Sherbrooke Record e-Edition

Tanya Bellehumeur-allatt on being a Peacekeeper’s Daughter

By Gordon Lambie

In some ways, Tanya Bellehumeurallatt’s new memoir, Peacekeeper’s Daughter is the work of a lifetime. “I’ve been working on this book for 20 years,” the author said. “I started right after 9/11, when the American administration declared the war on terror because I realized I had a story to tell.”

In this case, that story revolves around

Bellehumeur-allatt’s experiences as a 12 year old girl living for a year first in Israel and then in Lebanon while her father worked as a Peacekeeper in the Middle-east for the United Nations. Although parts of the experience have been shared in the past as standalone essays, this book marks the first time that they have been collected together in chronological order.

Bellehumeur-allatt grew up in a

military family, moving from place to place as her father was given different assignments.

“It was while we were living in Yellowknife that my dad volunteered with the United Nations to be a peacekeeper and to serve in the Middle East,” she said, explaining that in the early days of 1982, the region was in a state of relative peace so the idea seemed like an adventure and a nice change from life in the north. “We didn’t see it as a dangerous thing,” she added.

In June of that year, however, the calm in the region came apart as Israel invaded southern Lebanon and Bellehumeur-allatt saw her life change in a way that has been with her ever since.

“My book is about the five months that we were in Israel, and the seven months we were in Lebanon,” she said. “It was a tough time for me. My childhood ended when the war began.”

Coming out of the sixth grade in Canada when her family made the move, the author said that she had no context for conflict in the Middle East or real understanding of what it meant to be at war. Where her parents and even her (then) teenaged brother were able to pick up on some of the risks involved in the ‘adventure’ they were embarking on, she said that the experience was one that reshaped her whole outlook on life.

The original plan, according to Bellehumeur-allatt, was for the family to remain mainly in Israel during her father’s two six-month postings.

“Going to Lebanon was never part of the plan,” she said. “My father volunteered, and his thought was that our family was either going to remain in Israel, or go back to Canada, but my mother said no, we followed you this far and we’re staying with you.”

As a result, the family headed into the country at a time when many others in similar situations were being sent back home, and they ended up being present through an increasingly unstable time in the country’s history.

“I was conscious when I was in Lebanon that children my age had never known anything but war, this was their reality,” the author reflected.

Bellehumeur-allatt said that she made a particular effort throughout her writing to keep things in her perspective from the time, aided by the journal she kept that year, but it is clear that the year that inspired Peacekeeper’s Daughter has also had a profound impact on her life and perspectives when it comes to conflict in the middle east today. For example, although the timing is coincidental, the author said that the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan felt very close to home.

By the time we left (Lebanon) in early July, the airport was under siege. We got out just, just in time.” She said, sharing that the family had a contingency plan that involved using $10,000 U.S . stuffed in a cookie tin at the back of the fridge to hire a boatman to row them across the Mediterranean if the need arose. “In the end we left through the airport kitchen onto a military plane that flew us to Cairo and then to Jerusalem.”

The book was released on Sept. 30 of this year, and the author is clearly pleased with how it turned out, but she did not shy away from the challenges she faced in getting to this point since her return to Canada now 40 years ago.

“Things have changed now, but at the time military personnel and their dependents were expected to just reintegrate, pick up your life again and go on,” she said, noting that everyone was living with what she now recognizes as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder upon the family’s return. “I was deeply hurting inside and didn’t know what I needed.”

Even as time passed, Bellehumeurallatt said that she always thought of the time as being her father’s story to tell.

“It was the pinnacle of his career,” she said. “I never really thought about how my story might have interest to anyone.”

Instead, she said, the story came in bits and pieces as she found the courage to revisit the memories prompted, in particular, by America’s ‘war on terror’ after September 11, 2001.

“I understood the President wanting to retaliate after 9/11, but at the same time it struck terror in my heart because I thought about the civilian casualties and what it would mean to declare war on Afghanistan,” she said. “I hope that readers will come away from the book thinking that there’s got to be another way to deal with conflict than taking up arms.”

That in mind, the author was clear that although politics seem to permeate every aspect of conversations about the Middle East, she intentionally tried to avoid that side of the issues.

“The book is in no way a political treatise. It doesn’t take sides because I am writing from my 12-year-old point of view.” She said. “For me it’s really about the people; how war affects lives, how it affects women and children, how it affects families.

An indoor/outdoor book launch event for Peacekeeper’s Daughter will be taking place at North Hatley’s Gillygooly Gallery on Oct.24 starting at 2 p.m. and the author said that she will also be participating in the upcoming Knowlton Literary Festival. The book has also been stocked at both Brome Lake Books and Black Cat Books in Lennoxville, something the author underlined as very important to her because of the role the local writing community played in making the book a reality.

“Quite a few writers around here feel attached to it because they were behind me all these years. They have all read early iterations,” she said, speaking of one local writing group in particular. “They’ve really cheered me on.”

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2021-10-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-15T07:00:00.0000000Z

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