This summer, I traveled to Egypt, where much of my extended family lives. I had not visited for six years, and during my absence the elders in my family, including my mother, my grandmother and my grandfather, had passed away.

Although my mother had always told me stories about her childhood in Egypt, I really didn’t know much about my family. My grandmother especially had always been something of a mystery. I had seen her only three times in my life, and I knew very little about her.

I knew that she was a wonderful cook, that she raised chickens and rabbits and had a one-legged duck. She made homemade pita bread in a stone oven on the rooftop, and when we admired her jewelry, she readily gave it to us, even when we protested. She was a sweet, giving woman.

But I did have a few memories, one of them of a time when we were alone together. We were sitting on the floor, where she did much of her work for our meals, and she was stuffing eggplant with rice from a big bowl. As Grandmother worked, she looked at me, and proudly and emphatically she said, “I raised all my children to be educated—every one of them.”

I remember looking in her eyes, trying to understand her meaning. Her eyes looked sad, as they often did. Her small mouth was pressed. I knew she was trying to tell me something important, but I didn’t know what it was.

When I arrived in Cairo this summer and saw my family, I was surprised at what a difference six years had made. Babies were now young children; some people were taller; some were balding and some were going gray.

I was different, too. For the first time, I spoke directly with my aunts and uncle rather than relying on my mother to relay information.

One day, I visited my cousin Yasmeen. She offered me cake and tea, and after we talked for a while, I said, “Tell me what you remember about Grandmother.”

She replied with a question. “Did you know it was Grandmother that talked Grandfather into letting your mother go to college? He said no at first. And when your mother went, the others were able to go too.” On another visit, my cousin Heba and I sat cross-legged on the bed listening to our children play in the next room. “Once,” Heba told me, “Grandmother saw the next-door neighbor beating her daughter because she wanted to go to school instead of doing housework. Grandmother told that lady, ‘Never, ever beat your daughter for wanting to learn!’ ” Heba paused, and then said, “That girl is now a school principal at the school where I teach.”

Children in my grandmother’s small rural community in Egypt were unlikely even to finish high school. But all five of my grandmother’s children—four girls and one boy—finished college. Two of them went on to get master’s degrees. And when I was 4, my family left Egypt for New York, where my mother earned her doctorate from New York University.

As I considered the mystery of my grandmother, the meaning behind her emphatic words to me so long ago became clear, as clear as what she had left unspoken—that she herself knew only how to write her name.

My grandmother, an illiterate homemaker, had been determined to leave a legacy of learning for her family. Her passion for the education that she did not have had meant better lives not only for her children, but for her grandchildren and beyond. She was more than sweet and giving; she was my first advocate.

And now, Grandmother, because of you, I am able to write, though you were not. And now, Grandmother, I understand, and because I understand, I can thank you.

This article was orginially published in World Ark, a magazine of Heifer International. Used with permission.