At the age of fourteen, I was one of the Jews caught in the mass migration that came to be known as the Second Exodus—the result of the “Suez Crisis,” the 1956 war that pitted Egypt against the armies of France and Great Britain over ownership of the Suez Canal, and of Israel over the right of passage through the Red Sea.
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Since our flight from Egypt, the Passover celebration fills me with complex and contradictory feelings—the joy of being reunited with family members, the longing for the presence of the loved ones that our exodus has dispersed in faraway countries, and a sense of deep absurdity as I remember the surreal feelings of Passover seders of my childhood.
The absurdity of the situation was that my family was commemorating the exodus of the Jews from Egypt—while we were Jews living in Egypt!!! Nothing about Passover in Egypt made sense, and none of the elders in my family could ever come up with a sensible explanation.
Why were we still in Egypt after Moses took us into the desert for forty years? Had the Exodus really existed? If Jews had really reached the Promised Land, why did they—WE—return to the land of slavery? Every year I would ask the same questions and every year the questions would be met, first with unsatisfactory responses, then with no responses at all.
Yet, despite of the absurdity and the confusion of the situation, I remember with fondness the first Passover celebrations of my life. My parents had divorced when I was four, and my father and I were living with Nona, my grandmother, on the top floor of a 19th-century French-style building on King Fuad I Avenue, a short walk from the Ezbekeyya Gardens.
Nona had lived in that apartment for decades with Nono, my grandfather, and she had remained there after his death, even though the apartment was too big for a woman alone. When her children urged her to give up the apartment and come live with one of them, she refused adamantly—this is where her husband had died, and this is where she would die. When they insisted, Nona would remind them that it was not only her home, but also the home of her longtime servants, Abdu and Mayasoon, and their many children who were born and raised in their rooms on the roof. Where would they go? What would happen to them? If anyone said another word, Nona would say, “Basta! Enough!” or she would close her eyes and pretend to fall asleep in her armchair.
Life at Nona’s revolved around Shabbat and the Jewish High Holidays. At the earliest hour, on the morning of the celebrations, Abdu and Mayasoon would open the doors and windows of the reception rooms to let in the fresh air. They would polish the silverware and set the dining room table. In the evening, the crystal chandelier and the menorah would glow, and the clan would gather around Nona’s long table.
The immediate family—Papa’s brother, Oncle Léon, his wife Tante Marie, and their three daughters; his sister Tante Rebecca, her husband Oncle Maurice, and their three daughters—was often joined by second and third cousins and other guests. After the prayers, Nona never failed to say a blessing for the absent members of the clan who had gone to Palestine before it became the state of Israel—Oncle Victor, his wife Judith, their children, Elie and Annie, and Felix, Rebecca’s son from an earlier marriage.
The prayers always ended with the Mourner’s kaddish for our family members in France, Austria, and elsewhere who had died in a place called “The Camps” during the Nazi regime. When I asked Papa about it, he just said it was a bad place that no longer existed. The prayers’ ultimate words were the traditional, “Next Year in Jerusalem!” It sounded like an inaccessible dream, yet Jerusalem was only eight hundred kilometers away, just a long train ride in the days before Egypt’s war with Israel. There had to be a way to get there instead of just praying about it!
During those celebrations, Oncle Léon would read Oncle Victor’s latest letter from Israel. Since mail service between Egypt and Israel no longer existed, the letters were routed through Tante Jeanne in Italy. In every letter, Victor urged Nona and his brothers and sister to join him in Israel. Since it was hazardous to mention Israel, they used a euphemism in its stead—Israel became ‘chez nous,’ which means ‘our home’ in French. Few among us were keen to flee to Israel, but we admired Victor, Judith, their children and Felix for fulfilling the dream of Yehuda Cohen—Nona’s father—of rebuilding the land of the Bible.
We all feared for our family in Israel. The threat of a second war between Israel and a new alliance of Arab countries loomed large, and our kin would be called to arms. Even my cousin Annie. Women served alongside men in the new Jewish state’s military.
I loved the Shabbat gatherings and the holidays, especially Passover. My cousins would usually spend the whole day at Nona’s, and the seven of us would help Nona and the servants prepare for the evening festivities. Every minute of the day was full of anticipation. Live chickens roamed the kitchen until a rabbi came and slaughtered them in accordance with the kosher ritual. Mayasoon would burn their feathers on the stove to make plucking them easier, and Abdu would cook them. Once again, the regular silverware was put away and the silver holiday set would be brought out and rubbed until it shone brightly.
Shortly after sunset, Papa and Oncle Léon would come home from the synagogue, and we would sit around the huge dining room table and begin the prayers, punctuated by Oncle Léon’s painstaking explanation of each part of the interminable ritual. Sometimes one of the youngest children, Simone, Viva, or I, couldn’t suppress outbursts of laughter, and Nona would silence us with a severe look. By the time dinner was served, we’d all be starved nearly to death, but Nona wouldn’t have allowed anyone to skip a single sentence in the prayer book.
When the prayers turned to the ten plagues of Egypt and the flight through the desert to the Promised Land, I would raise Cain with a million questions. Had our ancestors stayed in Egypt while the rest of the Jews had followed Moses through the crossing of the desert—or did some Jews return to Egypt? I couldn’t believe the similarities between the situation of the Jews in Moses’ time, three millenaries ago, and our circumstance as Egyptian Jews in the mid-twentieth century. We were no longer slaves, but we were persecuted and humiliated by a new Pharaoh who had risen in Egypt. His name was Gamal Abdel Nasser, and his armies had fought the Jews in the land of Canaan and been defeated. And, across the Sinai, there was a new Moses. His name was David Ben Gurion, and he had led the Hebrews to independence in their ancestral lands.
So why on earth were we still in Egypt?
Nona had little patience with my incessant questions, and she would bark an imperious, “God has His reasons. When He decides that the time is right, He will take us back to Jerusalem.” If I insisted, she would shake a piercing finger at me and sternly say, “Basta!”
When my cousins went home, I would feel lonely and sneak into my grandfather’s forbidden study. Ignoring Nona’s interdiction, I would open one of my grandfather’s books. Some of them had drawings, and I would look at them for hours in an attempt to decipher the mysteries contained in the books they illustrated. Even the smell of paper and ink was an invitation to a magical journey. There was comfort and peace in the books, even if I couldn’t read them—yet.
When Nona caught me coming out of my grandfather’s library, she gave me a hard look and sent me to my room. I was so upset that I told Abdu that I was sick and couldn’t join Nona for dinner. She came to my room and sat on a chair by my bed. “It’s not your first time sneaking into Nono’s room, is it?” My face must have registered shock and fear, but she wasn’t as angry as she looked. “You thought I hadn’t noticed, did you?” I looked down. Nona bent over and tapped me on the forehead. “If I catch you again, I’ll spank you until your backside is as red as a monkey’s. You’re too young for these books! They are rare editions, and I don’t want you to damage them. But someday, when you’re older and wiser, I’ll give them to you.”
It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected, and I could only mumble a weak thank you. Nona put her hand on my forehead and blessed me. “You’re his spitting image, son portrait craché! You bear his name, you have the same eyes, the same intelligence, the same inquisitive mind. He would have been proud of you.” She raised her hand and shook it in a threatening way, “But he was too kind, like your father. I won’t be so kind, so you better behave!”
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