I am Cleopatra, the beautiful queen of the Nile, with a slender, olive-toned, body, big, brown, almond shaped eyes, and long curly black hair. I carry the mystique of a hidden garden, the power of a gladiator, the praise of a goddess.
September 1993 - September 10th, 2001: California
A gold crown adorned with rubies and emeralds lay invisibly upon my head, ready to finally be shown to the rest of the world.
“I’m Egyptian,” I answered the age-old question smiling widely, knowing that in a room full of children of various European and Asian descents, my crown would finally shine in all its glory, with all my glory.
“Whoa, that’s so cool!! Do you live in the pyramids?” one kid asked with his brown and blue eyes bulging.
Are we in Egypt or does he think we just build them wherever we go? “No, I live in a normal house.”
“Is King Tut your great, great, great, great grandfather?!” another asked.
Yes, in fact as I trace my ancestry back a million years, his name shows up on my family tree. “Well, King Tut could be related to me… that would be awesome!”
“Do you ride a camel to school?”
Did you see a camel strolling up the driveway? “No, my mom drives a Volkswagen.”
My crown was growing with me, its beautiful exterior never cracking under the harsh conditions. But then one day, I took it off my head and stuck it in a box in the back of my mind, intent on never returning to that crevice again.
1961: Egypt
Traveling back home, to the land commonly known for the sphinx and the oldest pyramids in the world, a young man finishing his Master’s degree in Germany decided to tell his father he was emigrating to Canada.
Throughout the years, my Uncle Nabil had seen enough discrimination and harassment towards his fellow Copts (Egyptian Christians) and refused to raise his own family there. Little did he know that his father, Tawfik, had been discriminated against more outwardly than usual while Nabil was in Germany.
Tawfik Morcos, Nabil’s middle-aged father and my grandfather, had grown accustomed to the harsh treatment towards Christians by Muslims since his birth, a seemingly normal occurrence since the Arabs invaded Egypt in 639 AD. By the 1960’s, the hate was so common and one had to know the right people in the right places to do anything.
A few months prior to Nabil’s return home, Tawfik was offered a job to be the manager of all the supermarkets in Egypt, a position that had to be approved by the “communist president” of that time, Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Because Tawfik had friends in high places in the government, he was told after applying for the position that his name was circled on the document Nasser had reviewed, with a note saying, “why, you couldn’t find anyone else?”
“If you’re Christian, you can’t find a good job and even if you do, you’d get paid less than a Moslem person would in the same position,” Ashraf, Tawfik’s youngest son, and my father, says. “They wouldn’t help you in anything; they’d take you to court and make up things to say against you, all because you’re an infidel in their eyes.”
Tawfik got the job, but the initial salary offer was cut severely, and to a family of ten mouths to feed, this was a large neon sign reading LEAVE.
“We had to have a plan for the whole family; we are a big family. Because Nabil had been in Germany for over two years, he was able to emigrate from there to Canada in 1965. And the rest of us were close behind, but in stages.”
As Nabil traveled over the Atlantic Ocean, seeking religious freedom and peace, Maher, the next eldest of the eight, was applying for medical school at the University of Toronto. A few weeks after Maher opened his acceptance letter from University of Toronto, he and Violet, the oldest of the three sisters, left for Canada as well. Violet went to work as a computer operator at an insurance company to help support Maher while he studied medicine.
Meanwhile, Tawfik still had six family members, not including him, stuck in Egypt impatiently waiting to rejoin their blood.
“In Egypt, everything is done with baksheesh (tips or bribes),” my dad said. “That’s how people make money to survive, but this time it just wasn’t enough. Because we’re Christians, the immigration officer gave my father a hard time. Every few days my dad would take [a day] off from work to bring the next document they asked for. One day it was the birth certificate, then his degree, then passport, until he got fed up.”
Tawfik requested that the immigration officer give him a list of documents he needed so that the process would not continue this long.
“You’ll never see your children again if you don’t do things my way,” the immigration officer instigated.
“My father was so angry! He somehow got the strength to pick up this man, with his chair, and throw him out the window,” Ashraf says, laughing at the thought; “It was a first story window but, still, this was a criminal offense. Just saying something against a government official would land you in jail.”
Tawfik noticed right away that he would be carted off to jail if he did not do something quickly, so he asked to use the phone and called an old friend from High School and Lieutenant in the Army, Fahim Armaneous. Lieutenants were of high stature in Egypt and Fahim was known throughout Egypt as a very powerful man. When Tawfik asked for him, he did not use his title, signifying how close they were to anyone within earshot.
“Give me Fahim Armaneous.”
“No, don’t. We can take care of this,” the immigration officer’s boss panicked, hearing the Lieutenant’s name.
“Tawfik, what’s the matter?” Fahim was on the line.
“I need you to come down to the immigration office. This idiot officer just threatened that I’d never see my kids again.”
“I’m in a meeting…
“So?”
“So, it will be over an hour by the time I’m able to get out of this meeting with everyone saluting me.”
“Take the back door!!”
Ten minutes later, Fahim walked in just as a dull thud came from near Tawfik’s feet. The immigration officer fell at Tawfik’s feet, looking like he couldn’t breath, red blotches covering his face, and begged my grandfather to forgive him, stating that he too had kids and couldn’t lose his job.
Within minutes and without Fahim saying a word, the officer stamped Tawfik’s visa. Two weeks later all ten members of the family reunited in Toronto.
September 11, 2001: California
The innocence and naïveté of childhood had to end at some point, and the crude reality set in. Merely days after the attack on the United States by its own airplanes, the comments changed. No longer was it “so cool” to be Egyptian in their eyes, after family members and friends had died.
One day, a sign, as bright as the neon sign my grandfather had received to leave Egypt, told me to run. I had become so good at hiding my emotions from prying eyes and ears of insensitive boys and girls throughout elementary school, that by the time my last year of middle school had come, I was a pro.
But one sentence threw my whole world under a loaded truck to be run over.
“You’re Egyptian, right? So, are you going to hijack a plane and crash it into the school?” the boy with frazzled blonde hair said with such disdain in his voice.
I ran.
I ran until I couldn’t breathe and found myself in the middle of the football field, gasping and sweating, my mind racing with fear and frustration. How could someone say something that mean?
I went home early that day and cried myself to sleep, unable to speak even though my parents asked me what was wrong repeatedly. When I finally told them, they looked so calm, like they had expected it.
My father told me of Tawfik, my grandfather who passed away when I was just two years old, and the discrimination he got just for being Christian. Immediately I connected the dots.
“The Muslims are the ones doing these horrible things!! Not Copts…” I exclaimed with great fury.
“Yes, but no one understands that right now. We know that because of what we went through in Egypt. One day the people will understand that they are infidels in the eyes of the terrorists also, but until then, you have to carry your head up high. Your ancestors created one of the Seven Wonders of the World, in addition to geometry, bowling, make-up…basically anything you can think of.”
I returned to school the next day with glares flying at my face like darts, but I avoided them. Comments were whispered amongst friends behind my back with cackled laughter, Ursula and Cruela’s voices suddenly filled my mind.
The simple fact that I was Egyptian automatically associated my thirteen-year-old, never-even-been-to-the-motherland, self with terrorists. I countered as many comments as I could, trying to tell them that my family had felt their pain; maybe the incidents were not nearly as grand in scale, but the foundation was there. But no one listened. They were too young, too naïve, too unaware of the world that existed on the other side of the ocean, farther than most people had traveled in their lives.
Summer, 1970: Egypt
A woman of slender physique and pale beige skin walked along a sandy road by four story apartment buildings. Her short-sleeved red dress billowed out at the ends in the light breeze, a break from the warm stifling air that hung in her short and curly black hair. It seemed unusually quiet that day, but she ignored the nagging feeling that something was wrong.
My mother left New York during her twenties to make a visit back to the motherland. She wore her gold Jerusalem cross around her neck, the cross that she still wears daily.
From the 2nd story window of the sand-blown buildings, the forty-something year old Arab man spotted my mother’s cross and spit on her. When I asked her why she kept wearing the cross, especially in a place where it is obviously looked down upon, she stared at me with concern etched into her pupils, as if looking for the right words to say.
“My cousins told me not to wear it, they knew it was going to happen. I was shocked only because I had left Egypt at such a young age that I couldn’t remember what it was like, and obviously it got worse year after year.
“But I kept wearing it to show that I’m not afraid of them. Saints of our church went through torture and even death for Christ. The least I can do is be proud of my faith, be proud of the truth.”
2002 - 2009: California
It had been years since I had worn my gold crown. It lay in a box in my memories, the shine stifled by layers of dust and grime. After September 11th, it became harder to speak the truth to people who were inundated with lies, most of which were formed in their own minds. People would ask what my nationality was, and I’d mumble “Egyptian,” monotonously, already expecting a cynical response, the innate pride in my culture fading with the ancient hieroglyphics my ancestors wrote on walls.
As the pain of September 11th faded, only a minute given to remembering those who had passed away each year, the layers of dust began to fade away as well. The gold reflections and multi-faceted jewels lit up my face as I spoke of my past again; the courage of my grandfather, my mother, the saints of the church that risked their lives, shot through my blood.
I am Cleopatra, the beautiful queen of the Nile; as calm as a dove and as clever as a serpent; stronger than ever.
12.05.2009
12.03.2009
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