I am my father's daughter

I am my father's daughter

I have his eyes

I am the product of his sacrifice

I am the accumulation of the dreams of generations

And their stories live in me like holy water

I am my father's daughter

(J.KILCHER, L.CARVER)

In early August 2024, I attended my dad's six-month memorial service at St Anne's parish in Heraklion. Although the service was an opportunity for the family to remember him through religious rituals, I found little solace in it. I returned home and sat in his study, seeking to connect with his spirit. I am my father's daughter; I share his deep love for reading and books.

As I cleaned out his study, I went through his notes, diaries, archives, bills, letters, and books, reminiscing about my childhood memories of him with books in the background, books piling up on his nightstand, him arriving from town with a bag full of new books for me and him, not easy books, books I would find fascinating just from their titles. One book that left a lasting impression on me was Wilhelm Reich's "Listen, Little Man!" which he allowed me to read at 13, despite its complexity. That was Dad; you were responsible for making your own decisions and forming your own judgments. Its message of personal responsibility and human potential stayed with me for years.

Another book that came from his shelves was Khalil Gilban’s The Madman. We got talking about Gibran’s belief that “your children are not your children, they are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself, they come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” I always felt I had the freedom to spread my wings in whatever direction I wanted to fly, with no conditions other than sharing my travels’ discoveries with him. For years, our telephone conversations were distilled down to “any interesting news from the places you have been, the things you have done, the people you have met?” Sometimes, I was annoyed; I felt like I was a newsagent!

The last time I spent time with Dad, I had to take him to the hospital, and as I was running out of the house to go with him in the ambulance, I grabbed a book, knowing I would have to spend hours waiting in the hospital corridors. It so happened that it was Gibran’s book, and we ended up reading it together while waiting for his discharge. He loved it!

And then there was the UNESCO red-leather bound volume set on Human Rights that felt almost revolutionary to my 9 years old brain! I had seen it on a book catalog that had come to his work, along with a Palestinian Authority leaflet. Human rights, Palestinian rights... hot topic even back in the 70s, still now.... He saw my attention caught, and a few weeks later, we received the 3 volumes on Human Rights that are still on the shelves in his study. A few decades later, I became Unesco Chair for Freedom of Expression.

So many of his books were defining as they imprinted on me early in my life a strong sense of social justice that defined a big part of my work later and my way of seeing the world, even my strong feminism. When I recently heard about Irish writer Edna O’Brien’s death, I remembered Dad, who introduced me to her work, the “Country Girls” trilogy.

When I received the news of his death six months ago, I was cleaning through my house in Auckland to prepare it for renting. While packing my bookcases, I found a book he had given me many years ago by our fellow and much loved Cretan author, Nikos Kazantzakis. The book, a brown leather-bound volume of his trip to Japan before the war, carried a dedication from Dad to me. It felt so poignant as I was preparing to travel to Japan for my research, and a few weeks later, I received the news of having secured a prestigious research fellowship from Japan Foundation.

Was Dad trying to communicate with me right at the moment as his spirit was leaving his human body? I feel that he did; he found a way through the books we both love to tell me that no matter what, I should keep honoring the free spirit he cultivated in me, and through that, he will continue living in me. I am my father's daughter …