'I flew to Morocco with an old photo of my birth father. Then a stranger said "follow me."'

Growing up with a blonde mother and a red-headed step-father, Nadia Mahjouri always stood out when she was out with her parents. 

Her dark skin, six-foot height and curly brown hair meant she was often asked where she was from, and for most people, 'Launceston' wasn't a satisfactory response. 

"If I said Morocco, they'd be happy," says Nadia. 

Nadia knew her biological father was from Morocco. But that's all she knew. Her mother never talked about him and Nadia didn't push it.

Watch: Types of Unhealthy Father Daughter Relationships. Article continues after the video.

"It very much felt like this was this no-go topic in our family, and that included me being from Morocco, and my father, so we just didn't talk about it. 

"But as much as she didn't want it to be part of a conversation, it was part of my life's conversation everywhere I went. I was in a community where there wasn't much cultural diversity, but I was always curious," she added.

Nadia knew both her mother and her grandmother were uncomfortable with conversations about her biological father, so she let it go. 

Until she had her own child at 22-years-old.

"I had a child quite young, and I remember thinking, I've travelled a lot, why do I not know about my own culture?

"And I remember feeling like I wanted to be able to answer his questions in a way that my mother couldn't answer mine. 

Nadia Mahjouri. Image: supplied.

"It started to become quite real to me that there was this man out there that I didn't know. And who is this man? Why has he just disappeared from my life?

"I wanted to know about the culture, but I also wanted to figure out who he was and what happened?"

The first thing Nadia did was write a letter.

She enlisted the help of a friend to write a letter in French, and sent it to the only address her mother could remember from her time in Morocco. 

In the letter, Nadia explained who she was and, being the nineties, she requested her father leave her a letter at a local post office in Morocco with an address for her to visit.

And with that, Nadia packed up her four-month-old son, and caught a plane to Morocco. 

"I went to the post office every day and there was no letter. And I'm just thinking one of two things have happened – either the letter didn't reach them, or my dad's got another family and doesn't want to see me."

But, since she was already in Morocco, Nadia decided not to give up just yet. Instead, she took to the local neighbourhood, armed with an old photo of her dad, and started asking around.

In the beginning, no one recognised him. Until someone did.  

"We followed him down these little narrow alleyways. And he gets to a little arched doorway and just points at it and nods and disappears again."

Nadia knocked on the door, holding the photo in her hand, when a small, elderly lady opened the door. 

"She just knows immediately and starts crying."

One after the other, family members began turning up at the house. It turned out, they had received the letter, but Nadia had been attending the wrong post office and didn't receive their reply. 

"The reason they'd all come is that none of them had seen my father in 25 years, and so they all came to find out all about my father," she said.

Nadia met her aunts and uncles and extended family, and it was lovely.

But she still hadn't found him. 

Plus, she still didn't know much about his relationship with her mother. They were married, and left Morocco for Scotland at one point. 

She also knew they split on bad terms, and her mother hated talking about him. But she loved Morocco. 

"She never spoke about my father, but she did talk about Morocco as a country, and she loved it."

The only thing was, Nadia's father wasn't in Morocco.

Years later, Nadia found him by accident, when the old White Pages put its contents onto the internet. Nadia searched her family name for fun, and her father popped up. 

It turned out, he was in Australia all along.

They exchanged a couple of telephone calls and her father revealed he had been involved in the attempted assassination of Moroccan King Hassan II in 1972. He claimed that was the reason he had never returned to his home country. 

After a while, Nadia's father changed his number, and a few years passed before she tried to contact him again. This time, they met. 

"It was a strange feeling because he was big and soft and lovely. I remember feeling at that time like, even though I was furious at him for so many things, there was also this sense of, this is what I didn't have – this kind of really big, kind of soft, safe-feeling man."

They only met one time before losing touch again. 

"He is a problematic character. He drank a lot."

Nadia has written a novel based on her story. Image: Supplied.

But for Nadia, the effort wasn't in vain, because she ultimately gained a new family in Morocco, who embraced her mother and step-father as well. 

"I developed the most beautiful relationship with my aunts and cousins. I learnt about my grandmother – they all said she died of a broken heart because her firstborn son disappeared and never came back. 

"She had died before I got there, so I never actually met her. But I have this beautiful relationship with this family in Morocco."

All these years, Nadia's family assumed her mother had kept her father away from Morocco. They didn't realise he'd left them too. 

"So, what I found was this beautiful culture and this beautiful family ready to embrace me, and that's what I was looking for, this understanding of kind of where I came from, and a connection to the country and to the culture. In reality, I have a stepfather, and I've been fathered."

Twenty-five years later, Nadia has written a novel based on her experiences, called Half Truth. 

"Writing about it for me was an opportunity to delve into my grandmother's life and to try and get a little bit deeper into understanding her cultural beliefs. 

"What would it have been like to be a small village girl and to go through all the changes, because there have been incredible political changes in Morocco, and cultural changes."

Nadia says the experience has also been a gift to her son, who also has distinct Moroccan features. 

"He's been going back to Morocco since he was a baby. I feel like it's a gift I've been able to give him that I didn't have myself. So that's been lovely."

Feature image: Supplied.