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Many people have asked us, why? This page has come about to answer the why, the where, and the how. Some details have been withheld to safeguard identity and some are matters of national and/or international security.

I am high-born, free woman, which means that I was born with a title and out of bond. (Bond-born are those of low-caste, or working classes.) In our society, that makes me top dog, if you’ll excuse the term. I was raised with the knowledge that one day I would take my father’s place at the head of the House, but, having been exiled, we had to live as ‘low-caste’ to protect our identity. It is a big responsibility to oversee the needs of over 608,000 people in a region still hampered by border disputes and international greed. Although the exile ruling set down decades ago has finally been lifted, our safe return is still not possible and our lands are still occupied by foreign forces.

Most of our family is either Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Muslim, with a dappling of other beliefs just to make life interesting. Pasha was raised by her mother’s brother and his wife, as their own daughter. Wild and ferocious, she learned life’s lessons early on and excelled in several forms of defence. My father raised me to be a lady, unquestioning and silent unless spoken to. I was brought up in a very strict, insular home, whereas Pasha’s upbringing was very relaxed. In short, she is the complete opposite of me. She, too, was high-born, but the truth was kept from her, until we met up again after twenty years and struck up a casual conversation about our family trees. I was able to fill in the gaps that her mother had left out, much to our mutual shock. We are both descended from the same family line.

We have known each other since we were fifteen having met while Pasha was working in the Middle East on assignment. Her work took her all over the world. We have known about each other since we were very small, but have not thought to ask - you know that feeling, there’s something missing and you don’t know who to ask? Or even why you are feeling or thinking this in the first place?

It would be years before we discovered what that ‘missing’ was and what it meant for our future. My father had alluded to Pasha’s existence on several occasions, but I was very shy and never pushed the touchy subject. My father was not one to be questioned about anything, if he wanted you to know something he would tell you in his own time. Until 2001 I was happy to let that ride.

Pasha and I were happy to go wherever life took us, and we both married and had children. I lost my husband through murder, and Pasha lost her husband through a consequence of mental illness within months of each other. Getting together came about purely by chance. It was finally the right time to reveal the bond that had existed between us for decades. We were married July 24, 2003.

There has been a lot of hype in recent months about race, war and gender. In our home, we are mixed race, mixed nationality, mixed religion and a female couple. We have had many people frown on us, ridicule us, scorn us etc, and frankly I have found it uninteresting, judgemental and immature, forced by a prejudice of misinformation and ignorance.

My family are Kurdish-Romani, with Basque, Flemish and Scots influences; Pasha’s family are Kurdish-Native American with a little German thrown in for good measure. Our large extended family were persecuted by the Nazis during WW2 and our numbers were whittled down to less than 30 people. From the age of four years, I was made a example of by teachers and students alike in the British schools I attended, for being ‘worthless gypsy scum, no better than to spit on’. Just days after my husband’s murder by Islamic Fundamentalists, our 5 year-old Muslim son was beaten up by anti-Muslim extremists in a spate of retaliatory attacks. I call that cruelly ironic. In the words of Katrine in The Game (Star Trek Voyager); ‘Leave the war outside’. I have no interest in the world’s hate, I have heard it and lived it. It’s not as original as they might think.

Pasha and I are both authors and have ten children between us, plus two others who were raised elsewhere, and despite being married for over a year, we hare still forced to live apart by politics, sensationalism and war. Matters beyond our control or desire have shaped our family life for the past three years. We still pray for an outcome that will mean we can be together. For now, we must wait.

Our gender preference is no more an issue than our race or nationality, but some in positions of power have forced it into an issue. Why should the way you tie your hair, the colour of your skin, the name of the God you pray to or the gender of the person who keeps you warm at night matter to the general populous? Unless your actions are endangering life, limb or property, it doesn’t impinge on national security or import a change in policy or law or upset the balance of power. Despite this fact, other peoples’ opinions and meddling separate me from my children and from the woman I have loved for 22 years.

It might sound like angst, but I have an air of resignation and realism. Justice, in whatever form is in vogue at any given time, has left me widowed, raising children physically and emotionally scarred and, more importantly, alone. In a political environment that I barely agree with, barely understand, and I cannot vote to change, I have gained an edge of cynicism. I was raised to accept people for who they are, not for their position, status, colour or anything else about them, except their honesty. Self-reliance was something forced upon me the day I realised my reliance on others was too much. Until you are left alone you don’t know a person’s worth. I had never cooked myself a meal until I was 21. I had never changed a light bulb until after I was widowed. I had never faced paying bills until I was widowed. Or even done anything so mundane as washing windows. This might sound conceited, but I don’t mean it to be. Life comes in many colours, shapes and sizes and until you have lived its harsh realities, you are sheltered and unable to understand what is really going on. I found myself unable to fight my way out of a wet paper bag, weak, and without support. I soon changed all that.

I count myself as being very lucky, despite the hardships and losses and the split that exists in our family. I am who I am, accepted or not. Pasha has a never-may-care attitude to life, a ‘take me as I am or don’t, it’s not my problem, it’s yours’ way of thinking. I have adopted it, I won’t change the way I am to support a society that is blinkered in its opinions of others who are different. I am different and proud of it. If you knew my beautiful wife, you would love her too.

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