AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Tracy Farrag and I am the guest liaison of the TT Film Festival.

Farrag is spelt exactly like it sounds: like a distant piece of cloth. A far rag.

It’s an Egyptian name.

Most of my growing up was in Diego Martin, but the most significant part of my life was the part of my childhood in Belmont.

That’s my reference point for a lot of who I am. Playing moral. Sno-cone man coming around. Fresh mangoes and bananas at home and amazing people living around us. David Rudder lived up above my grandfather in Belmont.

Do I have a “Corn-vent accent”? Or do I just speak properly?

I started at Sacred Hearts Primary. Then Belmont Girls’ RC.

But, yes, I went to St Joseph’s Convent.

But I felt like a square peg in a round hole there. Maybe part of it was my family situation, but the school didn’t give me an outlet to discover who I was.

I don’t have a clear memory of when my parents divorced.

In those days, children weren’t told anything. You just moved with the current of life and didn’t know where you’d end up. Some days, a parent picked you up at school and you went with them.

My father didn’t have custody. We were with him while the legal battles were going on. So it was more like a case of kidnapping, I guess.

I am myself divorced and have one amazing son, Saif.

We moved back to Trinidad when he was about nine.

I was raised Roman Catholic and some of my real grounding in my beliefs started in St Francis Church in Belmont.

But some of the stuff just didn’t make sense. Like why God would create mysteries (to confuse) the very brain he created.

Fr David Olliviere, an amazing human being, told me, “Never let the church come in the way of your spirituality.” And that’s been my motto ever since.

Love, kindness and compassion for people should be the guiding principles of life.

I think God wants us to be happy and joyful. The God I love doesn’t want you to suffer. A lot of suffering is self-imposed.

After my first real job as a BWee flight attendant, I couldn’t do an eight-to-four job at all! On planes, it was always a new crew, new passengers, different destinations, different planes.

[caption id="attachment_975742" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Tracy Farrag is the guest liaison of the TT Film Festival. - Mark Lyndersay[/caption]

After Stockholm, Zurich, Toronto, Baltimore, I just couldn’t do an office job. The thought that I would have to see these people at the office for the entire week – and, come next Monday, it would be the same people again for the whole week – was too much for me.

I left BWee because I got married. I met my ex-husband on a flight. Kinda cliche for a BWee flight attendant.

I think we were married actively for, like, 16 years. We finally divorced after 19 or 20 years. I lost count. It wasn’t important at that point.

I’ve worked in video production. Corporate work has been the most consistent thing.

I was a coproducer on Sally’s Way, the first children’s feature film produced in Trinidad and Tobago.

And I am working with Ma