The Suitcase - Six Attempts to Cross a Border

Frances Stonor Saunders is a writer, broadcaster, and documentary-maker. Ten years ago, she was handed an old suitcase filled with her father's papers. Her father's life had been a study in borders - exiled from Romania during the war, to Turkey then Egypt and Britain, and ultimately to the borderless territory of Alzheimer's. Frances found herself with the dilemma of two competing urges: wanting to know what was in the suitcase and wanting not to know. Her story is about the silences and stories that protect us, and the borders we construct, literally and figuratively, to fortify our sense of who we are.