Let's Talk About: Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman

Our first book in the Let's Talk about it: Jewish Literature discussion series (http://tinyurl.com/7qdm7)

Aciman's memoir captures the memories and perspectives of a young Jewish boy growing up in Egypt. This colorful family, who moved to Alexandria in 1905 long before the narrator was born, is a family like so many others...multi-dimensional characters, grandmothers whose love is unmistaking, and a bond between them all that is universal. This was a difficult book to get involved in...in fact, I had to do a "family tree" to keep track of the generations and the various aunts and uncles.
But the tale becomes a tale I could strongly identify with my Irish ancestors...

The book opens with a quote from Great Uncle Villi: "Siamo o non siamo," Are we or aren't we?" and so the family moves through generations struggling to find a place in the world to call home. The narrator is Andre who uses the memoir to record family stories of genrations of his family as they move from one place to another. As they struggle, Uncle Vili repeats his question, "Are we or aren't we" and, as the narrator observes "It was his way of whistling in the dark, of shrugging off defeat, of picking up the pieces and calling it a victory." (ch.1)

The family's saga takes the reader through good times as well as bad...the family rubs shoulders with the king of Egypt, sells Italian cars, rice, sugar cane, and dabbles in other industries. The wealth comes and go as the family faces the realities of wars and economic depressions.

I found the story of this Jewish family interesting and one I could relate to coming from a large Irish family. So many of the relationships and his recollections of his experience as a displaced member of this family seemed universal.

When Andre recalls his memories of conversations with his family, the disconnectedness they felt as they wandered outside of their homeland was clear: "Even today,...I cross the street on the slant, I always sit in the side rows at concert halls, I am a citizen of two countires but I live in neither, and I never look people in the eye." "I'm honest with no one, though I've never lied. I've given far less than I've taken, although I'm always left with nothing. I don't even think I Know who I am, I know myself the way I might know my neighbor from across the street. When I am here, I long to be there; when I wa there, I longed to be here." (p. 85)

The Jewishness of his recollections are interesting. He provides lavish descriptions of food and celebrations, yet no words of going to the Temple or worship. Often he seems embarrassed by his Jewishness and longs for conformity. His recollections are those not unlike a child who is embarrassed by his mother, his background and his heritage. There is no question that he is privileged yet he lacks the pride in the things his family provides for him in Alexandria.

At the end of the memoir, he sits as the beach, he finally knows: "And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giants boulders beneath the promenade... I wanted to come come back tomorrow night, and thenight after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painfull was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment, when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved..." (p.339)

Between Two Worlds: Stories of Estrangement and Homecoming? One that many generations and nationalities can relate to...