Unplanned Journeys, a memoir

About the Book

Unplanned Journeys’ Summary

“…the police chief harshly summoned me to his office. I was shaking from head to foot. In a minute or two he was pounding his fist on the desk and shouting questions at me that I could hardly answer. Questions like: ‘Where is your husband’s brother?’ ‘What is his address? ‘… I left his office knowing that I had been harassed and fought to keep back my tears.’

Married to a man with a mysterious past she only now was discovering, this young woman alone in a foreign country was forced to make decisions that would drastically change her life. But then so much had already happened to Tilly during her travels at home and abroad.

Born in Cairo, Egypt during British colonization of that mid-Eastern land, she seemed destined for many “Unplanned Journeys” even as a child. The third of seven daughters born to Jewish parents, she survived being run over by a car when a toddler and entered the work-world at the tender age of twelve. As a young teen together with her family she suffered the growing Arab loathing of Jews after formation of the State of Israel in 1948. The family moved several times, once after Arabs had marked their home with an “X” for burning. During World War II she and her sisters frequently hurried to air raid shelters as sirens wailed over Cairo. But there were good times as well: meeting dashing airmen while employed at British and U.S. air bases, enjoying friendships at the American and British embassies and marrying a German film distributor.

Tilly’s overseas journeys began after the war with visits to her married sister in England, then to Germany, France, and eventually to the United States where she settled and raised a family.

No one knows where life’s adventures will take them, but in this book you will learn of the twists and turns of one woman’s “Unplanned Journeys,” similar perhaps in some ways to your own.

About the Author

About the Author Born in Cairo, Egypt during British colonization of that mid-Eastern land, Tilly Kolus seemed destined for many “Unplanned Journeys” even as a child. The third of seven daughters born to Jewish parents, she survived being run over by a car when a toddler and entered the work-world at the tender age of twelve. Tilly’s overseas journeys began after the war with visits to her married sister in England, then to Germany, France, and eventually to the United States where she settled and raised a family. In this book you will learn of the twists and turns of one woman’s “Unplanned Journeys.”