My family hails from Egypt.
My father loved his birth country, and I grew up listening to stories of
what sounded like a magical kingdom. ...And kingdom it was. I spent countless hours listening to stories
of his fascinating Egyptian life, of his great friendships, of his home and family
I never met, of his horse rides along the pyramids with his dog Faris, and of
him crossing the desert on a jeep with only a wet handkerchief on his head which he kept wet by dipping in a bucket of water he had on the seat next to him. Stories illustrated by beautiful black and
white photographs my mom has in deteriorating photo albums in Switzerland.
It was a different Egypt then; an Egypt where Jews were
welcomed and thrived. So much so, that
when my father, who was in the equestrian team that was slated to go to the
Olympics before the Second World War, was denied a visa because he was Jewish,
the team leader decided that if Raymond, my father, could not participate, then
the team would not be going to the Olympics.
And they didn’t.
After the war and the creation of Israel, all that
changed. Nasser took over the kingdom
and made life miserable for Egyptian Jews by persecuting them and expropriating their wealth. My father always
thought of himself as Egyptian first and Jewish second; but he eventually was forced by circumstances to leave the country he loved. He ended
up emigrating to Brazil, a country my parents knew nothing about and whose
language they did not speak, in order to create a new free life. A country he did not die in, but where I was
born, and where I learned to be rootless.
Today Mohamed Morsi announced that he was shutting down the
last working Synagogue in Egypt for so-called “security reasons”. To the world at large, it’s just one small blip
on the news ticker. To me, it should not
matter. I am not Egyptian, not religious, and, hey, where there were once
80,000 Jews living in harmony with Christians and Muslims, there are now only
100, or so, who for some unknowable and insane reason remain in a country that has long ceased to welcome them. What does it matter if they
can no longer get together and celebrate their beliefs, right? No, it should not matter to me, yet the news
weighs on me because of the stories I grew up with, learned by rote, and understand
now, many years later, how they form who I am.
If this Arab Spring goes on for much longer, god help us when
the summer comes.
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