Out Of Egypt

 

 

I finished reading this book. I liked it immensely. I bought it because it speaks of a family, a Jewish family, who after various odysseys ended up in Egypt, in Alexandria.

Although my father’s family wasn’t Jewish, they had the same destiny and they ended up in Cairo.

My grandfather, a utopistic young man just graduated in architecture, had a fierce disagreement with the prime minister of the time, which brutally turned out in my grandfather being exiled.

When you emigrate you leave your country keeping it deeply in your heart. When you are exiled, your country has rejected you. You don’t take it with you. You feel betrayed by your own country.

My grandfather and his young family began travel the world. His children were born in all continent, a part from Asia – or perhaps not even Asia if Australia is considered belonging to that continent (or perhaps it isn’t?). The family acquired an international flair, not really connected to any country in particular. But at the end, they settled in Cairo, and Egypt became the only home they ever had.

Reading the book I found so many aspects of everyday life in Egypt that I had already known, because of the many memories shared with us about their normal life, there. It was like listening to my father and his sisters and brothers, when they met and spoke about their time there. The people of the many nations they had to do with: mainly Greeks, French, Italians, and of course British – being Egypt under British protectorate.

It was a real strange feeling. Through the words in the book, the description of the different people there, the different languages they all spoke… it was indeed like listening to my father’s family. And it was moving on one side, and very awkward on the other.

I can’t say anything else, I am still feeling strange inside.