. I might have been young but I was prepared. This was not enough for Michel. Suddenly everything I did was not good enough.
What I didn’t know was why Michel had married me. He was not in love with me, even though he told me so, he was lying in order to catch me. He had set out to get me, as he saw me as an advantage to him. Getting an Australian wife would be a feather in his cap, for a Lebanese, an Australian wife was a two edge sword: on the one hand it was a cachet to have one, on the other hand, an Australian woman would me more likely to leave her husband for another man, or if she was not happy. These fears were in the back of Michel’s mind from the beginning of our marriage.
Michel had married me because I was young, intelligent but as he saw it, naïve and innocent t the ways of the world. He figured that if he got to me early, he could mould me into the woman he wanted me to be. That is, he believed he could change me into the perfect Lebanese wife, one with Anglo good looks and the perfect little wifey attitude. However as with a lot of his ideas, the basic premise was faulty. You can’t change a grown person’s mind. Even I knew that. You can influence someone, but you can’t change the way they think. Michel had an overwhelming confidence that he could change the way I thought, completely changing me to the person he wanted me to be.
He started with my parents. It was his intention to separate me from my parents as he saw them as having control over me. They were a bad influence on me, he thought, and I must not be allowed to listen to them, as they might give me ideas that were contrary to his. He needed to work on this: alienate me from my parents. This became a recurring theme throughout our marriage and he never stopped trying to do so, right up until we separated.
In the week following the wedding we had an argument about my mother’s clothes at the wedding. She had the temerity to wear slacks to the wedding. Some years prior to this, she had decided that skirts were silly and she was not going to wear them again. So she didn’t, and she wore a pair of slacks and a pretty blouse to the wedding. This did not bother me; why should it bother Michel. I was confused. What did it matter? It was not important. He was infuriated by this remark, and slapped me, hard. I was so astonished by this, and hurt as well, so I cried out. He immediately shushed me, saying “What will the neighbours think?” What would the neighbours think of me being belted around? The neighbours in question were only a dividing wall away so they could most probably here us anyway. I told him, through tears, that if he ever, ever, hit me again I would get up and leave. Forever.
This must have got through to Michel as he never hit me again. He just changed his tactics and used more subtle forms of control. At least with the slapping I knew where I was. With the newer methods I didn’t. They were too insidious.
The one method Michel used to a certain level of success was to wear me down with a soft form of nagging, “whispering in my ear” as he called it. He was always accusing my parents of this act, I presume because he did it himself, and assumed that everyone else would be doing it as well. It is what parents did, in his view. Little did he know that my parents, having this behaviour from their own parents, had sworn never to do this to their own children. They had decided on a hands-off approach to their adult children, and all the time I struggled with my marriage they never ever said anything concrete about Michel to which he could have taken exception.
The first casualty in his campaign against my parents was my visits to them. He refused to visit with me, which confused me. What had they down, or more to the point, what had I done to deserve this? In the end I visited on my own.
I fell pregnant in the first month after the wedding, so I was able to visit my parents during the week once I was home waiting for the baby to be born. Michel continued to absent himself from my parents’ home until he had need of them.
Three months after Elizabeth was born, Michel received a letter from Lebanon saying that his mother, who was sick with cancer of the cervix, was now very ill, and was not expected to live for more than a few more months. Michel should come now if he wanted to day goodbye. He decided we should go, and we packed up and sold the furniture, got our immunisations (smallpox immunisation was still required at this time) and made our goodbyes.
I decided (or Michel decided, I can’t remember which, but anyway it was a bad idea) that I should get my hair permed for the trip. My hair was long and I wore it mostly back, and on the weekends wore it lose because that is how Michel liked it. My hair was a continual aggravation to me as I didn’t like it around my face, which is how Michel liked it. I had it cut to shoulder length, permed and coloured a lighter blonder colour. The problem was that the perm required maintenance of having curlers put in overnight to keep it looking nice. It was a foolish thing for a new mother to do, especially as I was not really experienced with doing my hair like this. But hey, it looked so nice!!
Michel decided to bury the hatchet (which he had invoked in the first place) and make his peace with my parents. What my parents thought of this I do not know, and as I was in the dark myself as to why he was behaving the way he was, I was just relieved he was taking to them again. However, he had an ulterior motive: he realised he might need their help later on, and decided that it was sensible to be in their good books to allow this to happen. It was to pay off later on. There were no flies on Michel, it seems.
I had been going out with a doctor from Sutherland Hospital, which is a story in itself.
In November of 1971 I become ill with abdominal pains. These pains were non-specific and I found them hard to describe, the doctors at the hospital found them harder to locate and diagnose. The problem did not go away: it lingered over the Christmas holidays and was still with me when I went back tot school for my final year – an important year, as I was to sit the Higher School Certificate exams in October.
It was during this period I met the doctor –I can’t remember his last name, his first was Gilbran, shortened to Gib, and he was Lebanese, and lived in rooms at the hospital. He was a resident, a specialist in training. He was of average height, blondish, bulky in build, and he gave out a strong come hither message to me, even though I was sick. He managed to get through to me that I was to contact him.
I now know that his behaviour in approaching a patient in order to start a relationship was unethical and against the hospital rules and the code of conduct for health care professionals. It was very wrong of him to do what he did.
I contacted the doctor, Gib, and was invited to his rooms at the hospital. We didn’t really have anything in common, but I found him attractive and I believe he found me attractive, as he threw out a very unsubtle message regarding his intentions. We had sex on our first meeting. I recall the sex lasted for some time, and I remember my first orgasm – I was surprised as I did not know quite what to expect. I did not cry out or say anything and Gib continued to thrust. Later I found out from his comments to his friends (including Michel) that he considered me hard to please and slow to come to orgasm. It was really just a matter of lack of communication. His foreplay was abysmal and he was no Don Juan.
We never went out together, we always met in his rooms and our relationship consisted mostly of sex. We really had nothing in common. I was caught up in the glamour of the situation, “going out” with a doctor. He was only using me for sex.
It was while I was with him one day that he had some visitors, some Lebanese friends, included in their number was Michel. On this particular day I remember I was not wearing a bra, as I had spent the previous day sunbaking without a top on so I could get an all over tan. This backfired on me as the skin under question was very white so naturally it burned. I was in some distress and discomfort form the sunburn. I was wearing a flowery sprig dark coloured peasant blouse top with bright light blue hot pants (short shorts) and sandals. I thought I looked very nice.
The visitors and Gib talked in Arabic. Michel later told me they were discussing me – my prowess in bed, my seeming lack of ability to orgasm, the ease with which Gib manage d to get me into bed, etc.
I started a conversation with a young man, Michael, who was worried about his chances in the English test he was to sit for as part of his attempt to get Australian citizenship. I offered to tutor him in English spelling and vocabulary.
Our relationship grew beyond the teacher /student one and turned into a girlfriend /boyfriend one. By this time I had ceased to see Gib. We had nothing in common and I found sex with him boring. I was not attracted to him and I showed it.
It was in this period I had a one night stand with one of his friends. All I can remember about it is that he was a very large tall man in his thirties. I can’t recall how I managed to be at his place, alone, especially as I was unwell with this simmering problem. I do remember him having sex with me in the bedroom and him thrusting for what seemed like forever. It sounds as if I didn’t enjoy sex and indeed I often did not, as the men whom I chose as partners had no idea of how to excite a woman, as they had no foreplay technique to speak of. This one night stand was to backfire on me later.
Some few weeks after this my relationship with Michel moved to recognizably serious and we began to talk of a shared life together. This was in February of 1972. I was nearly 18 years old.
The problem with my abdominal pain continued to bother me and I began to lose weight. I went from about 65 kgs to 54 kgs in about 8 weeks, and was quite ill from the simmering pain in my lower right abdomen. All this time the doctors seemed nonplussed at the origin of the pain, and even made me submit to a gynaecological examination – a big thing for a teenage girl. The doctors said they could not find the source of the pain. In March, during a visit to the Gynae Clinic at the hospital, my mother spoke up forcefully and insisted the pain was appendicitis – a simmering appendix. The doctors conferred and decided that since they could suggest nothing else, they would take my appendix out. The pain was suggestive of appendicitis, but I did not react in the usual manner when they pressed on my lower right side –ie I did not scream out. This particular trait was to follow me through my life and cause a lot of trouble.
I had the surgery in March of 1972 and was found to have a sub-acute appendix which means that I did have appendicitis, the appendix was infected and was causing a simmering problem and was the cause of my problems. The surgery was not good as it was considered an emergency and was performed barely three hours after I had eaten – in my case a milkshake designed to bulk me up as I had lost so much weight. I vomited dreadfully after the surgery. It left me with a healthy respect for the rules of fasting prior to surgery.
I recovered well after the surgery and went back to school. I had missed about 8 weeks of the beginning of my last year and I had some catching up to do.
My relationship with Michel, as he was really called, moved to engagement. I spent my weekends with him. During the week I attended school and he went to work. On the weekends we visited his friends and made a few friends of our own. One couple I remember were saving for a house, and were so into saving that they split the matches in half before using them to light a cigarette. Of course it had not occurred to them it would have been better to give up smoking.
Both I and Michel smoked. I had started to smoke at age 16, and smoked about 10 cigarettes a day. The Lebanese regarded smoking as a social lubricant – to be offered along with tea or coffee when visiting. I must say that in general the Lebanese were quite welcoming to me. The issue of being Gib’s girlfriend was forgotten or so I thought.
A peculiar incident occurred one Sunday. We were visiting some of Michel’s friends, and the man with whom I had the one night stand was there. He started flirting with me, and I, believing that my status as engaged woman protected me, flirted back, naively believing there was no harm in it. We left them with me gaily saying goodbye. Michel was very silent. I soon found out why: he was furious because I had been flirting with the friend. I explained that I had merely been flirting, that it was nothing, he should know that. However nothing I said would calm him and he become more and more bad tempered, saying the engagement was off etc. Horrified, I grovelled. We parted that night without the issue being resolved, but to my relief the next time we met (with me grovelling over the phone to get to this point) he decided to “forgive” me. What I didn’t know at the time was that I had been set up – the friend and Michel had agreed to test me and I had apparently failed. What Michel didn’t realise was that flirting in Western terms has a different connotation, depending on the context, than it has in an Arabic setting. My own behaviour in grovelling was wrong, I see now.
Why I was so afraid to lose Michel I don’t know. I imagined I was in love with him; however it was merely lust, which has little foundation and dies quickly if not backed up with love. I should have walked away at this point. Michel was a means of escaping a bad home life and a step into adulthood – I was caught up n the glamour of getting married, even if I didn’t go overboard with white wedding dresses and bridesmaids like other girls who dreamed of their wedding from the time they are old enough to understand the idea.
We had not decided what to do when I had finished the Higher School Certificate. I applied for admission to teacher’s College, thinking that I would train to become a primary school teacher. This appealed to me. I didn’t think of going to university as our family had no money at all, and as my father had spent most of the previous two years out of work, there was nothing to draw upon, and I didn’t even consider it. I was hoping for a scholarship to teacher’s college. I had a scholarship for the two years of senior school which helped with my expenses – it wasn’t much, but it did help by paying for shoes etc.
To fill in time I applied for and got a job with the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac). I did not tell them of my plans. I was accepted, briefly trained in an induction day, given uniforms and sent to Jannali as a batch clerk. I could not believe my good luck in getting a job so close to home that I could walk to work. My starting salary was $45 after tax, and I paid 1/3 in board, 1/3 was to be saved, and the remainder was for me to spend.
Eventually I learned my job well enough that I was moved to Kogarah branch, after a short stint as a relief – where I was told to relieve at a branch in the area where someone was sick or on holidays and they needed someone to perform the batch clerk duties.
Kogarah branch was not a nice place like Jannali. For starters, the equipment was older. At Jannali I had (for the times) a sophisticated batch machine, at Kogarah I had only the machine that encoded the slips and an adding machine to add up the batches. My supervisor was a young man in his early twenties who harassed me sexually, touching me, making lewd jokes for my benefit, etc. I found him physically repulsive and his behaviour didn’t endear me to him at all.
By the time I received an offer to attend Teacher’s College somewhere in the country, Michel and I had decided to marry and had set a date, in August. I was not pleased with the offer, as it was too little too late. It was in the country and would have been very expensive. I would not hav been able to see Michel, as I would have to live in the college. It did not suit me at all as my expectations and view of the future had changed, with Michel firmly in the middle. I declined the offer, knowing that I could not study and be a married woman at the same time – Michel would make it hard for me to study if we married. My job was going well, and I had advanced at the bank. I had managed to learn my job as a batch clerk in very short tome and was now proficient at it, even being able to memorise the bank/branch codes with ease. I had also learned how to use a Sylvester telephone switchboard and an accounting machine. My career at the bank looked promising.
In April of that year, 1973, Michel went back to Lebanon, with the promise that we would marry when he returned to Australia. He was gone for three months. When he came back, in June, he brought with him two rings: a large very ostentatious diamond and white gold engagement ring and a wedding band in white gold and with diamonds set in to it all the way around. They were not my taste at all; I would have preferred a simple yellow gold band and perhaps a coloured stone engagement ring. I did not particularly like diamonds then, and now I like them even less. They are cold stones, brilliant like ice. The story of the wedding rings does not stop there, of course. Michel fussed over the rings, telling me to keep them safe. I never wore them on a daily basis, they were too big and caught on things, and I was never comfortable wearing them. What I didn’t know was that the rings were worthless. I had them valued when I separated from Michel in 1980 and found that the rings he fussed over so much were worth about $5 each. What I don’t know is whether he knew that they had no value or whether her himself was bilked. Perhaps I should hope that he was bilked.
We had found a garden flat in Bexley to live in, which was close to both our places of work.
We married in the Catholic Church in Sutherland, St Patrick’s, even though I had not attended church for years. Michel was a Maronite Catholic, that is like a “Roman” Catholic, but not recognising the Pope. The Catholic Church recognised Maronites with no problem. We married when it was still hard to marry someone of a different faith, not a non-Christian, but someone of another sect of Christianity, such as a Lutheran. Such marriages, especially according to the Catholics, were just not allowed, and any children of such a marriage were to be brought up as Catholics. These things were written into the marriage ceremony. Those were the days of the grossest bigotry. Luckily we didn’t have to worry about this.
I asked my school friend Debbie Holt to be my bridesmaid. I made my wedding dress, a plain empire line floor length shift in white polyester crepe with the veil my mother made for my first communion, and offered to make Debbie a bridesmaid’s dress. She asked if she could wear one from another wedding she had participated in, and I said okay. I was relieved as I had plenty to do, even though ours was a very simple wedding compared to most. I was married from home.
We bought flowers for the corsages, my mother made food for the wedding breakfast, and I invited my family. Michel hired the cars and photographer and bought the drinks. Michel had no-one on his side, so my brother Seppe was his best man. Somehow one of my mother’s cousins found out we were marrying and she came with her family. I barely knew them. I wondered who had invited them.
About two hours before we were to leave for the church, my father stopped me in the hallway and told me he believed the marriage would be a mistake – there was still time to call it off. Given that one of the reason I was marrying was to escape from home (although I did not admit that to myself for some years), and given that I could not imagine backing out at this last stage, I naturally said no. He shrugged and went on his way. When we were leaving to go to the church he gave me a drink of whisky, saying it would calm me down. I was, of course, very nervous. The drink did help. My father made the driver of the car drive us around the church block a few times before we arrived – he said a bride should arrive late, to give a sense of anticipation to the arrival. The wedding went well. We did not have nuptial mass, as it would have gone on forever.
I did not enjoy the wedding breakfast. I barely remember it. I remember being photographed in Forby Sutherland Park in Sutherland, and I still have few photos of this sessions. All other photos are lost. I remember having a photo taken with me admiring the beautiful shawl my mother-in-law sent me as a wedding gift. Apparently she railed at Michel for marrying a foreign girl, but eventually accepted the fact and sent me greetings with the shawl. Somehow the shawl got lost in the melee surrounding our departure form Lebanon a few years later.
Michel had told everyone we were going on a honeymoon, destination a secret, the next day. I didn’t know anything about this, and just as well, because it was a tissue of lies, a fabrication of amazing complexity, all done to impress everyone with his generosity towards me. He told me in the car on the way to our new home; I was stunned. I felt conflicting emotions: I knew he didn’t have much money, as he came back form Lebanon with nothing; because of his lies we could not visit my parents (as we were supposed to be on a beach in Queensland) and I was to pretend we had been and gone and had a wonderful time. I felt as if someone had taken a sweet away from me. I did not expect a honeymoon, and here he was telling me to pretend we had one! I would have preferred to say we had just stayed home! We had a week off work, which we spent quietly getting the flat in order. Already I was feeling a little as if I was in a bad dream. Perhaps my father was right – the marriage might be a mistake.
We left the party fairly early. I was told later the party went on for some time. The boys had “decorated” Michel’s car in the usual manner, and we left at about 9pm. My married life had begun.
I never spent a night with Michel before we married. Married life was a shock. I came equipped with the usual accomplishments that a girl should have: I could cook, sew, wash, keep house, indeed I could do a lot more than most young women my age, courtesy of being the eldest girl from a large family. I had a good understanding of what a married woman should be able to do and how to conduct myself. I had observed my parents’ (at times not very good) marriage, and had also spent time looking at other peoples’. I was an inveterate reader and consumed anything in my path, so understood a lot, I was intelligent and could work things out for myself. I might have been young but I was prepared. This was not enough for Michel. Suddenly everything I did was not good enough.
What I didn’t know was why Michel had married me. He was not in love with me, even though he told me so, he was lying in order to catch me. He had set out to get me, as he saw me as an advantage to him. Getting an Australian wife would be a feather in his cap, for a Lebanese, an Australian wife was a two edge sword: on the one hand it was a cachet to have one, on the other hand, an Australian woman would me more likely to leave her husband for another man, or if she was not happy. These fears were in the back of Michel’s mind from the beginning of our marriage.
Michel had married me because I was young, intelligent but as he saw it, naïve and innocent t the ways of the world. He figured that if he got to me early, he could mould me into the woman he wanted me to be. That is, he believed he could change me into the perfect Lebanese wife, one with Anglo good looks and the perfect little wifey attitude. However as with a lot of his ideas, the basic premise was faulty. You can’t change a grown person’s mind. Even I knew that. You can influence someone, but you can’t change the way they think. Michel had an overwhelming confidence that he could change the way I thought, completely changing me to the person he wanted me to be.
He started with my parents. It was his intention to separate me from my parents as he saw them as having control over me. They were a bad influence on me, he thought, and I must not be allowed to listen to them, as they might give me ideas that were contrary to his. He needed to work on this: alienate me from my parents. This became a recurring theme throughout our marriage and he never stopped trying to do so, right up until we separated.
In the week following the wedding we had an argument about my mother’s clothes at the wedding. She had the temerity to wear slacks to the wedding. Some years prior to this, she had decided that skirts were silly and she was not going to wear them again. So she didn’t, and she wore a pair of slacks and a pretty blouse to the wedding. This did not bother me; why should it bother Michel. I was confused. What did it matter? It was not important. He was infuriated by this remark, and slapped me, hard. I was so astonished by this, and hurt as well, so I cried out. He immediately shushed me, saying “What will the neighbours think?” What would the neighbours think of me being belted around? The neighbours in question were only a dividing wall away so they could most probably here us anyway. I told him, through tears, that if he ever, ever, hit me again I would get up and leave. Forever.
This must have got through to Michel as he never hit me again. He just changed his tactics and used more subtle forms of control. At least with the slapping I knew where I was. With the newer methods I didn’t. They were too insidious.
The one method Michel used to a certain level of success was to wear me down with a soft form of nagging, “whispering in my ear” as he called it. He was always accusing my parents of this act, I presume because he did it himself, and assumed that everyone else would be doing it as well. It is what parents did, in his view. Little did he know that my parents, having this behaviour from their own parents, had sworn never to do this to their own children. They had decided on a hands-off approach to their adult children, and all the time I struggled with my marriage they never ever said anything concrete about Michel to which he could have taken exception.
The first casualty in his campaign against my parents was my visits to them. He refused to visit with me, which confused me. What had they down, or more to the point, what had I done to deserve this? In the end I visited on my own.
I fell pregnant in the first month after the wedding, so I was able to visit my parents during the week once I was home waiting for the baby to be born. Michel continued to absent himself from my parents’ home until he had need of them.
Three months after Elizabeth was born, Michel received a letter from Lebanon saying that his mother, who was sick with cancer of the cervix, was now very ill, and was not expected to live for more than a few more months. Michel should come now if he wanted to day goodbye. He decided we should go, and we packed up and sold the furniture, got our immunisations (smallpox immunisation was still required at this time) and made our goodbyes.
I decided (or Michel decided, I can’t remember which, but anyway it was a bad idea) that I should get my hair permed for the trip. My hair was long and I wore it mostly back, and on the weekends wore it lose because that is how Michel liked it. My hair was a continual aggravation to me as I didn’t like it around my face, which is how Michel liked it. I had it cut to shoulder length, permed and coloured a lighter blonder colour. The problem was that the perm required maintenance of having curlers put in overnight to keep it looking nice. It was a foolish thing for a new mother to do, especially as I was not really experienced with doing my hair like this. But hey, it looked so nice!!
Michel decided to bury the hatchet (which he had invoked in the first place) and make his peace with my parents. What my parents thought of this I do not know, and as I was in the dark myself as to why he was behaving the way he was, I was just relieved he was taking to them again. However, he had an ulterior motive: he realised he might need their help later on, and decided that it was sensible to be in their good books to allow this to happen. It was to pay off later on. There were no flies on Michel, it seems.
The three photos are all I have of me at age 18 -19, in the year prior to my marriage to Michel. The first is of me jsut after my operation, the second in May 1973, and the third is of me during the Higher School Certificate examination period. I was very relaxed during this period.
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