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Egypt Today, Egypt
July 11 2006
Sona Zeitlian
Renowned Armenian-Egyptian author Sona Zeitlian examines the
centuries-old relationship between Armenians and their adopted
Egyptian homeland
By David Lee Wilson
UNTIL THE FALL of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the
modern Republic of Armenia, the Armenian people had been without a
homeland for centuries. Between war, migration, deportation and
genocidal massacres, the majority of the native Armenian population
was forced to find settlement away from its homeland.
Egypt took the lead among nations that gave Armenians in exile a
home. Here, Armenians were allowed to retain their cultural identity,
given the opportunity to obtain citizenship and encouraged to
contribute to every aspect of Egyptian society, including its
political and military establishments.
Faces
The Filmmaker
The son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, this prac...
The relationship between the Armenian diaspora and what became their
adopted home has been put into focus with the publication of
Armenians in Egypt: Contribution of Armenians to Medieval and Modern
Egypt by renowned Armenian-Egyptian author Sona Zeitlian.
Zeitlian, now in her 70s, was born, raised and educated in Egypt. A
teacher in Cairo for many years, she writes passionately about her
ancestors~R contribution to her birth country. Filled with photographs
and illustrations ~W and wonderfully annotated ~W Armenians in Egypt
explores the achievements and accomplishments of artisans, politicos
and pashas of Armenian descent who helped weave the complex tapestry
that is modern Egypt.
While Zeitlian was in Cairo for a series of lectures connected to the
English edition of the book, et sat with her for an exclusive
interview. Excerpts:
Egypt Today: By all accounts you have had a very successful return to
Egypt; how long has it been?
Sona Zeitlian: It was twenty years ago that I was last here.
Unfortunately, that trip was cut short because my home at the time
was in Lebanon and it was a time of civil war. I got the news that my
husband had been kidnapped [he was later killed by his captors and
his corpse found by the side of a Beirut street; no group has ever
claimed responsibility for the slaying] and it was a whole new set of
realities that had confronted me. Thankfully, my feelings then were
completely different from those I~Rm experiencing. [laughs] I~Rm here
to celebrate the Armenian-Egyptian experience, which means so much to
me.
What~Rs the biggest change in Egypt you~Rve noticed since returning?
I made it a point to visit both Islamic Cairo and Coptic Cairo to get
both perspectives of the city, and so much has changed. There~Rs
demographics, obviously: There are so many people and so much
traffic, but those are only the things that you see immediately. On
the other hand, there is much progress on the economic and political
fronts. The Middle East is a turbulent place, and so what attacks one
country will automatically attack the others. The Palestinian problem
has been with us for so long and has affected our destiny in the Arab
world, and we all feel the repercussions of that everywhere that we
go.
The turbulence continues, especially with the situation in Iraq. The
problems really haven~Rt changed. They are problems that have been
with us for decades now and I feel strongly the urge to find justice.
For me it is more urgent than the search for democracy. Of course
democracy is essential, but the feeling from the common people is
that they have to find justice finally.
Unless justice is granted to the people, I don~Rt think that there
will be good grounds to build democracy.
Most Armenians have never been to their ancestral homeland, but they
speak with an incredible passion on the subject. To what would you
credit that?
There are two very important things about Armenian life that make us
so passionate and make us seek the justice that has been denied us.
First there~Rs the genocide. It was covered up; the powerful nations
of the time, for their own political interests, accommodated it. They
would say, ~SIt has to be proven~T and so on. Of course there are many
people who have learned the truth about the genocide, but political
interests prevail.
Statesmen have to take relations between countries and strategic
situations into account ~W and that is understandable ~W but there is
still an urge in us Armenians to find justice. Ninety years have
passed, but we have two things that have sustained us, and the first
is our church. Our church is not an international church. It is a
church only for Armenians, a national church. The destiny of the
church has been tied to that of the people. I mean, the Armenian
church developed in the fifth century. We have had this national
church, and even when we had no kings or nobility, it took care of
the people.
The second thing we have going for us is our high regard for our
culture. We had the alphabet very early on in the fifth century and
this year we celebrate the 1,600th anniversary of the Armenian
alphabet. The culture was nourished by intellectuals all of those
years in the schools. Those schools, both national and private,
fostered this. For instance, in Egypt, we had 30 schools up until the
1960s, when the community started to disperse. We had 30 private and
public ~W when I say public I mean community schools ~W so there was
great emphasis on education.
These important factors stressed our ethnic identity and made us
passionate about what each of us can contribute to the Armenian
people.
The ultimate support of any individual is the family, and they know
that no matter what, they have a safe haven and open arms to receive
them. So family has also sustained us.
Ultimately, my book is about setting the record straight in two ways:
First, it~Rs about everything the Armenians have contributed to Egypt.
Second, it~Rs about everything Egypt has done for the Armenian
immigrants who came here with nothing, but were given the opportunity
to make a life for themselves.
The implementation of justice, it seems to me, is very much dependent
on who your publicist is. How is it that the world believes the
genocides carried out against the Jews of Europe and the aboriginal
people of the Americas, yet the Armenian experience flies below the
radar ~W even though estimates claim anywhere from 650,000 to 1.5
million Armenians were massacred between 1915 and 1918?
You know, that~Rs a very important question. The first act of the
genocide was to wipe out the intellectuals. They were the head to
chop off, so as to make the body unable to defend itself and
ultimately to disappear. It was very well planned from their
perspective and we lost the cream of the Armenian society. Two
generations passed before we were able to regain a foothold.
Even now, we are not very good at public relations. Maybe it is the
residual effect of the genocide: the fear of what might happen if you
raise your head and raise your voice. Maybe. But I think that the
time has come that we should think about other strategies. For
example, in Sohag in Upper Egypt, there is an old Armenian monastery
called the White Monastery. At one time it belonged to the Armenians,
and there are inscriptions that mark the dates when the Armenians
were there and what they had achieved. Later on, as the Islamic
population increased, there was a move of Armenians toward the Delta,
Cairo and so on, and when there were no more Armenians in Sohag, the
monastery passed to the Copts.
It is now an important place of pilgrimage for the Copts. A few years
ago, under the previous ambassador, the previous patriarch, the Copts
said, ~SWe are going to whitewash the walls inside, and if you like,
we can give you permission to remove these inscriptions and take them
to your own churches or do whatever you want.~T
There was a lot of discussion about this, and ultimately the
patriarch of the Armenian Church decided that it was better to keep
our heads down. It is the same state of mind that I was referring to
earlier. Why not say, ~SThank you for returning this to us!~T and take
advantage of the situation?
We didn~Rt do that and we should have.
What was it that enabled the Armenians to weave themselves into
Egyptian culture?
The very early Armenians that came here came to study at the great
institutions, the Alexandria Library and so forth. This was in the
third and fourth centuries, and they came to study at the Hellenic
institutions that had a worldwide reputation. Other Armenians came
for trade opportunities, because there had been long-established
Armenian trade networks on the caravan routes in Anatolia and
Mesopotamia. They also supplied and trained troops ~W you would call
them mercenaries ~W to defend the caravan routes.
There was a third category of Armenians, and those were slaves. When
the amir freed his slaves, those slaves, according to their
abilities, often became generals. The person who led the Fatimid army
and who was the initiator of building a new capital was of Armenian
descent. He was a former slave, a Muslim and also the founder of
Cairo. Surprisingly enough, Al-Azhar University ~W though it was not a
university at the time, but still a place of higher education ~W from
that time until today they still remember his name, Gohar. He was
called, ~SGohar the Sicilian,~T because he was imported as a slave to
Tunisia from Sicily. That was another category, former slaves who had
attained important positions in the Army: in the administrations and
especially as calligraphers or secretaries. If you were a good
calligrapher, you had a position in the administration.
The first Armenian who was instrumental in founding the Holy Armenian
See, the future patriarchate, was also a former slave who was also
the governor of Syria. When the Fatimid dynasty was in poor shape,
this former slave was already known as a very courageous man, so they
asked him to become vizier in Cairo. He made one condition for this;
he said, ~SI will bring my Armenian army with me.~T Because of their
dire straights they replied, ~SWhatever you want, just bring peace to
this country.~T It is estimated that there were 10,000 Armenian
soldiers that accompanied him. This was Badr al-Gamali.
During his time, he never forgot that he was an Armenian. He was a
Muslim, of course, and he was also not only a vizier, or what we
would call a prime minister today; he was also the leader of the army
and the chief of the propaganda apparatus. He monopolized all three
posts, so he was really a dictator if we used the modern term. He was
very good to Armenians, and the time that he was vizier here
corresponds to the time of the fall of the Armenian kingdom in our
native land.
Because of the benevolent attitude towards Armenians in Egypt, many
Armenians came here, and he gave them free housing and encouraged the
establishment of the Holy See.
The acceptance of Armenians in Egypt wasn~Rt the norm, was it?
There was a huge difference in Egypt. Armenians here gave a lot of
money and material help in 1896 and 1915 to the Armenian casualties
and the refugee camps in Syria and so many other places. The Egyptian
government accepted the transfer of so much money out of Egypt for
humanitarian reasons. They could have objected and said that no
Egyptian money could leave the country, but they allowed it. So, we
have much to be grateful for to this country.
One hears of sporadic tensions between Copts and Muslims in Egypt. Is
there a similar tension between Armenians and Muslims?
I wouldn~Rt say that. You know, when the revolution took place, one of
the important slogans was ~SEgypt for Egyptians.~T Now, Armenians were
by this time Egyptian and there was a difference between Armenians
and Greeks or Italians or other foreign minorities in the sense that
there had been special dispensations for foreigners. It was an
Ottoman arrangement that they made to encourage the Europeans to
invest in Egypt. Europeans were free from the regulations and the
laws of the country. They only followed the laws of their own
country, and if anything happened ~W from a misdemeanor to
manslaughter ~W they were judged only in their consulate courts and
not by the government of Egypt.
Armenians did not have this status since they had no independent
country of their own. In fact, there was only an Armenian embassy in
Cairo after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Armenian Republic
was established just 15 years ago.
I will give you an example. I taught at Kalousdian School in Boulaq.
There was a very rich Armenian who had a monopoly on hammams, or
public baths. He was also very prominent in the maritime trade on the
Nile. He was a very wealthy man, but he had no children, so he gave
all of his money to that school, and it bears his name because of
that. There was a rule that even though you leave your money to a
specific school, the money goes to the Ministry of Education, and it
is the ministry that determines if they will give the money to the
school or not. It depends on their agenda.
Our patriarch wrote the prime minister at the time and said, ~SDo you
want this school to be closed, where so many Armenian children are
being educated, most of them free of charge? Do you want us to lose
this school? If you care for the Armenians, you must do your utmost
for us to retain this school.~T
Mubarak Pasha Baya, a very prominent Armenian who was the prime
minister, found the loopholes to approach the problem through. The
result was that he was able to keep the school for the Armenians and
in court it was registered in the name of the community.
Last year they celebrated their 150th anniversary. So, you see, this
is an example that without having a government or an embassy to
support you, and only thanks to that high official, the rights of the
Armenian people were taken care of.
So is Egypt still an attractive home for Armenians?
The political situation has changed. You know what struck the
Armenian community in Egypt hard was Nasser~Rs nationalization policy.
My father was a tobacco distributor in Old Cairo and one day when he
went to his place of work, it was closed with red tape and he was
told, ~SNow this belongs to the government.~T
They said that maybe if he waited 15 or 20 years, that gradually the
government would return what it took ~W and of course that never
happened. The Armenian community was really a wealthy community, many
involved in both light and heavy industry, and that blow was very
hard. In just one night, you went back to your work and it was no
longer yours.
At the same time there was a welcoming cry from countries like
Australia and Canada. They opened wide their doors and said, ~SIf you
want to leave, we are ready to welcome you.~T If those doors had not
opened as wide or they were not so welcoming, not so many Armenians
would have left ~W I am sure.
Of course much has changed now from the policies of that time, but
it~Rs a shame: One of our foremost filmmakers, Atom Egoyan, was born
in Egypt and his father was a classmate of mine. He was born here,
and when the revolution came he was five years old and his family
immigrated to Canada. Now he is a famous film director and producer,
and if he had stayed here that talent would have gone to Egypt.
Have you been able to get a feel for the current Armenian-Egyptian
experience? And what has been the general reaction to the book in
Egypt thus far?
There were many Armenians who came to me and told me that they did
not know so much about their culture and history in Egypt ~W even
though they have lived here all of their lives. What impressed them
most was that there was an uninterrupted Armenian presence here.
Today, we have a very good ambassador to Egypt, and he has taken good
care of the community. There was an initial printing of the book that
appeared in 2004 and at the time he was newly appointed as ambassador
to Egypt, and one of the friends of my daughter who knew him in
Armenia gave him the book. She thought that it would give him an idea
of the history of Armenians in Egypt.
Apparently, he liked the book, and when we started working on the
expanded English edition, he asked to write the forward and he wanted
to present the book in Cairo where the story began. From what I saw
at the launch party yesterday, it was well received by the Egyptian
dignitaries and the other ambassadors. If you present them facts and
not just speeches, and you accept in all humility what this country
has done for the Armenian community, it will always be well received.
et
http://www.egypttoday.com/article.a spx?ArticleID=6844
July 11 2006
Sona Zeitlian
Renowned Armenian-Egyptian author Sona Zeitlian examines the
centuries-old relationship between Armenians and their adopted
Egyptian homeland
By David Lee Wilson
UNTIL THE FALL of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the
modern Republic of Armenia, the Armenian people had been without a
homeland for centuries. Between war, migration, deportation and
genocidal massacres, the majority of the native Armenian population
was forced to find settlement away from its homeland.
Egypt took the lead among nations that gave Armenians in exile a
home. Here, Armenians were allowed to retain their cultural identity,
given the opportunity to obtain citizenship and encouraged to
contribute to every aspect of Egyptian society, including its
political and military establishments.
Faces
The Filmmaker
The son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother, this prac...
The relationship between the Armenian diaspora and what became their
adopted home has been put into focus with the publication of
Armenians in Egypt: Contribution of Armenians to Medieval and Modern
Egypt by renowned Armenian-Egyptian author Sona Zeitlian.
Zeitlian, now in her 70s, was born, raised and educated in Egypt. A
teacher in Cairo for many years, she writes passionately about her
ancestors~R contribution to her birth country. Filled with photographs
and illustrations ~W and wonderfully annotated ~W Armenians in Egypt
explores the achievements and accomplishments of artisans, politicos
and pashas of Armenian descent who helped weave the complex tapestry
that is modern Egypt.
While Zeitlian was in Cairo for a series of lectures connected to the
English edition of the book, et sat with her for an exclusive
interview. Excerpts:
Egypt Today: By all accounts you have had a very successful return to
Egypt; how long has it been?
Sona Zeitlian: It was twenty years ago that I was last here.
Unfortunately, that trip was cut short because my home at the time
was in Lebanon and it was a time of civil war. I got the news that my
husband had been kidnapped [he was later killed by his captors and
his corpse found by the side of a Beirut street; no group has ever
claimed responsibility for the slaying] and it was a whole new set of
realities that had confronted me. Thankfully, my feelings then were
completely different from those I~Rm experiencing. [laughs] I~Rm here
to celebrate the Armenian-Egyptian experience, which means so much to
me.
What~Rs the biggest change in Egypt you~Rve noticed since returning?
I made it a point to visit both Islamic Cairo and Coptic Cairo to get
both perspectives of the city, and so much has changed. There~Rs
demographics, obviously: There are so many people and so much
traffic, but those are only the things that you see immediately. On
the other hand, there is much progress on the economic and political
fronts. The Middle East is a turbulent place, and so what attacks one
country will automatically attack the others. The Palestinian problem
has been with us for so long and has affected our destiny in the Arab
world, and we all feel the repercussions of that everywhere that we
go.
The turbulence continues, especially with the situation in Iraq. The
problems really haven~Rt changed. They are problems that have been
with us for decades now and I feel strongly the urge to find justice.
For me it is more urgent than the search for democracy. Of course
democracy is essential, but the feeling from the common people is
that they have to find justice finally.
Unless justice is granted to the people, I don~Rt think that there
will be good grounds to build democracy.
Most Armenians have never been to their ancestral homeland, but they
speak with an incredible passion on the subject. To what would you
credit that?
There are two very important things about Armenian life that make us
so passionate and make us seek the justice that has been denied us.
First there~Rs the genocide. It was covered up; the powerful nations
of the time, for their own political interests, accommodated it. They
would say, ~SIt has to be proven~T and so on. Of course there are many
people who have learned the truth about the genocide, but political
interests prevail.
Statesmen have to take relations between countries and strategic
situations into account ~W and that is understandable ~W but there is
still an urge in us Armenians to find justice. Ninety years have
passed, but we have two things that have sustained us, and the first
is our church. Our church is not an international church. It is a
church only for Armenians, a national church. The destiny of the
church has been tied to that of the people. I mean, the Armenian
church developed in the fifth century. We have had this national
church, and even when we had no kings or nobility, it took care of
the people.
The second thing we have going for us is our high regard for our
culture. We had the alphabet very early on in the fifth century and
this year we celebrate the 1,600th anniversary of the Armenian
alphabet. The culture was nourished by intellectuals all of those
years in the schools. Those schools, both national and private,
fostered this. For instance, in Egypt, we had 30 schools up until the
1960s, when the community started to disperse. We had 30 private and
public ~W when I say public I mean community schools ~W so there was
great emphasis on education.
These important factors stressed our ethnic identity and made us
passionate about what each of us can contribute to the Armenian
people.
The ultimate support of any individual is the family, and they know
that no matter what, they have a safe haven and open arms to receive
them. So family has also sustained us.
Ultimately, my book is about setting the record straight in two ways:
First, it~Rs about everything the Armenians have contributed to Egypt.
Second, it~Rs about everything Egypt has done for the Armenian
immigrants who came here with nothing, but were given the opportunity
to make a life for themselves.
The implementation of justice, it seems to me, is very much dependent
on who your publicist is. How is it that the world believes the
genocides carried out against the Jews of Europe and the aboriginal
people of the Americas, yet the Armenian experience flies below the
radar ~W even though estimates claim anywhere from 650,000 to 1.5
million Armenians were massacred between 1915 and 1918?
You know, that~Rs a very important question. The first act of the
genocide was to wipe out the intellectuals. They were the head to
chop off, so as to make the body unable to defend itself and
ultimately to disappear. It was very well planned from their
perspective and we lost the cream of the Armenian society. Two
generations passed before we were able to regain a foothold.
Even now, we are not very good at public relations. Maybe it is the
residual effect of the genocide: the fear of what might happen if you
raise your head and raise your voice. Maybe. But I think that the
time has come that we should think about other strategies. For
example, in Sohag in Upper Egypt, there is an old Armenian monastery
called the White Monastery. At one time it belonged to the Armenians,
and there are inscriptions that mark the dates when the Armenians
were there and what they had achieved. Later on, as the Islamic
population increased, there was a move of Armenians toward the Delta,
Cairo and so on, and when there were no more Armenians in Sohag, the
monastery passed to the Copts.
It is now an important place of pilgrimage for the Copts. A few years
ago, under the previous ambassador, the previous patriarch, the Copts
said, ~SWe are going to whitewash the walls inside, and if you like,
we can give you permission to remove these inscriptions and take them
to your own churches or do whatever you want.~T
There was a lot of discussion about this, and ultimately the
patriarch of the Armenian Church decided that it was better to keep
our heads down. It is the same state of mind that I was referring to
earlier. Why not say, ~SThank you for returning this to us!~T and take
advantage of the situation?
We didn~Rt do that and we should have.
What was it that enabled the Armenians to weave themselves into
Egyptian culture?
The very early Armenians that came here came to study at the great
institutions, the Alexandria Library and so forth. This was in the
third and fourth centuries, and they came to study at the Hellenic
institutions that had a worldwide reputation. Other Armenians came
for trade opportunities, because there had been long-established
Armenian trade networks on the caravan routes in Anatolia and
Mesopotamia. They also supplied and trained troops ~W you would call
them mercenaries ~W to defend the caravan routes.
There was a third category of Armenians, and those were slaves. When
the amir freed his slaves, those slaves, according to their
abilities, often became generals. The person who led the Fatimid army
and who was the initiator of building a new capital was of Armenian
descent. He was a former slave, a Muslim and also the founder of
Cairo. Surprisingly enough, Al-Azhar University ~W though it was not a
university at the time, but still a place of higher education ~W from
that time until today they still remember his name, Gohar. He was
called, ~SGohar the Sicilian,~T because he was imported as a slave to
Tunisia from Sicily. That was another category, former slaves who had
attained important positions in the Army: in the administrations and
especially as calligraphers or secretaries. If you were a good
calligrapher, you had a position in the administration.
The first Armenian who was instrumental in founding the Holy Armenian
See, the future patriarchate, was also a former slave who was also
the governor of Syria. When the Fatimid dynasty was in poor shape,
this former slave was already known as a very courageous man, so they
asked him to become vizier in Cairo. He made one condition for this;
he said, ~SI will bring my Armenian army with me.~T Because of their
dire straights they replied, ~SWhatever you want, just bring peace to
this country.~T It is estimated that there were 10,000 Armenian
soldiers that accompanied him. This was Badr al-Gamali.
During his time, he never forgot that he was an Armenian. He was a
Muslim, of course, and he was also not only a vizier, or what we
would call a prime minister today; he was also the leader of the army
and the chief of the propaganda apparatus. He monopolized all three
posts, so he was really a dictator if we used the modern term. He was
very good to Armenians, and the time that he was vizier here
corresponds to the time of the fall of the Armenian kingdom in our
native land.
Because of the benevolent attitude towards Armenians in Egypt, many
Armenians came here, and he gave them free housing and encouraged the
establishment of the Holy See.
The acceptance of Armenians in Egypt wasn~Rt the norm, was it?
There was a huge difference in Egypt. Armenians here gave a lot of
money and material help in 1896 and 1915 to the Armenian casualties
and the refugee camps in Syria and so many other places. The Egyptian
government accepted the transfer of so much money out of Egypt for
humanitarian reasons. They could have objected and said that no
Egyptian money could leave the country, but they allowed it. So, we
have much to be grateful for to this country.
One hears of sporadic tensions between Copts and Muslims in Egypt. Is
there a similar tension between Armenians and Muslims?
I wouldn~Rt say that. You know, when the revolution took place, one of
the important slogans was ~SEgypt for Egyptians.~T Now, Armenians were
by this time Egyptian and there was a difference between Armenians
and Greeks or Italians or other foreign minorities in the sense that
there had been special dispensations for foreigners. It was an
Ottoman arrangement that they made to encourage the Europeans to
invest in Egypt. Europeans were free from the regulations and the
laws of the country. They only followed the laws of their own
country, and if anything happened ~W from a misdemeanor to
manslaughter ~W they were judged only in their consulate courts and
not by the government of Egypt.
Armenians did not have this status since they had no independent
country of their own. In fact, there was only an Armenian embassy in
Cairo after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Armenian Republic
was established just 15 years ago.
I will give you an example. I taught at Kalousdian School in Boulaq.
There was a very rich Armenian who had a monopoly on hammams, or
public baths. He was also very prominent in the maritime trade on the
Nile. He was a very wealthy man, but he had no children, so he gave
all of his money to that school, and it bears his name because of
that. There was a rule that even though you leave your money to a
specific school, the money goes to the Ministry of Education, and it
is the ministry that determines if they will give the money to the
school or not. It depends on their agenda.
Our patriarch wrote the prime minister at the time and said, ~SDo you
want this school to be closed, where so many Armenian children are
being educated, most of them free of charge? Do you want us to lose
this school? If you care for the Armenians, you must do your utmost
for us to retain this school.~T
Mubarak Pasha Baya, a very prominent Armenian who was the prime
minister, found the loopholes to approach the problem through. The
result was that he was able to keep the school for the Armenians and
in court it was registered in the name of the community.
Last year they celebrated their 150th anniversary. So, you see, this
is an example that without having a government or an embassy to
support you, and only thanks to that high official, the rights of the
Armenian people were taken care of.
So is Egypt still an attractive home for Armenians?
The political situation has changed. You know what struck the
Armenian community in Egypt hard was Nasser~Rs nationalization policy.
My father was a tobacco distributor in Old Cairo and one day when he
went to his place of work, it was closed with red tape and he was
told, ~SNow this belongs to the government.~T
They said that maybe if he waited 15 or 20 years, that gradually the
government would return what it took ~W and of course that never
happened. The Armenian community was really a wealthy community, many
involved in both light and heavy industry, and that blow was very
hard. In just one night, you went back to your work and it was no
longer yours.
At the same time there was a welcoming cry from countries like
Australia and Canada. They opened wide their doors and said, ~SIf you
want to leave, we are ready to welcome you.~T If those doors had not
opened as wide or they were not so welcoming, not so many Armenians
would have left ~W I am sure.
Of course much has changed now from the policies of that time, but
it~Rs a shame: One of our foremost filmmakers, Atom Egoyan, was born
in Egypt and his father was a classmate of mine. He was born here,
and when the revolution came he was five years old and his family
immigrated to Canada. Now he is a famous film director and producer,
and if he had stayed here that talent would have gone to Egypt.
Have you been able to get a feel for the current Armenian-Egyptian
experience? And what has been the general reaction to the book in
Egypt thus far?
There were many Armenians who came to me and told me that they did
not know so much about their culture and history in Egypt ~W even
though they have lived here all of their lives. What impressed them
most was that there was an uninterrupted Armenian presence here.
Today, we have a very good ambassador to Egypt, and he has taken good
care of the community. There was an initial printing of the book that
appeared in 2004 and at the time he was newly appointed as ambassador
to Egypt, and one of the friends of my daughter who knew him in
Armenia gave him the book. She thought that it would give him an idea
of the history of Armenians in Egypt.
Apparently, he liked the book, and when we started working on the
expanded English edition, he asked to write the forward and he wanted
to present the book in Cairo where the story began. From what I saw
at the launch party yesterday, it was well received by the Egyptian
dignitaries and the other ambassadors. If you present them facts and
not just speeches, and you accept in all humility what this country
has done for the Armenian community, it will always be well received.
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