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August 21, 2009

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS: Lil's Story
By Lilliana Seibert

“I am not going back to that Communist hell. My country is not there anymore.”

Standing on the deck of a military transport ship, demanding entry into the United States, Pancho Nakashev, a noted Bulgarian pharmacist and inventor, was delivering a speech in broken English on the evils of communism. His daughter Lilliana stepped forward. She knew that defying her father would land her in trouble, but understood that the wrong answer could send them back to the war torn, occupied nation. No, she told the official. My father is here on a three-month visa. We will return to Sofia when his business is concluded.

She did not mention his three other children and five grandchildren left behind. She didn't talk about hearing the siren, fleeing their home, or looking back to see their house bombed to rubble. She couldn't speak about how peace was shattered again for her in the safe village they found, after she was claimed by the local gangster. Nor could she describe the look on her mother's face when she sent Lilliana back to Sofia alone, a little packet of poison in her pocket. Her English was good, but there are no words for that mother's look in any language.

She may have believed that they would someday return to Bulgaria. Despite the hardships, it was the songs she sang with friends and the close family ties she craved. From a privileged, upper class family, she would become a businesswoman at a time when women did not yet run businesses, in a new place called “suburbia.” A pampered daughter and teased youngest sister, she would become her parents' sole support and a lifeline to older siblings left behind. As a mother, she would not let her own children experience need. As a wife, she would devote herself to the sweet man from a tiny village who one day said “hello” to her at a New York City bus stop.

Lilliana Seibert's story, “Between Two Worlds,” written just as she turned 88, is a thrilling and vivid account of her many personal experiences, the times in which she lived, and the spirit that sustains us all when we need it the most.

©2009, Lilliana Seibert. All rights reserved.