Letters
Letters written by Ada A. Aharoni, Ph.D. International President of PAVE
PEACE Association and Coordinator of the International BAN - WAR CAMPAIGN.
Copyright 1997 - Ada A. Aharoni - All Rights Reserved.
Contents:
Letter to Kadreya
Letter to
President Anwar and Mrs. Jehan Sadat
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Dear Kadreya, I have often thought of writing to you--there is so much wecould tell
each other after twenty years of life in "enemy countries."
Tonight, when I finally take up my hesitating pen between myfingers--though
the gap over distance, time, and perhaps values, stilllooms
forbiddingly--with the cease-fire on our mutual borders, Idiscern a shaft of
hope, a possibility of renewed ties between our twocountries, and also
perhaps between us. Over the oceans of prejudiceand blunder, I feel tonight
that I can at long last extend my hand toyou in a craving for understanding
and open friendship. As I write, I see again my pensive school chum Kadre of"Alvernia
English School for Girls" in Zamalek, with her pale-olivetan, her
serious deep grey eyes, and her charcoal curls of weblikesoftness glistening
in the sun. What a bunch of active, tenacious andbright kids we must have
been then to be able to write and publish a"literary" magazine all
on our own at the age of thirteen! Do youremember the joys and heartaches
"The Rainbow" gave us as co-editors? And the oath we solemnly took
then to become writers whenwe grew up, so as "to do good to mankind, and
banish wars from theearth forever"? How delightfully uncomplicated, naive,
andenthusiastic we were then! The last time I saw you was in 1949, when you came to bid mefarewell
before we left for France. My father, Jewish and a Frenchnational, had his
business permit withdrawn. You whisperedwistfully--I can almost hear your
tremulous voice--"Why are youleaving Egypt? You were born here, this is
your country!" I couldn't explain then what I shall try to do tonight twenty-five
years later, that for me, unlike you, Egypt was not my country.The first
powerful impact of that stark fact hit me full in the face whenI was only
seven years old. This is a part of my childhood that I don'tlike to remember,
as it has left a sore spot in my mind even after allthis while, but I feel I
have to try to communicate this experience toyou as it might lead us towards
a better understanding. That forlorn,dazed child, whom I shall try to conjure
up, is so remote from me today that I can only recall her in the third
person. A frail girl of six was being led wide-eyed and hesitant throughthe
bustling narrow streets of Bab-El-Louk Souk, by a tall, hefty maid,Mohsena.
The child was worried and confused; instead of taking herto the park for her
usual afternoon stroll, the maid had furtively ledher to this sordid and
unknown world. The child drew back her smallhand reluctantly but the maid
pulled it firmly, announcing impatientlyfrom time to time, "We shall
soon be there." "But where?" asked the child querulously for the tenth time.
"Don't ask questions again, you will soon see," answered
themaid abruptly and she energetically plodded on. With growing fear, the little girl looked forlornly around her. She
was sure the sun had been shining when she left home, but herein the tortuous
smelly streets it was dark. On every side of the dirtystreets vendors in colored
striped cloaks shouted their modulatedguttural utterances: "Er-essus,
Er'r'r'essus, Tamar Hindi, Ter-mess,Ter-rrrmess"; and ragged beggars
pushed against the terrified child. Above the general din, one refrain became
more and more distinct,and the bewildered little girl became aware she was
being addressed: "Affrangeia, affrangeia what are you doing
here?" She felt the insult in the word affrangeia; but why were
theyinsulting her? She had never seen these people before, and there they
stood grimacing at her and hating her for no reason at all! Even Mohsena seemed different; from her usually cheerfulsubmissive
self she had become incommunicative, bent on her privatepursuits, unknown and
unshared by the child. Her lips were firmly set,which made them look thin and
pale, and her habitual easy bustle hadchanged into a nervous agitation. The word affrangeia, however, was repeated so often and insuch
a variety of vindictive tones, that the child who scarcely daredaddress the
maid in her new mood, finally asked, "Mohsena, whatdoes affrangeia
mean?" The maid turned on her and curtly expostulated: "Didn't I tellyou
not to ask any more questions?"The little girl felt more and more
forlorn and gradually thesickening feeling inside her seemed to spill over
and overwhelm her. She stopped, refused to go on, and pleaded tearfully:
"I want to goback home now; I want my mamma." "We shall soon be there," came the prompt and decisive
retort,and she was pulled firmly along again, through what seemed to be
anunending nightmare. The child gazed mournfully at the hectic activity around her. Some
ragged barefoot children had tied an old baby bathtub to ahanging pole and
were swinging it dangerously, while a screaming boyinside it madly
gesticulated to the mocking children to stop. As soonas they saw the little
girl however, the bathtub was forgotten, andpointing menacing fingers at her,
the noisy bunch circled around hershouting the same infuriating chant of affrangeia,
affrangeia. Shefled. The painful odyssey continued. The dazed child started towonder if
something strange had happened to her in the last half-hour,something she was
not aware of but which had rendered her sodespicable that everybody stared at
her in amazement. She furtivelytouched her ears and backside. "Had she
suddenly grown ears and atail like Pinocchio?" But this clutching fear
subsided as her tremblinghands moved over her ears, and she breathed in
relief. Suddenly she was arrested by a horrible cry, piercing her ears. She
felt a chill creeping up her spine, a warning in her blood thatviolence and
mutilation were in the air. On the pavement before her a young shaggy donkey had laidhis bleeding
heat while a bunch of rollicking, barefooted brats werelashing his back and
behind. The donkey's large brown liquid eyestared at the child's pale face,
and again it emitted a long heart-rending heehaw. The child had never heard
or seen anything likethis before. The hideous scene seemed to be in some
strange mannerlinked with her own misery and part of her own experience.
Shecouldn't keep silent any longer. She tore her hand away from themaid, and
shouted with all the power of her young lungs, "Stop, stop,you're
killing him!" The boys stopped in surprise, then, noticing the frail little girlthey
waved their whips threateningly: "Affrangeia, go away,
whatbusiness is it of yours? Or do you want to taste our whips too?" The sight of the donkey's blood pouring from his woundsoverwhelmed the
child and she burst out in trembling defiance, "I'mnot affrangeia,
I'm not, you're affrangeia all of you!" She was stillscreaming at
the astonished children when Mohsena swiftly carried heraway. The maid seemed somewhat more affable now; she wiped thechild's tears
and said in a soothing voice, "We're there now; that's it,it's this nice
shop with the pretty sugar dolls, I told you we'd get therein no time, didn't
I?" The girl's sobbing gradually subsided, and she gazed withwonder at the
rows and rows of white and brown sugar dolls of allsizes dressed in gaily
colored sparkling paper. With tear-stained faceshe stared at the
expressionless multitude. Here at least was a silentworld that did not
threaten to affrangeia her. The shop-owner, whoseemed to be the maid's
lover, beamed with flaming face at the nowcoy and strangely excited Mohsena, while
he reiterated under hisprofuse mustache, "Welcome, Ahlan Mosahlan,"
with overdonecordiality. He patted the child mechanically on the head and
said off-hand, "You brought the little affrangeia to visit us,
heh?" This time the evil word was so unexpected that the little girljust
stood there petrified and looked at him unbelievingly. "What's the matter?" laughed Mohsena nervously, annoyed
atthe stare. "Affrangeia is not an insult!" The man guffawed, "Is this why she gapes at me so? I thoughtI had
trod on her toes or something." "What's affrangeia?" "It means," the man explained gallantly,
"European." "What?" the child asked in unbelieving dismay, not
comprehending how this could apply to her. "It means that you are not an Arab like us," he
continuedcondescendingly. "Your face is white, not brown like ours; you
area foreigner, a stranger." "But I was born in Cairo; my parents were born here--I'm notaffrangeia."
"There's no reason for you to cry," said the man
soothingly,throwing meaningful, amused looks at Mohsena, "If you want to
thinkyou're not then you're not, but how will you convince the others?"
With that he stopped bothering with her, and turned his exclusiveattentions
towards Mohsena. So that was it: she was different, she was an outsider, astranger, and
she could do nothing about it. Whatever she would doshe would never be able
to convince anybody in the land where shewas born that it was not so, she
would always be considered aforeigner, an intruder, and a freak. She sighed sadly at the new revelation, and yearning for thewarmth of
her protected life at home, she looked for consolation atthe crowded rows of
white and brown dolls. "You will not tell yourparents that Mohsena
brought you here, will you?" asked the manwith a suave smile.
"Here, I'll give you a nice Muled El Nabi doll andwe'll forget we
were here, won't we? They're for the feast of ourprophet, our Nabi.
I'll raise you up so you can pick up one yourself,"he said coaxingly,
"You'd like that wouldn't you?" The child saw all the dolls staring at her face indifferently, andshe
grabbed the nearest, a brown one with a green and white outfit. "Are you sure you want a brown one?" the man asked
slylygazing at her intently, "I think it's preferable to have one of
yourkind," he said with a wink at Mohsena, and grabbing the dark doll
heexchanged it for a white one wearing a sky blue robe with whitestripes, and
a shining star over her forehead. The child pressed thesugar doll to her
quivering lips, and its taste was sweet. The whole traumatic experience related above, had a verypowerful
effect on me and on my attitude to life, in spite of my tenderage. After that
painful revelation, my first Epiphany, I spent most ofmy life in Egypt until
we left, trying to figure out where I belonged. If I was not an Egyptian,
what was I? Though my mother tongue wasFrench and we were of French
nationality, I did not feel French; I hadan English culture for I had gone to
an English school since I was atot, and I had fallen deeply in love with English
literature, but again Idid not feel English. Thus my roots not being tucked
in any soil,dangled painfully in the air, unprotected, sending spasms
ofuncertainty and emptiness through my being. By 1948, to the word affrangeia was added the more spitefuland
emotionally laden one of tsahiuneia ("Zionist") which was
oftenhissed at me for no reason at all, for I was not a Zionist then. I gotmy
bitter taste of anti-Semitism, and it brought back the revulsion Ihad felt
when I first discovered that I was different and did not belong. Now the
yearning to identify, to become part of something bigger andmore important
than just myself, became still more acute. I yearnedfor the birthright of
every being: for a country where I could feel "thisis my land, I belong
to it, and it belongs to me; this is where I mean toplant my roots." In France, I found no solution to my identity problem. Mygeneral
unrest was rather diffused. As you can well understand, it wasvery hard for
such a young girl to put her finger on the right spotamong a multitude of
others and say, here, this is precisely where ithurts. When I talked to my
family about my strange "malaise," thisuncomfortable, gnawing
feeling of being where I did not belong andwith which I could not identify
myself however hard I tried, theylaughed and belittled my ears. "So
what? You're not the onlywandering and uprooted Jew. We're all like that and
always will be." My spirit revolted against this placid injunction.
"Whyalways?" I asked at first incredulously and then, as time went
on, moreand more obstinately. Seeking solutions to counteract the
"always"I started to look towards Israel, the young Jewish state. One day, I was trying to hitchhike to the Cote d'Azure together with a
French friend.A driver slowed down and thrusting his head from his window
shouted at us sales Youpins!. Puzzled, I asked my friend what youpin
meant. "Oh, it's just a French derogatory word for Jews, like 'yid'
or'kike' you know," she explained lightly. "I don't pay any
attention tothat kind of thing anymore, you have to learn to live with it,
they'renot all like that, thank God! France is a very liberal country, and
theJews in it can live their lives in peace if they don't take every
sillyexpression to heart." That night I couldn't sleep, and the old fears wracked my brainand
heart. I decided at length that I couldn't and wouldn't "live
withit." In 1950 I left my family in Paris and came to Israel, alone, atthe age
of sixteen. Here at last, to my boundless joy, I found that Ibelonged. I took
to the country and it took to me; I planted my rootsdeeply in it and they
bore fruit. This does not mean there were noproblems of adaptation. I had to
learn a new language and absorb anew culture, and I suffered all the
characteristic difficulties of periodsof transition. But I felt that I was
wanted, that at last I was home, andthat wonderful new feeling of belonging
magically smoothed thejagged path. Today I feel myself an Israeli in the full
sense of theword. The problems of my country are my problems, and everythingthat
happens here means and means intensely. Life becomes so muchricher and more
significant when you do not live in it only for yourselfand for your narrow
family circle. So you see, dear Kadre, Israel justhad to exist for rootless
people like me. My son is due to go into the army next week, and if a peacetreaty
between our two countries is not signed soon, he may perhapsone day be facing
yours, and they might both see death in each other'seyes! This is not the
bright future we had planned for them in "TheRainbow" years and
years ago, when we were younger than they aretoday. The whole absurd
situation we find ourselves in nowadaysseems to me to be so senseless and
unnecessary. Having told you all this, I suddenly feel very near to you,
dearKadreya. I would very much like to see you and chat with you atlength
again as we often did in the past. Perhaps somehow, some day,this wish may
become a reality, and we shall be able to meet again inpeace and friendship
on the calm bans of the magnificent Nile, oramong the green splendors of my
beloved Mount Carmel. With my profoundest wishes for salaam-shalom,
Mrs. Jehan Sadat 25 October 1977
I am enclosing a poem and an autobiographical letter entitled:
"Letter to Kadreya: from Haifa to Cairo with Love," both
addressedin general to the women of Egypt, and in particular to a dear
school-friend of mine in Cairo, whose name in 1949 was, Kadreya Barsoumi.May
the Interim Sinai Accord lately signed between our twocountries, Egypt and
Israel, be the opening of a massive gate to a realpeace in the whole of the
Middle East.These poem and letter are modest attempts to extend a handin
Salam-Shalom to you, Kadreya and the women of Egypt whom Iremember with
warmth. As we were friends in the past, there is novalid reason we cannot be
friends in the future too, when as we allhope, our two countries will, with
mutual rust and good will, reach areal and lasting peace.
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