memoirs

Chapter I

My name is Aurélie Asseo sometimes spelled Asséo, I was born on February 22, 1988 in Geneva's cantonal hospital, Switzerland I have a brother Emmanuel born on November 20, 1989, in good health. As well as a dizygotic twin sister Amélia Asseo who died a week after our birth. I have a Sephardic Jewish surname. I did not receive a religious education, however. I know that my father's maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust as well as my great-aunt Charlotte Asseo born Briskin my father's aunt who lost her mother in Auschwitz and was raised in a children's home,in Paris.She told me recently her mother's name was Sarah Ita Kupperman

My paternal great-grandfather was Salomon Asseo, his parents were Sephardic Jews from Spain that were expelled from the country in 1492 and went to Salonika,( Salonikan Jews are also called Turkish Jews or Greek Jews or Jews of the Ottoman empire) the family would have settled in Nice in Charente- Maritme before perhaps the twentieth century. Salomon nicknamed "Papou" by his children and stepchildren an affectionate diminutive of dad, would have traveled a little in Belgium or Germany, before settling in Switzerland. There he met his future wife Rosa. Of Jewish and Ashkenazi origin, she was from Bern (with origins that laid in Poland for the Flataus.)Her full name I was told was Rose Flateau or Flatau and recently an aunt told me her full name was Flat (e)au- Weisenstein, a very Jewish name .Salomon Asseo's mother or father may be related to another Salonican Jewish family: The Mizrahis.

The couple spoke French and maybe two or three words of Yiddish. The Asseos also spoke Ladino-Spanish, a Judeo-Spanish language. Rosa was nicknamed Mamine and I saw her once when I was five years old, in 1993 it seemed to me that she had died months or years later without me knowing much about her, she died very old, she was over a hundred years old. I remember we visited her in Vevey where she lived and she listened to music with headphones and liked to eat flans, puddings in French. It is possible that Mamine and Papou lived in Bruges for some time. The couple had two children, my grandfather Raymond and my great-uncle Edgar. Edgar physicist at CERN died in 2015 and Raymond my grandfather who has lived in Brazil for decades is an accomplished photographer. Raymond met and married my grandmother Clotilde, an inveterate feminist and activist. Our grandmother is of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, from a Judeo-Russian and Judeo-Polish lineage. Her parents, my paternal great-grandparents were born Leon Alenick and Charlotte Chlamovitch. Charlotte's mother I believe was named Dora, and I was told Finckelberg, and she may have had cousins or brothers and sisters that died in gas chambers.
Leon's family was from Nizhny Novgorod in Russia and his wife's was from Poland. I remember stories I was sometimes told by Liliane Romano Alenick before her death .

She recounted possible encounters between the Alenicks and painter Marc Chagall in relation to painted portraits of angry green faces.Lilane's mother was Poplai's brother Salomon Aleinick my great grand oncle and his wife was Mina Aleinick said to have been born Litman and it is also possible that or Mina or Salomon were at some point related to familes Schrebnev or Schkrebnevs and The Kirshofs , families of Russian Jewish origins .

The couple escaped the pogroms as stateless Jews and emmigrated to France. They knew the difficulty of factory work and fled concentration camps after being captured by the Gestapo during the roundup of the velodrome d'hiver.


My then three-year-old grandmother Clotilde was hiding at her grandmother's house, fortunately safe. My grandmother had a sister ten years older than her, Nadine, who died of cancer some time ago. .She had two cousins Liliane Romano, (wife of a violinist from the Swiss Romande orchestra) violinist and teacher born Alenick now deceased, mother of my two great cousins now in in their fifties, Estella and Silvana Romano Aleinick. One of the two women is deceased. My grandmother Clotilde also has a cousin Sylla Chlamovitch,(sometimes spelled with still alive and aged over eighty, a theater teacher who has since been a local artist between Geneva and Paris. Sylla Chlamovitch's mother was Mina Retchinsky or Retchisky, a Jewish family from the Dnieper in Ukraine. Sylla's dad was the brother of my great-grandmother Charlotte Chlamovitch or Chliamovitch (I sometimes forget spelling of names ). Mina Rechinsky's husband was Isaak Chlamovitch, my great uncle who, as a child was dressed as a girl and looked a lot like me. ^^

Sylla gave me theater lessons in 1998 when I was ten years old .The Alenicks were very good amateur musicians, Papolay (Léon Alenick) was a violinist and his wife a pianist, they mainly played chamber music. My great-grandfather was both a house cleaner and an engineer, there was no useless job at that time, they died in 1991 when I was three years old. From the union of our paternal grandparents Clotilde Alenick and Raymond Asseo were born our father Sylvio Asseo and our uncle Cédric Asseo. When he was younger, my dad looked a lot like singer Bob Dylan. As he got older, he became more and more the artist he is today. He is a very talented sculptor who manages to capture the movement of animals with genius. He carves magnificent wooden animals such as falcons, bears, dragons and owls throughout the city of Geneva and also in the form of games for children in parks and schoolyards.

He also knows how to carve benches, armchairs and tables. As children, my brother and I were fascinated by Dynomir pronouced Deenomir the wooden dinosaur
and by the wooden train (not a small model) . Deenomir sculpted near swings that has the shapes of yellow ducks .It has now been replaced by a badger.


Our loving grandfather Douglas a man of English origin passionate about culture and classical music wrote a few words about music in his memoirs which he tried to publish entitled "Some of which I wish to tell " he mentions among others the violinist Yehudi Menuin he appreciates deeply and with who he shared a brief correspondance.

Our beloved mother was born on March 2, 1960. Her name is Yasmina Asseo Rasti whose paternal branch comes from the small village of Najafabad in Iran near Isfahan. Thus she sometimes adds Najafabadi to her name. Her mother, my maternal grandmother, born Raymonde Hirchi or Hirshi (pronouce Heershee) Swiss, met my biological maternal grandfather, at the age of sixteen, Ardeshir Rasti, with whom she left for this beautiful country that is Iran. This was somehow both unusual and fantastic. My maternal great-grandmother was French from the department of Ain, her name was Yvette Thyvin or Thivin she never knew her father (Who may have been related to the Baeriswils, another Swiss family ,possibly, here is the missing link?) She met a Swiss man named Raymond Hirschi (pronouce eershee). They were settled in Lausanne, she a hairdresser and he an electrician, he lost an arm in a work accident. He was brave and strong enough to rebuild our house in Spain, in ruins in Llioma del Castanar (pronouced Casta-nee-ar in Spanish) in the small town of Dénia in Spain on the costa del sol in the late fifties.

As a little girl my grandmother Raymonde was a bit rebellious, one of her dreams was to run away and meet the gypsies, she was born in Lausanne. She took her bike and rode everywhere befriending gypsies (One of her best friends she met when she was thirty was Nanette, a gypsy. My grandma Raymonde met Ardeshir when she was sixteen. He lied to her about his age by telling her that he was twenty-six when he was over thirty. He had already been married twice and divorce did not exist in Iran. Unofficially he was married four times. They met at the Port Franc in Lausanne.

They started a story and then a few months later they left for Iran. My grandmother gave birth to my uncle Cambiz when she was a teenager and three years later to my mum Yasmina, back in Lausanne. My grandfather came from a family of Persian rug traders. They were among the very first families to launch the Persian rug trade in French-speaking Switzerland in the 1970s. When she went to Iran my grandmother sometimes walked with her children in Yolfa, an Armenian district, she is very beautiful, so often she was mistaken for a resident of the region. My grandfather had sympathy for other merchants, Jews also although he is Muslim and doubltlessly for Armenians.Ardeshir had many brothers and sisters and so I have many cousins. His brothers were: Shahab, Ali, Shahin,Hassan , Iran and Houshang , Ranoumara and Azar.

I share a very strong bond with my grandma Raymonde and still today. I remember the time that we had played together Mémé and myself as well as with Douglas in Gryon when I was very small in Alpes des chaux, a small village in Cheysières in the canton of Vaud where Doudou and Mémé lived. I glanced at photos of my mother's wedding, just before I was born. My mom is pretty, very thin in a blue dress with a crown of flowers and my father in white pants with a mop of afro hair. At the wedding, my uncle Cédric was present and he was playing the djembe, I also saw Papolai on the photo (later Cédric will marry my aunt Maciré from Guinea Conakry, West Africa and they will give birth to my four cousins. Mariama, Maya, Talita and Naomi)

I also remember my first kiss at thirteen in my garden under an tent, I had flirted with Nicolas , one of the sons of my parents' best friends, Yolande of Haitician origin and Daniel-Philippe, Swiss. (Daniel-Philippe unfortunately died in 2002 ) I remember that with Nicolas and Amandine we told horror stories in a laundry room in Thyon les colons, at rue des écureuilles a chalet that Mémé and Doudou had rented after leaving the Alpes des Chaux. I told them stories of evil hands rising from the ground.

I have a memory of me at nine years old playing in the garden of my parents' workshop. We had a fairly large garden in the Geneva countryside on Chemin des Dardelles in Puplinge with a small chalet and a weeping willow. My uncle Cédric (the chalet being his now) often had parties with his family and friends where he played African music (specifically West African music from a country called Guinea and an area called Conakry and with his first Guinean wife Maciré.
Two of my adorable cousins were just born. My eldest my eldest cousin's name is Mariama which is the African equivalent of the name Marianne, I think it's a very pretty name.

I am physically handicapped due to a premature birth at five months and three weeks, I survived the birth accident of dizygotic twin sisters. I survived a small cerebral hemorrhage like many premature babies I had lost my twin sister Amelia Asseo a week who died of pulmonary failure. As a result, I have a disability called congenital spastic triparesis. Today, that means mild hemiplegia with mild hand dyspraxia, which means I have difficulty rotating my left hand and straightening my left fingers properly. I hold my pen with my right hand and with two fingers and my thumb. As a very young child I couldn't sit up and I was mostly on all fours.

I was already very intelligent and already impressed with my (very high) verbal intelligence, however I later encountered some problems with my sense of direction (especially when it came to finding myself in space) as well as 'with mathematical reasoning, especially as it related to spatial organization and mental rotation, as I had spent my early childhood crawling instead of running or climbing trees. Most likely the small hemorrhage affected that part of my brain and even though it healed entirely without damage afterwards. By the way, half of my brain grew ex utero. I had tried to improve my spatial orientation problem especially when Douglas had taken me for walks in town especially. Today I have progressed a bit although I still can't drive nor take a bus on my own and I still need taxis, I have difficulties with my household chores and so the cleaning ladies do this work, and even though I have my own apartment since 2016, I live half the time with my parents and I still need and love them.

How come I have such good English? Well, that's because my mother's stepfather, my grandfather Douglas, who is English and was born in Reading (He was born in a certain part of London called Stoke Poges, which makes him a cockney, because he could hear the sound of the bells. His father was Cecil Alan and his mother Winifred , (who also had some Scottish and Irish blood, ) an extraordinary man and teacher who gave me the taste of English literature When I was very young he had built a playhouse and we played with two adorable puppet rabbits named Fred and Carrot while I played with a cardboard theater - a castelet I stood up all the time without much effort and for a very long time Douglas , whom I later called Doudou, who knew me a few seconds after my birth, contributed enormously to my education as a grandfather and pedagogue. By the way, I have a step-family with step-cousins in England and France, starting with Douglas' children, Silke and Nicholas. German, by their mother, Eleonora (Lore), Doudou's first wife. They grew up in Switzerland, then both married to French husbands and wives had children and moved to France

Chapter II

After we had spent several weeks in the USA and left Newington so that I could have leg surgery, my grandparents bought a chalet in Puplinge to live near us on rue des Dardelles near Cédric's house and my father's workshop. A small shed, surrounded by a small flower garden, magnificent with an apple tree, a veranda and a small gabion My grandparents settled there in order to stay close to us in this two-room shed when we left the rue du December 31 at Eaux-Vives. Later they would get electricity from solar panels installed on the roof by Douglas. As a living room there is a small adjoining veranda and we as well as a small gas stove and generator. In the veranda is an old TV with a shelve full of video tapes with classical films.

In the shed there is no shower or bathtub but a bathroom with sink and toilet, I often washed at the sink, and made up in the small bedroom towards the chest of drawers near the mirror. Often I slept with my grandma near me in the adjacent bed we would often talk of many amusing things together. When I child we invented stories of an invented aunt Sidonie living in the clouds or a dinosaur in a egg living there too. .

The veranda has a TV with sofas upholstered in my grandfather's Scottish tweeds, which also had seen at Alpe-des-Chaux. The shed is also where I was homeschooled for a year in 1994 during my recovery time period from surgical interventions on my legs , I entered primary school in Puplinge in 1995 in September. The gabion keeps Douglas's hundreds of books and records safe. he also had an amateur vocal studio in the cabion where professional recording microphones were installed with a filter, jacks and a very old and expensive mixing console which had cost him two thousand francs which he had probably found at the Salvation Army in Geneva (I used the studio with the help of Douglas for hours years later as a teenager from 2003 to 2008, covering Enya songs like "Only time "China Roses" and "Caribbean Blue" and "Sean nos nua" by singer Sinead O'Connor. Album that I had bought in 2003. J I had tried his version of "My Lagan love" even if the latter was too difficult for me, I continued with a cover of "diamonds and rust" by Joan Baez and a bit of the Corrs "forgiven not forgotten" as well as the Norah Jones album "Come away with me" Unfortunately I lost these recordings which I transferred to MP3 tapes and unwittingly scratched my RW Cds and R Cds because of carelessness.

In 1994-95, I started learning to read. Douglas also taught me some geography and arithmetic, read me Paul Gallico's Snow Goose, and taught me grass fishing with paper fish and fishing rods). Many of my parents' friends loved me very much and took care of me as a child and toddler: I remember that I had been told about an African (Eritrea or Ethiopia) named Yemaneh and an Indian named Winston as well than a physiotherapist named Madame Nguyen) A friend of my father, a local artist named Geza Sekeli and his daughters were also good friends. My mother and Douglas taught me to read (reading was going extremely fast and well, and by age nine I was reading books for eleven-year-olds without any comprehension problems) and to write and it was going well, although I held my pen with two fingers and my thumb. Forming letters was then a bit more difficult due to my manual dyspraxia.

I couldn't walk yet but I stumbled and dragged my left foot all the time. A friend of my grandfather named Boyd told him about the children's hospital in Newington in the United States where we went twice and I was successfully operated on by a man said to be the best surgeon in the world at the time, Dr. De Luca. I therefore went to the United States twice in 1994 and 1995. Some time before I was part-time at the kindergarten of mont between 1993 and 1994, while being in a day institute for children in special needs called the Roseraie rehabilitation center in Geneva where I spent time with other children, some survivors of the war in Yugoslavia. In 1994, I started using the classroom computer and wrote related newspaper articles with my classmates. The educators were pleasantly surprised and my articles were considered among the best.
I remember that in Alpe des Chaux in 1992-3, my grandfather had an adorable cat named Gladys that we loved, she tragically strangled herself.

Puplinge's primary school was a very pleasant place as well as my first class where Anne-Marie Catel, our teacher, taught us illustrated reading and children's crafts (the reading method used was: Ratus and his friends Method conference of J.et J Guion and Le petit prince de Saint-Exupéry where my mother had illustrated the little prince with beautiful paintings for each episode, and part of Ratus was taught by a blond and quite handsome assistant professor, I think his name was Fabrice but I'm not sure.) I made friends with boys and girls in the school class, Caroline, Matteo, Marie, Julie, Cédric, Morgane and a few others, including Lorris has become a close friend of mine, and perhaps the only one in this class that I've really seen beyond Facebook recently. I remember the hours I spent playing in the school yard with my brother Emmanuel when I started walking in the summer of 1995. I also played with Guillaume P., a pretty blond boy, we played the lion king with stuffed animals and I was in love with him when I was nine, ten years old but also with a classmate named Matteo (the most handsome boy in the class (his mother is from Honduras) and then I was very impressed with his girlfriend Caroline, I knew she was American.

Chapter III

One day I was offered a four-wheeled bike, my feet remained attached to the pedals and I loved cycling in the schoolyard by taking the ups and downs under the roof housing the primary school classes. I fell from time to time but without hurting myself seriously. There were two good friends that I always played with. They are now two married women, I have always considered her intelligent and elegant: They are Silvia and Houda Silvia, nine and a half years old in 1999, the first born of a portuguese familya household of three sisters Silvia, Joanna and Sofia. (Some pupils made fun of Silvia because she was overweight and had entered puberty early, she was between nine and ten years old) which I disagreed with, first of all she was very pretty (had a huge mop of shiny black hair, good taste in clothes and makeup, and a tendency to mother us other girls, especially Houda who was her complete opposite, skinny and petite.

Houda was extremely intelligent and loved math ( her Algerian-born father worked in finance and had married Houda's young Swiss mother, Anne) this memory of me in 6th grade, ( pretty thin and tanned playing with my classmates and wearing Marilyn Monroe t-shirts my navel sticking out, trying to look like the heroine of the game Lara Croft video or trying to dress like Britney Spears and listening to American singers: The Hansons, Nelly Furtado and Britney Spears (The latter I had sent a fan letter to when I was twelve). I remember a newcomer to the class, a girl named Maria. She was very pretty, beautifully arched face, her lips, eyes, body, hair and voice were beautiful. She was very outgoing, pretty and smart and reserved at the same time , we befriended especially,during the school breaks. I liked it a lot, a crush. She is half Danish, half Spanish. She had to go back to Denmark by the end of the year, I felt sadly surprised and tried to contact her recently, she told me she was very busy taking care of her husband and her daughter.


My mother had hired a very nice, elderly American-born nurse called Nancy and she took me to physiotherapy every week. She is married to a man named Monsieur Jacques Dalcroze, a family known in Geneva for having created a very famous music institute. She told me a bit about her life and I remember enjoying talking to her. In 2001 Douglas took me to London for the first time at Bob and Shirley's. His cousins. I remember I had a little argument with my mum about some teenage issues that I don't remember, or was she afraid I was going to London? I don't remember!

So I ended up at Heathrow Airport to meet the B. and met an angelic eleven-year-old girl named Emma. She was blonde, beautiful and tall with big blue eyes. At the time I barely spoke a single word of English, yet the friendship between Emma and myself gew very quickly and I learned fast. Over Easter I was in Birchwood, Beckenham visiting London and Picadelly Circus for the first time listening to Westlife and Britney Spears and enjoying my friendship with Emma that friendship was like a rising tide.

I started the 7th in September 2001 at the Cycle du Foron, a school in the neighboring town of Chêne-bourg, a school of eight hundred students which included the 7th, 8th and 9th years. I had chosen to enter the Latin section and with the study of Latin I knew exactly what I wanted, I already dreamed of studying letters at university and I sometimes projected this as my main study perspective. already at fourteen - I was interested in books related to Irish and Celtic cultures, (I had fallen in love with Anita ) not bad in English and French. My results weren't that bad in history and biology and I was really trying my best with geography, math and German (although those weren't among my favorite subjects) My English teacher was Mrs. Bo. a histrionic teacher that I liked and my French teacher was Mrs. P. and I liked her too, she was very pretty, young with long black hair and Spanish.

I remember having feelings of romantic love, intellectual and sexual attraction for Anita Emma's Irish sister-in-law. I pinned a postcard of Cathleen Ni Houlihan on my bedroom wall and read a lot of Irish literature, I listened to folk music. Anita had been adopted, I liked her, according to these words she had been a ballet dancer in Cork where she was born.Emma became a regular correspondent. Sadly, Shirley, her mother had cancer, she was a very lovable person and it's so sad that she passed away in 2006

When I entered secondary school, Claparède college, I realized that I could fall in love with both men and women, I had crushes on many people. Romain my math tutor, Maxime the young stable man who worked with my grandmother Clotilde. One of my acquaintances, of Mauritian and French origin by the name of Johanna did Indian dance and I liked her a lot, but she said she would never be a lesbian. I fell in love with Joanna , an Irish-British girl I went to the movies with. I didn't tell her frankly I believe. I had scribbled a poem on a sheet of paper in a notebook on a table in the school dining hall "Emerald eyes" something she probably never noticed. A few years later I remember buying him a present and my mother had made a wooden sparrow which I then gave to her. I started dreaming of her by a river or lake in Geneva and it was in my dreams that we were having a stroll. She once invited me to a party at a pub in Geneva that she Flanagans' for St. Patrick's Day.

In May 2005, I had failed the school year even though I had worked very hard and started to feel depressed- So my grandparents Douglas and Raymonde made one of my dreams come true; they took me on a ten day trip to Ireland where i went for the first time and really enjoyed the trip where i saw dublin, parnell street and the wicklow mountains. We had been to London for the third time at Emma's a year before for spring break. In September 2005 my mother found the perfect school for me, a French high school in Geneva called Lycée Montaigne, rue du Rhône more precisely at rue Grenus in Geneva where I could be registered in second and stay until final year to successfully obtain a high school leaving certificate, which I did. And since my father was French through his father Raymond, my mother asked the em-bassy for a French identity card which I obtained in 2006. (At the time I still had plans to go abroad to study Celtic studies at Trinity College in Dublin, I then realized that this project was not necessarily realistic, I was not yet inde-pendent enough and did not yet have my leaving certificate in hand) Well, school wasn't free, and my parents paid twenty thousand francs a year for school fees.I had chosen a baccalauréat series L (literature) with optional Latin and reinforced English, and I could drop German. I worked hard and it went well however - as I had missed quite a few hours of French and I had to repeat the year. In July 2009 I completed my baccalauréat with success and a pass mark of 11.02/20 and very high marks in English, 17/20 in oral and written English.

In 2004 at school I met a Moroccan-Israeli and Swiss student, her name is Sophie S. a friend of mine, born in 1989, who was in a class near mine in the building. She also had a sister I met briefly Choulamite ( prounouce Shoolameet), pretty, kind and always smiling, tall with long black curly hair and bright green eyes - Sophie always hugged me whenever she saw me and we talked of what we had learned in literature since we had the same teacher from time to time I would invite him to my grandparents' chalet in Puplinge where we would watch a film with Douglas making clever comments. I remembered we watched Amen by Costa Gavras .

In the spring of 2006, I had bronchitis and I felt really sad, I started writing a letter to Anita telling her that I was in love with her (Anita) but I had written it in such a subtle way that she wouldn't feel bad about it and wrote back to me by a very nice letter telling me that the world was my oyster a week or two later (before Anita's letter I believe but I'm not sure) my grandparents took me on another trip to Ireland, same place, Dublin, Parnell street ie and Wicklow mountains and during these vacations my little psychotic crisis worsened a little.

in 2005 I had met a woman named Karen 23 who was the accountant at the Bookworm library in Dublin and she saw my interest in literature as I bought five books there (Celtic Dawn by Ulrich O'Connor, William Butler Yeats collection full of poems, Lady Augusta The complete Irish mythology by Gregory and The raggy boy trilogy by Patrick Galvin and purchased dictionaries I guess) This year I had heard a woman talking near my window once back in Geneva . The voice said "I saw her when she fell, I saw she was ill" I remember talking for about an hour with an Indian-born pharmacy adviser in Dublin who told me given an anti migraine pill. My grandparents and I had also visited the Writers' Museum in Dublin and Trinity College - I dreamed of studying here and wanted to obtain a PHD in Celtic literature, but of course the goal was unrealistic according to my daily reality and my knowledge - In the hotel room I was reading the Raggy boy trilogy by Patrick Galvin, the only book I had time to read and with a good basic understanding during this short trip (the novel deals with Ireland and society in general during the era of Nazism, Fascism and Franco's Rules and Irish Blue shirts, I recently read it a second time)

Back to Ireland of a second short holiday In 2006 I had occasional anxiety sometimes believed that the police officers down the street from the hotel room were fascist guards in blue shirts because they wore blue shirts and had bald heads, something different. 'absurd - I was strolling along the Liffey Street Bridge over Parnell enjoying the sunshine and had a few food phobias which I was trying to control. And then everything fell back into place slowly. I was also fascinated about the Celtic and Irish tales had newly discovered way back in 2004 that had been made popular to francophones by the French writer Jean Markale .At the same time I had tried to read them in English a little scantily maybe. The tales I found the most fascinated were the stories of Badb, Macha and The Morrígan and Cú Chulainn (I became fascinated with the symbol of crows afterwards for a time, as I went to Salsburry to see Stonehenge and its megaliths with Douglas and Emma who saw me elated in spring 2005 ) and the Wooing of Etain and the Boyne river (I have never been too) . Jean Markale writes that princess Etain in some version is turned into a fly (Which I have undersood for some time now is a butterfly) and although the idea of the young princess disapearing is very sad (that's how I had felt it at the time) we can also imagine that the butterfly is a beautiful symbol representing a young woman assessing who she while reaching her twenties.


When I was fourteen in 2002 I started singing lessons with a man named Xan W. in Veyrier Switzerland he told me he was American and Jewish and Swiss, he told me that he was born in the sixties he was very friendly, handsome, tall with long black hair and a very good teacher and opera singer, he taught me singing lessons in his attics near the roof of the family house of the W., he told me that he knew my old Cédric who had become a qualified percussionist and Ariane, that of my grandfather Raymond second wife and mother of my aunt Magali the half-sister of my father (I had perhaps to have had a crush on him as I had with many people as all teenagers do, however I kept a proper professional distance I never tried to seduce him in any way and I remained very careful being a good student in singing and extremely devoted to my work)

What can I say about Sophie K.

Yes, I loved her and I sometimes dreamed of a physical and romantic relationship with her and yes, I wrote poems when she inspired me. Well, we met during my depression in 2007, I was recovering from my psychotic episode on light medication which I continued to take for five years. At this time my mother started to think that I was becoming too lonely and friendless. She found an ad on our mailbox, a young woman was looking for a job as a maid and spoke English and Hebrew and she had left her phone number. She told me that she could arrange a meeting between us so that I had a `lady-in-waiting' and at first I shouted that I didn't want to

Back home in Geneva, Switzerland - I started hearing voices and it made me feel uneasy and scared So I told my mom I wanted to see a psychologist and she found one, a man named Solomon U., a psychotherapist at Thônex Geneva who followed me in therapy from 18 to 23 years old and very quickly I felt much better.

Sophie K. came into our living room (at my parents' and myself) with her attractive and frank manners! A beautiful blonde with blue eyes, she looked like a Franco Zeffirelli model speaking with a slight Israeli American accent and a husky voice. She was twenty-four. She told me that she was Israeli and more precisely that her parents were Jewish-Russian and I told her that I too was of partial of Jewish-Russian origin. We became friends very quickly; however she remained secretive and sometimes more distant during all the time that I knew her. My mother pays her fifty francs at first she gave them to me so that I could pay Sophie, so that she could stay two hours a week - we went out shopping we had fun together and I started taking public transport common in his company.

My mother cried with happiness when she saw me having more autonomy. As our friendship grew stronger; I stopped involving money. She told me that she was an au pair and worked for the Bernstein family in Florissant where she was staying. I went there several times with her on rue Robert de Traz. We went to music parties together and talked for hours on Facebook about movies, music, politics to some extent (we sometimes had disagreements) and she educated me quite a bit about Jewish and Israeli popular culture. She introduced me to another friend of her Lihi who was 26 at the time if I remember correctly, also Israeli and quite charming, they were very often together. I sometimes chilled with her in my garden and over the years I began to fall deeply in love with Sophie K. who discreetly and respectfully rejected me but still appreciates me very much today. I remember how wonderfully beautiful she was and very chic - bright makeup, gipsy green dresses and pretty earrings -

She sometimes let her natural red hair fall over her shoulders and that increased my growing desire for her. She told me about all the many friends she meets every week and asked me for advice, she told me about all the parties she's been to too- She also knew the entire Russian community in Geneva. She often traveled to Israel and all over Europe and I would have dreamed of seeing her more often or joining her during her parties and her travels - unfortunately she never invited me, but I saw all her photos on Facebook.

I remember how wonderfully beautiful she was, dressed chic - bright makeup, gypsy green dresses and pretty earrings - She sometimes let her natural red hair fall over her shoulders and this increased my growing desire for her. She had a soft and soothing voice that reassured me when I felt sad or panicked, when my school was going bankrupt for example or when we were taking exams. She went to both the Berlitz school and the Schulz school to improve both her French and her German skills.

She told me of many friends she met every week and asked me for advice, she told me of all the parties she's been too- She knew Geneva's whole Russian community as well. She travelled often to Israel and throughout Europe and how I would have dreamt of seeing her more often or joining her to her parties and travels - unfortunately she never invited me, but I was seeing all her pictures on Facebook I felt slightly envious sometimes although these images still made me miss her and so appreciating even more the moments we spend together.I wrote her "I love you "beside Cvs and cover letters we had made within our Facebook chat, I had written poems for her, (Some she needed to use for birth celebrations) and poems inspired by her, I tried to kiss her on the lips, but she would only give me her cheeks. However, I enjoyed kissing them much anyway, how delighted I felt! I would have done anything for her at any moment-until she told me she had a boyfriend; Avi was his name, and she was mad about him and wanted to spend every single minute with him. So, I tried to find myself a boyfriend, encountering issues I sometimes told Sophie K. of And little by little as I entered Geneva university (here again another complicated story I will tell you of later) where I came to encounter Alexandra G. randomly.

I was sad to have met Sophie for the last time in 2013 before she left for the US. However, I am happy for her since I saw on Facebook that she had fallen in love with a girl named Katie Herrera, I regularly write to her on Facebook, and I ask her if she's ok and most of the time she tells me "I'm good and you?" Which means her life is so fine now in the US. 'Maybe we'll meet again one day if she decides to. I also joined the young greens and the young reds and met many people there, in Geneva's local youth left-wing political parties, between 2011 and 2015, a man named Julien C.and my designated youth party adviser: Jeffrey N. as well as three acquaintances, Martha C. Valery B. and Olga B. with whom I blogged during the summer about free summer activities in Geneva. Alexandra G. changed my life. I fell madly in love with her in 2009 and my feelings have been lasting- She was part of a new and beautiful lesbian dream I would have wanted to come true.

She was my classmate at the university of Geneva.In ten years I could not tell yet if she shared the intensity of the feelings as I fell in love for her.Taken by such preoccupations I failed my freshman year. The fact that she gradually became distant or postponed our meetings turned me into another state of brief psychosis in 2013 . The fact that she had written such lines «Get out of my life, you’re nothing not even a friend» had put me to tears. By 2016 I started believing she was Himmler's granddaughter for the next five years. Something which is utterly incoherent with her rhetoric as she told me she was Russian and had Jewish grandfather and this way back in 2009. I understood I had shifting mental schemes that made me contradict her discourse and I did not understand why such a picture broke into me. I think this is nothing but a childlike psychosis in the mind of the young woman that I am and looking for a lover and exacerbated by the fact I had lost a twin soul. I used to think night and day of Alexandra for some time and we went to the movies to see Black Swan by Daren Aronofsky.

I was enjoying her company very much. And I was afraid of losing her so much that I even did things such as breaking into her office with flowers. I had cried all day at the sight of the day message she had sent me ordering me to disappear from her life. A few weeks later I met a young activist of twenty named Hanna P. who invited me to a pro- Ukrainian demonstration and was in demand for a sort of ghostwriter for a political speech. I did the work without really understanding what it meant to start with. In my schoolyard I found a sheaf of flowers that was like the one I had offered Alexandra G. and it seemed to have been thrown from a tipper truck, I found it a little strange, although a coincidence.(Since the meeting with Hanna P. also found this war in Ukraine frightening and hard to comprehend .I think the same of this terrible war in Syria and the numbers of wars since 2001 that have happened in the world are frighteningly high as well as the numbers of Islamic terrorists attack have increased and this is terrible)


I had encounters with people on my mind during daytime fantasies expecting a lovely text message (I think i.e of my college classmate Alexandra) . As a matter of fact, I have been systematically denigrated by one of my childhood best friends in our twenties,.It was only during a short period of time from 2012 to 2014 I know he had a hard time with his dying mother. He denigrated me while comparing me to his other girlfriends and threatened me if I came with the idea of calling them for help. Then he changed for good again. I made love with a man named Marco C. and it was in 2014 he was the first person I made love too and I did not even know his name firstly. However, nice times, lasted short and other serious problems came to the surface.The man enjoyed polyamory relationships,partners swings and naturism. He tried to convey me to all of this. I refused. I sometimes suspect someone died in his home in Italy. I also think I was invited by his family for lunch and given very strange food. I survived. - but I have been sick since. I could never become a mother I believe because of the recent physiological shock Marco C. triggered in me.However he is always tender and adorable.

Before him I have especially been scuttled by people who talked easily of sexual pornography in a saucy way (like with one of my ex-boyfriends i.e online) Since 2012 I had been regularly to a hairdresser named Carlos, I found him charming then he told me he was married. In 2015 I met a woman named Antheia I. 54 I fell in love with her but she did not want to hear about me anymore, we've been to the cinema and restaurant and she gave me photography class, I have been wanting a relationship with her. She is Greek. She told me she was born in Cyprus and had been a witness of the Cypriot military coup as a child in 1974). and later she became a photographer. I found her charming and sweet, however she sometimes got crossed with me because I have been calling her now for some times.

Since 2009 I started having a growing interest in Greek new wave cinema and for some poets I first studied in Geneva university throughout the context of English literature, poets like Seferiades, i.e. later on I myself bought and read modern and contemporary Greek literature translated in English and French and some bilingual editions although I do not speak Greek, I have read more American (including American Jewish literature and some feminists authors I cherish) and British literature and too novels in dealing with Cyprus like Colin Thubron's book for example. Moreover, I have read quite a few Russian authors in bilingual editions or in French. I have not seen her for years now and with her keeping her distance it has been a signal strong enough to tell me to turn the page. I am now back to mum and dad and trying to survive some difficulties in relationships at the hand of my latest ex-boyfriend Marco. I try to set things the better still, although the relationship with him had not been easy at all, I don't understand what went wrong with him and recently I have been frightened by this relationship. I though I was going to be a mother and live a good life, find back some friends, (or girlfriends) I thought of Alexandra G. or Sophie K.Maybe I would have been married , have children . None of this happened. I now have decided two stop on other elements in my life.

First ,my interest in learning Russian and what happened: who were my teachers and why do I have crushes that come back.I had a crush on Fabrice G. My teacher of Russian's (Monica Starouch) asssistant.

In 2011 after I had befriended a Russian- Israeli,a dame de companie, my mother had hired in 2007. named Sophie K .I realised I fancied her. Although -she- favoured a friendly tie I enjoyed sharing a lot and it also possible my friend had a sparkle in her eyes seeing me and that we almost sensually flirted. I therefore decided to learn Russian and enrolled in a class in one of Geneva's known language schools.
I had never learned Russian in anyway nor knew any of the cyrilic letters. I had enrolled Geneva 's university in 2009 and there a met another Russian student named Alexandra G , a bright student ,I also fell in love with after a couple of months and I would have wanted intimacy.My friend became more distant and so I said to myself I should try to learn Russian and discover more of a culture.This war between Ukraine and Russia I witness difficult to bear I found terrible what I saw on TV. I could I would have visited places like Moscow or Kiev or the Dnieper river.I discovered online about long gone Jewish actress Maya Deren and developped a soft spot for her and physical attraction I'd say.

My stay in the United States 1994-5