Out of Egypt: A Memoir (review)

· Book Reviews' 121 Out of Egypt: A Memoir, by Andre Aciman. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994. 340 pp. $20.00. Most historians of the modem Arab world, like myself, are accustomed to work with archival data and engage in field work. Those of us who also examine a memoir that blends prose with historical testimony may feel they are either caught in a complex web of incomprehensible literary gibberish or undergoing a most gratifying learning experience. Andre Aciman's memoir is most certainly gratifying. It is about the author's life in Alexandria during the 1950s and 1960s, in the era of Nasser and the Arab-Israeli conflict: the fmal days ofcolonialism in the Arab world. This was a time when strong currents ofxenophobia were directed at the "exploiters ofthe past"-foreigners, Jews, Christian minorities. Under the cover ofelegant and witty prose Aciman chronicles the life ofa Sephardi Jewish family imbued in Ottoman, Ladino, Italian, and French culture, a family whose members were endowed with different nationality status as was frequently the case in Sephardi families that entered Egypt a'fier the third quarter of the nineteenth century. His book is laced with data that is vital for historians, sociologists, and anthropologists, not merely of the Jews of Egypt but also of their relations with other communities: Muslim, Greek, Armenian, European. Set in Alexandria, the memoir is reminiscent of chronicles on similar Jewish communities I read, such as cosmopolitan Tangier. Like Moroccan Tangier, with its French- and Spanish-named boulevards and its multi-cultural school system, Alexandria was populated by diverse multilingual nationals, among them Jews, who at one time or another enjoyed the protection offoreign consuls, affected the local real estate market, and owned major department stores, banks, and houses of commerce. Like the noted Pariente, Pino, Toledano, Hasan, and Laredo families ofpre-1956 Tangier, Alexandria had its Sephardi and Italian Jewish counterparts, among them Aghion, Rolo, and de Menasce. Aciman's Alexandrian family is portrayed in the memoir as well established and flamboyant, one whose leading members-Uncle ViIi, a former Italian fascist, two domineering grandmothers, the "Princess" and the "Saint," the father, Aunt Elsa, Uncle Isaac, Uncle Nessim-were true daredevils. The family and its Egyptian servants appeared to have coexisted quite happily, as did most Alexandrian Jews with their nonJewish neighbors, Christians and Muslims, despite the evidence of certain communal tensions, mutual ethnic suspicions, and the growing xenophobic tendencies among Muslims. The central point in Aciman's saga is his family's fmding its Alexandrian dream crumbling during and subsequent to the Sinai/Suez War ofOctober-November 1956. Though mostly concentrating on his family, the main threads weaving through Aciman's book are themes pertaining to Jewish and other minority communities' self- 122 SHOFAR Summer 1997 Vol. 15, No.4 liquidation process in face of Nasser's Pan-Arab, antisemitic, anti-Zionist and antiWestern manifestations: the need to smuggle liquid assets out of the country; the disintegration of a city's complex cosmopolitan culture with the emergence of Egyptianization and cultural Arabization; the expulsion of Jews and foreigners in the push for national homogeneity; sequestration/nationalization of immovable.assets and freezing of bank accounts; and the feeling among Jews that government secret police agents and informants violated their privacy. In my own research I, too, found similar evidence as to the regime's attitude vis-a-vis the Jews. (See Chapter 8 in Michael M. Laskier, The Jews ofEgypt: 1920-197D-In the Midst ofZionism, Antisemitism and the Middle East Conflict, New York University Press, 1992.) Regardless oftheir Eurocentric tendencies, many Jews did not make the decision to leave Egypt because of disenchantment with the local milieu. They left reluctantly in light of the regime's measures to deprive them of their dignity and assets. True, ordinary Egyptians occasionally manifested contempt toward the Jews after the 1950s, as Acirnan confIrms when he and his uncle Isaac encountered anti-Jewish slurs from Alexandrian Muslim youths after the Suez War (p. 183). Aciman demonstrates, however, that the Muslims were basically tolerant, but under Nasser were prodded by the authorities to manifest displeasure with the Jews and other "non-patriotic" elements. The regime's propaganda against Europeans and...