Remembering the flight from Egypt

From the November 30, 2009, Jerusalem Post.

By Lela Gilbert

"All I can remember... is the element of fear," Joseph Abdel Wahed writes, reflecting on the events of his 12th year. "People in the streets would mock us with the famous Arab insult, Ya yahudi ya ibn el kalb [Jewish son of a dog], or even more ominously Idbah el-Yahud [slit the throats of the Jews].

"This really scared us because there was nowhere to hide. Many of us did not have travel papers and even if we did, the Egyptian authorities wanted to keep us as hostages and not let us out. After the revolution of July 1952, their attitude changed and they were only too glad to kick us out, but not before confiscating everything we owned - our businesses, farms, hospitals and homes and bank accounts."

From 1948 to 1968, between 850,000 and 1 million Jews fled or were expelled from their homes in Arab countries, including Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. Some Jewish refugees refer to the shattering events as their Nakba, borrowing the oft-repeated Arabic word for "catastrophe." Others, particularly those who once lived in Egypt, call it the "second exodus," relating their experiences to the biblical Israelites' miraculous flight from Egypt. Most of these refugees, now in their sunset years, feel blessed to have escaped Egypt and grateful to have made their way to Israel with little more than the shirt on their back and - if they were fortunate - one suitcase.

Joseph Abdel Wahed and Levana Zamir, also from Egypt, now live at opposite ends of the world. But for both of them, the events of May 14, 1948 were, indeed, catastrophic. That was, of course, the day when Israel proclaimed its independence and declared itself a nation, on its own land as bestowed by the UN partition. To put it mildly, the response across the Arab world was anything but congratulatory. Wahed was 12 years old; Zamir was 10. Although they weren't acquainted at the time, they both lived in or near Cairo.

These days, Zamir speaks of her experiences in her breezy, sunlit Tel Aviv apartment, surrounded by colorful décor and a collection of fine art. In a quiet voice she explains that she, her parents and her six brothers were once part of an affluent community that, for generations, had enjoyed an elegant lifestyle that she describes in her book, The Golden Era of the Jews of Egypt, published in cooperation with the University of Haifa.

Then the "catastrophe" struck.

"On May 14, 1948," Zamir recalls, "we were sleeping. All of a sudden, exactly at midnight, people were knocking very, very hard on our door. We woke up and I saw 10 Egyptian officers in their black uniforms. I wasn't afraid because my parents were there and my mother was smiling to comfort me. But the soldiers opened everything. They went through everything. They were searching for something, but we never knew what.

"The next day I went to school [she attended a Catholic elementary school]. The headmaster of the nuns came to me and said, 'They took your uncle to prison!' My uncle lived in a big villa. He, my father and another brother owned one of the largest printing businesses in Cairo. I rushed home and asked my mother, 'Is it true? Is he a criminal?' My mother told me, 'He's not a criminal. It's only because we are Jews.' So then it was even more a trauma for me.