Sukkot in Cairo!

(photos, stories, and conversations are purposefully made non-specific. Apologies if it takes away from the story..)

I managed to get myself out of bed last Monday - sleeping being my prime activity in Cairo - to attend a Sukkot celebration (a Jewish holiday) in Cairo. Figured it could be fun to see whether my Jewish compatriots were good cooks. (answer: hmm... not really.)

I phoned Carmen Weinstein, the head of the Jewish community council in Cairo, to see if I could come - “hi, my name is Mohamed, can I come to Sukkot?” - she had one question (which she repeated, eeek, 3 times): “are you a journalist?” - I assured her I wasn’t. She said I was welcome.

Actually, the only suspicious people about this little enterprise of mine were the half-dozen policemen at the entry of the Maadi synagogue. Whom I am sure ran my license plate to check me. Oh well.

Later, as I chatted with Carmen’s sister, she laughed and told me that Carmen wasn’t very keen on journalists, who generally ‘report things they don’t even understand’. As I thought of the (much bedeviled and ultimately cancelled) visit of old Egyptian Jews last May (that I first mentioned here)and the abysmal media coverage it received, I couldn’t but nod in agreement.

The crowd was as follows: 20 or so people, overwhelmingly female, average age 65, lingua franca Arabo-french. The only Hebrew I overheard was a new kid at the Israeli embassy from Rishon Letzion, and some tall girl speaking broken hebrew with a heavy American accent - surely an AUC exchange student. And the man who did the Torah reading - the only person with a kippa. (thank God I didn’t bring mine. :). And a couple of frenchies - because, as we established, there’s always a frenchie :).

And three or four veiled women, whom I assumed were friends of someone, or lived nearby and grew up in the synagogue’s vicinity, etc. I was sooooo wrong: they turned out to be the children of Jewish women married to Muslims, so they celebrate both religions- they just happen to be practicing Muslims. And who, as children to a Jewish mother, were viewed as Jews by the Community... I found that so simple, yet so fascinating!

There was also this loud and a little weird Egyptian (Muslim) guy, who turned out to be the Community’s lawyer-cum-MC-cum-caterer apparently, whose strangely-shaped belly was almost as inflated as his ego! He numbers the Jewish community in Cairo to 1000 people (several multiples of other estimations), many being intermarried, etc, and who choose to stay out of the public realm.

And ten old Egyptian Jewish women bickering in Arabic. I laughed hard when one of them asked me - “oh, so you’re Gloris’ grandson?”
Ah, grannies...

Half an hour later, of course, I was joyfully chatting with some ladies about life in Egypt and abroad (as many of their relatives and children do), traffic, how taxi drivers take advantage of old ladies (I ended up driving one of them, who was too afraid to take a taxi alone, home), of the holidays, I was forcefully fed more greasy fish-fingers, etc.
The usual :)

It was straight out of a history book. A glimpse of a strange past, of the vestiges of a reality that no-longer existed. For instance one of them, an octogenarian with whom I had a long chat, seemed straight out of André Aciman’s ‘Out of Egypt’: she said she lived all her life here, felt “almost Egyptian” (she’s an Italian citizen, somehow), and that her dad swore he’d never visit Israel and that she’d never been, had no intention to, had no relatives there (“pas une fourmi!”, she said), and that she “was born, has lived, and will die here”.

I was made to promise I would make it to the Adly synagogue on Monday if I were still in Cairo then - “Lazem tigi lundi prochain - inshallah. Khalaas, promise?*”

* you must come next Monday, God willing. Alright, promise?

(A related post on Egyptian Jews is here, btw.)