Letter to Paulo Coelho
The Return
Dear Paulo Coehlo
My name is Tiffeny Farag, and I write to you as an Egyptian woman born into a Coptic family, carrying a lineage that feels as old as the desert itself. My grandparents on my father’s side were from Alexandria, Aboukeer, and on September 1st, 1971, they immigrated to Melbourne, Australia with their five boys, seeking a future beyond what they knew, but carrying Egypt in their bones.
My mother’s family comes from Maadi, Cairo. My teta’s father, Naguib Ghaly Migala, owned the first flour mill in Alexandria and was a friend of King Farouk. My family always told me we were fully Egyptian, but I only understood the depth of it when I took an ancestry test recently. It confirmed I am 100% Egyptian. In a world shaped by travellers, conquerors, and migrations, I didn’t expect to be completly Egyptian . Yet somehow, I remained fully of the Nile.
I am now 34 years old, born March 27th, 1991, and the journey of my life has been one of signs, omens, and the silent guidance of forces I didn’t understand at the time.
I first read The Alchemist in 2016, during one of the darkest chapters of my life. After coming out to my family, love suddenly became conditional. I left Melbourne and moved to Launceston, Tasmania, searching not for treasure, but simply for air to breathe. I lived there for 2.5 years, quietly rebuilding myself.
In 2018, I left for Madrid, Spain, following the call of my own desert and the hope of finding love. For five years I wandered Spain, Andalucía, Galicia, the coastlines, the hidden corners, and crossed into Morocco and back to Egypt. I was searching for something I could not name. Eventually, I was forced to return to Australia because of visa reasons. I did not find love there, not in the way I expected.
The first six months back were painful. My heart was still wandering Spain, still dreaming of the life I left behind. Then something unexpected happened, I met a group of queer Arabs ,celebrations, music, warmth, and a kind of belonging I didn’t know I needed. Their presence opened my heart again. And somehow, through this love and acceptance, my own family softened. After 11 years, our relationship healed. The love that once felt conditional finally returned to me unguarded.
Nine years after reading The Alchemist, I picked it up again , without remembering it at all. When I finished, I realised something astonishing, every place I had wandered, every country I had crossed, every decision I had made reflected the journey Santiago walked. I had been living the book without knowing it.
Shortly after, I returned to Egypt for the 13th time. For the first time in my life, I visited the Pyramids. I walked through the Grand Egyptian Museum, overwhelmed by the beauty, by the feeling of coming home to something older than memory. It was as if my ancestors were whispering, “You have returned.”
Lately, omens have found me again, black swans, appearing in moments of confusion, a page torn out of a book that washed onto my feet at the beach, signs from the sky and sea that seem to point me toward a crossroads.
I feel I am standing once more between two timelines, the familiar and the unknown. One asks me to stay where life feels safe, the other asks me to step forward into something I can feel, but not yet see.
Your book guided me once when I was lost.
It feels like it is guiding me again.
Thank you for writing a story that becomes a mirror for so many of us who walk with omens, who search for treasure that is always closer than we think, and who carry the deserts of our ancestors inside us.
With gratitude and a heart full of signs,
Tiffeny Farag
All work is held with care.
For collaboration or inquiries:tiffenyfarag@gmail.com
© Tiffeny Farag