Sounds from North Africa

Sounds from North Africa

By Bruce Maddy-Weitzman

WHEN LOOKING AT REGIONAL developments and how they might affect their own lives, Israelis understandably tend to fix their gaze eastward. Ironically, since the end of the state of war between Egypt and Israel in 1979, Israelis have become generally indifferent towards the goings-on along the Nile. This is even more the case with regard to events further west, in Algeria and Morocco, the “core” states of North Africa. ... Full story

Lettre d'un pere à sa fille assassinee pour avoir refuse de porter le voile

from Amazigh World:

Katia Bengana : Une héroïne, un repère, une voie

Meftah est une petite ville à une cinquantaine de kilomètres d’Alger. Nous sommes en 1994. L’Algérie, au plus fort de la terreur islamiste, était à feu et à sang. L’Etat était au bord de l’effondrement. La révolution Khomeiniste était sur le point de se reproduire par la terreur au sud de la méditerranée, alors que l’Occident, faisant le jeu de l’Internationale Islamiste, permettait aux « réseaux de soutien au maquis algérien » de se former sur son sol pendant que le régime militaire d’Alger était en quête d’un compromis avec le GIA, laissant les démocrates, la presse indépendante, les femmes, les travailleurs… seuls face à la bête immonde avec pour seule arme, leur courage et leur ferme détermination, scandée à maintes reprises dans les rues d’Alger, de Tizi-Ouzou et d’autres villes d’Algérie, qu’était ce slogan : « Ni Téhéran, ni Khartoum, Ni Kaboul, l’Algérie sera libre et démocratique ».


Bien que les cibles intégristes les plus en vue étaient d’abord les services de sécurités, les jeunes appelés de l’armée, tous issus des couches populaires, les journalistes, les sommités intellectuelles, les militants démocrates… la femme aura été celle qui, bien avant le début officiel de leur « guerre sainte » en 1992, a subi de plein fouet la barbarie du fascisme vert. En l’absence de statistiques, politique officielle oblige, on parle de plusieurs milliers de femmes assassinées, autant d’autres violées collectivement dont beaucoup étaient devenues mères de plusieurs enfants nés de pères impossibles à déterminer et ayant grandis dans les maquis, loin du moindre contact avec la civilisation, des centaines d’autres femmes étaient réduites à l’état d’esclavage dans les casemates où elles étaient détenues…


Aussi, 1994 aura été l’année qui avait vu la stratégie intégriste se transformer pour en faire des carnages collectifs et des rapts de jeunes filles et des femmes en général le quotidien de populations entières notamment celles qui vivent loin des grands centres urbains. Dans ce sillage, les femmes sans voile (pas seulement) étaient harcelées et menacées en permanence dans leur intégrité physique. Beaucoup se rappelle encore ce jour de 1994, lorsque Alger (et d’autres villes) découvrit ses murs et ses boulevards totalement placardés par des affiches portant la signature du GIA et sommant toutes les femmes de se mettre au voile sous huitaine. Passé ce délai, toute femme sans voile sera exécutée à la première occasion. Beaucoup, se sentant seules et démunies, s’étaient résignées à le porter. D’autres, plus tenaces, continuaient à vaquer, cheveux en l’air, bravant la menace islamiste bien réelle et livrant aux « hommes », souvent circonspects, une leçon de bravoure et de détermination bien rare.


L’une d’elles, s’appelait Katia Bengana, à peine 17 ans, brillante lycéenne à Meftah, une petite ville dans la Mitidja qui était alors surnommée par les hordes islamistes « les territoires libérés » en raison de la quasi absence de l’Etat dans cette région où le GIA régnait en maître absolu. C’est dans ce contexte de terreur où pratiquement toute la gente masculine courbait l’échine pour sauver sa peau, que la jeune Katia reçoit plusieurs avertissements sous forme de menaces afin de la contraindre à se voiler. Elle refusait d’obtempérer affichant une détermination insupportable pour les barbus et qui avait impressionné ses professeurs, ses camarades et une population subissant au quotidien le cauchemar de l’obscurantisme religieux. Elle voulait être libre, elle voulait être digne, elle voulait être femme. Elle fut froidement et lâchement assassinée par une meute de barbus sur le chemin de son lycée le 28 février 1994. Depuis, Katia, accédant à l’immortalité, est devenue un symbole de résistance et d’épanouissement pour toutes les femmes et tous les hommes épris de démocratie et de Liberté.


Après tant d’années, Katia est toujours là, quelque part autour de nous, mais ses parents, résignés dans leur dignité, sont toujours inconsolables. Son père, décide de sortir de son silence, adresse une lettre émouvante à sa fille. Lisez-la et célébrez partout Katia Bengana, cette jeune fille intelligente qui avait tenu tête à des hordes intégristes armées jusqu’aux dents, pour que son sacrifice ne soit jamais vain.

Allas Di Tlelli (alias Halim AKLI)


LETTRE D'UN PERE À SA FILLE ASSASSINEE POUR AVOIR REFUSE DE PORTER LE VOILE (1)

Le 28 février 1994 - le 28 février 2010, voilà déjà 16 ans depuis ton assassinat par l’intégrisme religieux pour avoir refusé de porter le voile... Et depuis cette date, ta mère n’a pas cessé de te pleurer chaque jour que Dieu fait. Aujourd’hui ma chère Katia, je tiens à t’annoncer que ta mère est venue te rejoindre pour de bon dans sa dernière demeure en cette date du 23.01.2008 vers 23 heures environ.

Prends soin de ta mère, ma chère Katia. Fasse Dieu qu’elle ne manque de rien avec toi. Rassure-la que de notre côté tout va bien, et qu’elle n’a pas à se faire de soucis surtout pour Celia, la dernière de la famille. Car ici-bas, tu lui as beaucoup manquée Katia. Elle a manqué de tout à cause de cette politique favorable à l’intégrisme religieux de la part de ceux qui sont censés nous protéger et nous rendre justice. Ta perte cruelle, son chagrin, son désespoir, ses souffrances, ton deuxième assassinat à travers cette réconciliation nationale ont fait que ta mère et moi-même n’avons pas pu tenir le coup. La non-prise en charge de notre situation dramatique par l’Etat, les difficultés matérielles et sociales suite à ta disparition ont fait que ta mère n’a pas pu résister à sa maladie qui n’a pas été prise en charge afin de la sauver d’une mort prématurée par manque de moyens et de désespoir.

Aussi, j’accuse le pouvoir algérien de nous avoir abandonnés à notre sort. J’accuse ceux qui ont relâché et pardonné à ces sanguinaires aux mains tachées de sang. J’accuse le pouvoir algérien pour ses sympathies avec les bourreaux de nos parents. J’accuse cette réconciliation pour la paix qui a glorifié et amnistié ces monstres assassins de plus de deux cent mille civils innocents et autres corporations confondues. J’accuse tous ceux qui ont voté pour ce référendum de la honte. J’accuse cette réconciliation qui a consacré l’impunité et qui a ignoré la justice. J’accuse tous ceux qui ont été indifférents à notre douleur. J’accuse tous ceux qui ont été favorables à cette mascarade de vente concomitante d’êtres humains, de civils et autres pour simplement plaire aux maîtres et par la même occasion obtenir quelques miettes en contrepartie de leur soumission et servitude. J’accuse cette réconciliation qui nous a assassinés une deuxième fois à travers cette idéologie arabo-baâthiste pour faire de nous des Arabes par la force et malgré nous. J’accuse tous ceux qui instrumentalisent la religion pour se maintenir au pouvoir en sacrifiant des civils et autres. J’accuse tous ceux qui utilisent la religion pour y accéder en assassinant des innocents. J’accuse tous ceux qui utilisent la religion pour nous détourner de nos racines, de nos coutumes, de nos traditions et de notre langue historique et ancestrale (...)

M. Bengana (Père de Katia âgée de 17 ans, lycéenne assassinée à Meftah le 28 février 1994 pour avoir refusé de porter le voile)

Note:

(1) Lettre écrite en 2008 et publiée sous le titre "J'accuse". Je me suis autorisée à l'actualiser.

http://www.amazighworld.org/human_rights/index_show.php?id=2050

Visite de Ferhat Mehenni au Québec

Depuis quelques années, le MAK se déploie avec assurance au sein de la communauté kabyle à l’étranger. En plus de sa présence marquée en Europe, notamment en France, le Mouvement pour l’autonomie de la Kabylie de Ferhat Mehenni s’est trouvé d’excellentes affinités avec la démocratie nord-américaine où la communauté kabyle s’est, pour ainsi dire, intégrée sans se désintégrer. La dernière visite du Président du MAK s’inscrit ainsi dans (...)suite

What REALLY Happened at Tora Bora?

The Failure to Capture or Kill Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora still hangs over the CIA, U.S. Special Forces of all persuasions, the armed forces commanders in Afghanistan, and the George W. Bush administration.

The Al Qaeda leader escaped across the border to Pakistan's Kurram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

The time of this hunt for bin Laden and his escape was October 12 to 17, 2001.

War in Afghanistan: Assault on Tora Bora Fought in early December 2001, the Battle of Tora Bora saw Coalition and Afghan forces attacking the Tora Bora cave complex in the White Mountains near the Pakistani border....read more

The Battle of Tora Bora: The Definitive Account of How Osama Bin Laden Slipped From Our Grasp The New Republic

How bin Laden got away / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Battle of Tora Bora
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora

Berbers, Islam & Christianity

No mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs" (how many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?)

The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers-but unknown in this country, and his anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.

What is that cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French rightly saw the Berbers as superior to the Arabs — one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers — the Berbers were not discriminated against, but as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, the Berber language, Tamazight, in their schools, in their institutions, and even, at times, they could be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.

About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou. Reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world" and in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East — they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe), for everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."

The discovery or re-discovery of a Berber identity (and how many of those North African "Arabs" should begin to realize that they are Berbers? There is, by the way, a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished) is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should not as "Arab" but as the victim of Arab imperialism.

For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?

And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, would be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries, or more likely, are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.

In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "Maghrebins Laïques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so found up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return, to Algeria and Morocco, to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.

The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world’s Muslims are not Arab, come to realize — and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves — that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam.

Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) will be seen, by Berbers, by Kurds, by people in the subcontinent (why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots?), by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?

Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy’s folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny, one different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.

By Forkinsocket

Article taken from: New English Review, Friday, 18 January 2008

Leave a comment Discuss live in the forums
your comments:
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
22 October 2009, par ait ouahi / ouarzazate /morocco
hello. thanks. yes, that is very obvious to everybody. we suffered a lot since the arrival of the Arabs(islam) to north africa. they bring darkness, desertification, underdeveloppment,racisme...with them. it si them who made us face problems with other cultures. fuck them
addition
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Berbers, Islam & Christianity
4 July 2009, par Opine
Interesting article -
For recall - Berbers brought Christianity to Europe, and Europeans made North-Africa Arab. Peoples of north-africa may have seen in the Jihad a value, back in the 7th century, but correct the coran and took what’s of value, making fit within the local cultural. In places like Morroco, they translated it to Tamazight, pure and simple. The mixup came with Napoleon 3, who dreamed of his Ismic Kingdom, and though I haven’t read it anywhere, he was a Jihadist by all means who praised Islam. Islam or Arabs haven’t done anything to local peoples, it is their Neo-Republican governments who made it a point to islamize and arabize. It may be by necessity, or more perhaps by sponsorship, because the fact is, this is the case of Algeria: Those who ended-up stealing the liberation from France were somehow prisoners, in "costody", and in cahuts with the Baathists, the product of French and British Governments - i.e. The relays, for remote control. It is this dictators, with chanceleries in western capitals that commit the genocide. I am Kabyle, have lived outside Algeria most of my life, and no Arab has ever shocked me with the denial of my identity, as I state it. It is always, somebody else, "a westerner" who has long abandoned his own identity for food, who would insist. Go figure !
The snakes
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Berbers, Islam & Christianity
4 July 2009, by Tifirelest
Thanks Opine for your comment, here is a set of interresting comments, the questions here interesting and they denote that our history as Berbers is completely ignored by the world!
The Berber question in North Africa
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Berbers, Islam & Christianity
5 July 2009, by Opine
Interestingly enough, the group which composed this is the "JIHADWATCH" - Whoever that is - Jihad is the only thing of value in the Coran, but since, I believe that book is a misforged story, the jihad is what attrackted all arabs or moslims’ allied, such as the US and others in Afganistan in the 80s. Now, that said, one needs to explain to me WHY SOME FOLKS ESTABLISH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH A REGIME SUCH AS THE ONES IN North Africa, and encourage us to fight them - That’s all we do all the time. Clever, but not this time around ! These regimes FEED and GROW the Jihadist, and YOU FOLKS you FEED AND GROW these REGIMES !
As they say,
Deal with it !
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KABYLIA INFO FORUM ARCHIV ADMIN CONTACT

http://www.north-of-africa.com/article.php3?id_article=594

ALSO!

Look at this!

Kabyles and the Jihad
Should Kabyles be enlisted to help in the war against al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists who operate from the North African nation?

Click New Ally in the War Against Al Qaeda?

IMAZIGHEN (BERBERS) AND JEWS AND THE FORGOTTEN JEWISH REFUGEES FROM THE HATRED OF ARAB-ISLAMIC LANDS

TV debate on Berber-Israel friendship association

Ahmed Adghrini, Secretary-General of the Moroccan Amazigh Democratic Party:

"With regard to what Yahya said, let me point out, first of all, that he is defending Arab identity, which is of no interest to the Amazigh people. Arab identity is something particular to the Arabs, and does not concern the Amazigh, or North Africans of other identities. Arab identity is specific to the Arabian Peninsula and to the countries concerned with this, but not to the Amazigh or the non-Arab residents of North Africa. That's one thing. With regard to the Jews, I don't have to tell you that their history in our region goes back to 1000 BCE. The history of the Amazigh in North Africa goes back 2,957 years. In 40 years or so, we will have 3,000 years of history behind us, throughout which the Jews lived together with us. For the Jews too, Arab identity is of no concern, just as it is of no concern to the aboriginal residents of North Africa. He was talking about the Arab period in North Africa, whereas we go back thousands of years before that."


Fascinating debate on Al-Allam, an Iranian Arabic TV channel, in which a spokesman for the Moroccan Berber (Amazigh) Association, Ahmed Adghirni, puts up a dignified and reasoned defence of the Amazigh-Israel Friendship Association, to which this blog referred over a year ago. (With thanks: Lily)

Pitted against Adghirni is Yahya abu al-Zakharia, an Arab-Algerian writer. To him, the Jews of Morocco are not native to the Maghreb. They were the 'eyes of French colonialism', who betrayed the mujahaddin. They have shown ingratitude and lack of conscience and repaid Arab protection and kindness by joining Israel's security apparatus!The tension between the two is palpable. Adghirni states that the Association represents the humanist value of longstanding friendship, which 'Arabs had sought to replace with enmity and war'. He even accuses his interlocutor of antisemitism.Watch the whole thing!Transcript here


Labels: Jews/Berbers


posted by bataween @ Sunday, August 12, 2007 0 comments

http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2007/08/tv-debate-on-berber-israel-friendship.html




New Berber-Israeli friendship association

posted by bataween @ Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A new Berber-Israeli friendship association aims to develop relations between Berbers (also known as Amazighs) and Berber-speaking Jews in Israel.According to Boubaker Ouadaadid, a German teacher in Casablanca, the association aims to fight antisemitism in Morocco and to spread Amazigh culture among Jews in Israel."Where I grew up (in the country) there was no difference between Jews and Muslims. We were very close to our Jewish brethren. When I moved to Casablanca, I was shocked by people's attitudes. They were frankly antisemitic. For example they would say, lihoudi hachack. That's one reason why we decided to set up this association."The association aims to organise trips for Moroccan and Israeli Berbers (sic) to meet, encourage economic exchanges between the two countries and promote Israeli aid to rural Berber areas. It bucks the official trend, which aims to foster total rupture between the Moroccan state and Israel and runs counter to the pro-Palestinian sentiment prevailing among the Moroccan people.Ouadaadid, together with Brahim Amekraz, believes that the Palestinian cause has been exploited by the country's policies for personal gain. "We do not feel any animoisity towards Israel. The conflict is between Palestinians and Israelis. The war is taking place thousands of kilometres away. It does not interest us."The Jews who lived in Tinghir, Timit, Ouarzazate and Sefrou used to speak Berber and Hebrew. They sang in Berber at weddings or circumcisions.The founders of the friendship association hope to meet in August. They have members in Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes and Tangiers. In Israel, M. Ouadaadid mentions as his associates Dr Bruce Weitzmann, the researcher Moshe Benarouch and the journalist Mira Africh.

Read article in full (French)

Further reading on Amazigh (Berber) Jews

Labels: Jews/Berbers

posted by bataween @ Tuesday, July 25, 2006 2 comments


THE FORGOTTEN JEWISH REFUGEES FROM ARAB-ISLAMIC PERSECUTION

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, which absorbed most of these Jewish refugees, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.

Th[e] [Jewish Refugees] website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.


(Iran: once an ally of Israel, Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)

http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2007/08/tv-debate-on-berber-israel-friendship.html



Departing Jews marked Egypt's 'cultural Holocaust'


A 'crushing, brilliant book' is how Alana Newhouse in the International Herald Tribune describes Lucette Lagnado's memoir, 'The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit'. The man in question, Lucette's father, never recovered from the experience of being uprooted, while the departure of the Jews marked 'a cultural Holocaust' for Egypt.
"In her new memoir, "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit," Lucette Lagnado relates how her father, Leon, first reacted upon escaping the dangerous anti-Semitic environment of Nasser's Egypt in 1962: "Ragaouna Masr," he cried, as their boat left the Alexandria harbor - "Take us back to Cairo."
"It's a sad moment, but one would be forgiven for finding it melodramatic. After all, we know how the story ends: the family settles in America and, judging at least by the ascent of Lucette, their youngest daughter, as a prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter, they presumably enjoy success and happiness. That this assumption is so far off the mark - that the reality of the Lagnados' fate is so far from the triumphalism that Americans have come to expect from immigrant narratives - is one of many reasons to read this crushing, brilliant book.
"Lagnado traces the story of a family so connected to Cairo that they held on until they were forced out, thankfully alive. "Alas, what no one could stop was the cultural Holocaust - the hundreds of synagogues shuttered for lack of attendance, the cemeteries looted of their headstones, the flourishing Jewish-owned shops abandoned by their owners, the schools suddenly bereft of any students." Some will blanch at her use of the word "Holocaust" here, arguing that only the World War II murders of European Jews are worthy of this term. But the wholesale destruction of Middle Eastern Jewish life, along with the even more devastating evisceration of individual lives, was nothing short of a catastrophe - and not only for the Jews.
"Leon Lagnado, like many others, had a love affair with his city, and "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit" is a story about what happens when two such lovers are torn apart. The man of the title is, of course, Leon. Fluent in seven languages and full of charisma, he was the consummate man-about-town. He spent his days immersed in a web of discreet business deals - all conducted in such privacy that even family members couldn't describe his profession - and his nights gallivanting at the city's hot spots.


"But Leon was also a good Jew, as it were, one who went to synagogue every morning. "It was as if two people resided within one sharkskin suit," Lagnado writes, "one who was pious and whose vestments resembled those of the priests at the Great Temple, all white and sparkling and pure, and the very different creature who led a secret, intensely thrilling life."(...)


"Lagnado is equally adept at maintaining suspense, particularly as the skies begin to darken for Egypt's Jews after Gamal Abdel Nasser's rise to power. Leon resisted leaving for a decade and then did so only after harassment and discrimination extinguished all hope for his family's future in Cairo. Beaten down, they shuffled weakly through Alexandria, Athens, Genoa, Naples, Marseilles, Paris, Cherbourg and Manhattan, before finally landing in Brooklyn. But an easy union between Leon and America was not to be. Heartbroken and infirm, he failed to impress the social workers and bureaucrats in charge of helping new immigrants, leading to a string of humiliations and failures. The "boulevardier of Cairo" never regained his footing, and the already thin threads holding his family together frayed irrevocably. Lagnado recounts the irony of their Passover Seder in Brooklyn: "No matter how loudly we sang, our holiday had become not a celebration of the exodus from Egypt but the inverse - a longing to return to the place we were supposedly glad to have left."


Read article in full
This review also in The New York Times
Interview of Lucette Lagnado in The Forward
Labels: Jews of Egypt
posted by bataween @ Sunday, August 12, 2007 1 comments


First published 9-5-2007 at the original Islamic Danger Blog as
http://islamic-danger.blogspot.com/2007/09/imazighen-berbers-and-jews-and.html