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Ultimately, she finds peace of soul and her
God. Alisabeth’s new-found faith was born of a marriage of Christian and
Moslem religions. She could then echo the words of St Augustine “Late have I
loved Thee, O Beauty, so ancient and so new.”
Alisabeth’s trials and tribulations in the crucible of life have forged a
character that is as strong as her personality is gentle. She has emerged from
her ordeal with a recently acquired philosophy, to counter “the slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune” and to continue her pilgrimage. It is true that
we were born to make manifest the glory of God, that is within us. It’s not
just in some of us, it is in everyone. Shakespeare was cognisant of the fact
that “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends” (Hamlet act 5, sc. 2, 1).
In her youth Alisabeth had experienced the spark of love, now she has
encountered the Flame of Love.
The poet, Francis Thompson, expressed
God’s Love in Hound of Heaven: “I said to Dawn: Be sudden, to Eve: be soon,
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over From this tremendous Lover!”
Alisabeth’s book is an entity. If you will pardon the phrase, nothing like it has
come “Out of Egypt” or anywhere else for that matter.
The work by
Alisabeth, casts its own shadow. It does not stand in the shadows of other
books by other authors. The author of “Out of Egypt Have I Called My Son”,
clad in her new-found faith tinctured with her spiritually – spun philosophy, is
conscious of the fact that we are all captains and masters of our own fates
and destinies. In the language of Francis Thompson she is aware that “Human
love needs human meriting.” Alisabeth has achieved meritorious rewards.
Alisabeth heard God’s call and she answered it. It was to the mountainous
regions of Albania that Alisabeth was drawn.
While Alisabeth followed her calling in the mountains of Albania, she suffered
many privations. As she trekked through the country of her illustrious
ancestors, Alisabeth delved into Albania’s past. Among the cinders and
clinkers of a glorious history, Alisabeth searched for and found her noble
lineage. She discovered that the crowning achievement of her Grandfather’s
life was that he was an Albanian patriot, and revered as a national hero.
God is not subject to time, and in God’s allotted time Alisabeth located other
family rewards.
Albania is a country in the Balkan Peninsula whose western shores skirt the
Adriatic Sea. On its western frontier Greece and Macedonia are Albania’s
neighbours. The country is mountainous in the east while fertile lowlands
face the Adriatic Sea. Albania was inhabited from the tenth century BC by
the Illyrians, an Indo-European people who later practiced piracy on Roman
shipping. Rome defeated the Illyrians in 168BC and established the country
under the name of Illyricum as a Roman province. When the Roman Empire
was divided in AD395, Illyria east of the Drina River became part of the
Eastern Empire, whose capital was Constantinople. It was occupied by the
Slavs from the 6th Century, its name changed in the 8th –11th centuries to
Arbëri and finally to Albania.
In the theatre of her life which is Albania – it houses her family roots –
Alisabeth focuses the stage light on her forebears with such intensity that
they seem to come alive.
Her love of her new-found country is heroic.
Albania has captured and enraptured Alisabeth’s very being. As the reader
unfurls the pages of the book, he or she will be captivated by the animation
of Alisabeth’s words and phrases, a story told in a way that only Alisabeth
can tell in her inimitable style.
Dennis Benedict Scanlon,
BA
Villa La Salle
Gold Coast,
Queensland.
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