From Cairo to Katrina, An Exile’s Journey
We are the generation that invented a new necessity: discovering our identity, retracing our roots. So it’s not unusual to hear of yet another baby boomer going back to see the land from which parents, grandparents, or earlier ancestors came. But in 1999, Joyce Zonana took it to the extreme, for she is an American Jew, with roots in Egypt. She has written a brilliant book, “Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile’s Journey (Jewish Women Writers)
“I don’t understand why you want to go,” my mother complained. “There’s nothing there for us anymore.” We’d had this discussion many times before, and neither one of us could think of anything new to say. I wanted to visit Cairo, my birthplace, and she didn’t see the point.
My father, lost in the dementia that accompanied his advanced Parkinson’s disease, was silent. Because I knew that he was close to death, I was making my plans with a new urgency. I wanted to go while he was still alive, so that we might talk about whatever I found. For although often he was not with us in the present, his memories of the past were sharp; he talked with clarity and precision about his early days as a Jew in Egypt.
After nearly three decades of deliberation, I was at last on my way to Cairo—a pilgrimage my relatives did not hesitate to call foolish, but which I knew to be essential. Several times already, I had come close: I’d contacted travel agents, learned the price of a ticket, toyed with possible dates. But then I would hear about a bombing, a hijacking, a fatal attack on tourists visiting an ancient site, and my resolve would crumble. “It’s not safe,” I would tell myself, “I won’t be able to manage there alone.” I am, after all, female, Jewish, and American—all characteristics, I believed, that would make me vulnerable in Egypt. I would be a target, an easy mark. Men would accost me on the street and follow me to my hotel; shopkeepers would suspect that I was Jewish and refuse to serve me; at the airport when I was ready to leave, officials would examine my passport, discover my nationality, and detain me. It was impossible to think rationally about what ought to have been a simple journey back to my birthplace. My family’s reluctance to reopen the door they closed nearly fifty years ago made my own desire seem like the most daring transgression. Surely I would be punished for my temerity: the terrorist who brought down my plane would be answering a call, if not from God, then from my own unconscious.
My parents left Egypt illegally in 1951, just a year before the revolution that transformed their country and led, ultimately, to the expulsion of most Jews. When the official inspecting their bags found silver and jewelry among the tightly-packed clothes, my father slipped him several one pound notes. “Every time they found something, Felix gave them another pound,” my mother has told me. Rugs, linens, photographs—for each item, a one-pound note. I was eighteen months old then, impervious to the details of this drama. But I imbibed its essence—my parents’ paralyzing fear—magnifying it as I matured. At every border crossing now, I stiffen, cling to my passport, strive to make myself inconspicuous.
So when my plane lands in Cairo and I approach passport control, I am rigid with fear, certain no one will ever hear from me again. I await my turn in a tumult of anxiety. And then it happens.
I give a man behind a glass barrier my passport.
He peers at it blankly, then hands it back to me.
I am in.
I am stunned, breathless, thrilled. But there is no one with whom to share my joy, no one to hug or pat or kiss, and so I do what I everyone around me is doing: I walk onwards towards the baggage-claim area. Here, three Muslim men unroll a worn brown prayer rug beside the still-empty conveyor belt. They take off their shoes, step onto the rug, and begin a series of deep prostrations. I cannot tell whether they are performing one of the five daily prayers mandated by Islam or if this is a special prayer of homecoming, a formal expression of gratitude for safe landing. Whatever the nature of their rite, their actions mesmerize me, and I watch silently, envying their unselfconscious reverence. I want to make their gestures mine, to bend my knees and bow my head, to touch my forehead to this ground.
Egypt. I have arrived in Egypt. Around me I hear voices. “Ahlan wa sahlan!” people are saying to their relatives and friends, “Welcome!” And in the distance I see the man from my hotel, carrying a small sign with my name on it. Later, in the taxi, when I tell him that I am Jewish and that I was born here, he will smile broadly and touch my hand. “Welcome to your homeland,” he will say in all sincerity, “Ahlan wa sahlan!”
Category: Baby Boomers, Books, Joyce Zonana
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