MYSTERY MEAL: A new series, “Shocking Family Secrets,” delves into the buried lives of everyday people. (Getty Images)
What if, from the time you were toddlers, your father told you and your sister that your mother had abandoned you?
And what if he then took you both to live for days, weeks or sometimes months at a time in different countries — marrying a new wife in each place?
That was the only life that a young woman named Nefertiti ever knew. In each city, her father would go immediately to the local mosque, beg them for assistance — money, a place to stay and food for the girls.
He would then find someone to marry, beat the woman senseless and run somewhere else with the girls where he’d repeat the pattern all over again.
“Shocking Family Secrets,” premiering tonight on Discovery Fit & Health, bills itself as a new series about what lies just under the surface of otherwise ordinary-seeming families.
Woody Allen would be so happy to know that there’s now a show about dysfunctional families with gigantic secrets premiering on Thanksgiving night.
I mean, the man created a long-standing film clichè about the undoing of family dynamics on Thanksgiving.
The series features three family stories each week — and upcoming episodes promise all kinds of weirdness including cousins who marry secretly, on-the-run fugitive mothers and kids raised in secret.
Tonight, it turns out that not only did Nefertiti’s father get married 34 times while they were moving from country to country — marrying some for a few days for her money or her home before splitting again — but that he’d been married seven times before he ran away from them.
During the 14 years he had them, the kids lived in Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, the US and Sweden — with their father always scamming the local mosque and the local women into saving his sorry backside.
When they were teens, he finally turned on his daughters, abandoning them alone in a ratty hotel in Egypt.
You’ll be happy to know that the three segments premiering tonight all conclude with a reunion or confrontation so that you won’t be left wondering what-the-heck happened to them.
Good, interesting fun.
Tonight, it turns out that not only did Nefertiti’s father married 34 times while they were moving from country to country marrying some for a few days for her money or her home before splitting again, but that he’d been married seven times before he ran away from them — and the country.
During the 14 years he had them, the kids lived in Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, the US and Sweden — always scamming the local mosque and the local women into saving his sorry backside.
When they were teens, fe finally turned on his daughters, abandoning them alone in a ratty hotel in Egypt.
You’ll be happy to know that the three segments premiering tonight all conclude with a reunion or confrontation so that you won’t be left wondering what the heck happened to them.