Rizk was born to Arab Christian parents in Ottoman Syria (likely modern Lebanon). His mother, who had American citizenship, died when he was young, leaving him in the care of an illiterate grandmother who did not tell him of his American citizenship, which he learns of only when he is twelve; it takes him five more years before he is able to obtain his passport.Lecture brochure, accessed 17 July 2010. At the same time, he has been told "many wonderful, unbelievable things" about the United States by his teacher, who describes it as "a country like heaven...where everything is bigger and grander and more beautiful than it has ever been anywhere else in the world...where men do the deeds of giants and think the thoughts of God".Amir B. Marvasti, Karyn D. McKinney, Middle Eastern lives in America, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. p.5. Rizk realizes, even in his imagination, that America was "everything that my present life was not",Werner Sollors, Ethnic Modernism, Harvard University Press, 2008. pp.194–199. especially given the horrors that befell Syria in World War I. As soon as he was able, he left Syria for the United States. At the Port of Beirut, he boarded the S/S Sinaia, which set sail on March 30, 1927 and arrived at the Port of Providence, Rhode Island, on April 27. As the son of Charles Rizk, a naturalized United States citizen, he travelled on U.S. Passport number 323879
