Hanucca

TO YOU MY FRIENDS FROM EGYPT  MAY THE LIGHT OF HANUCCA SHINE ON YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES. HOW MANY HANUCCAS HAVE WE SPENT AWAY FROM THE COUNTRY OF OUR BIRTH? MORE THAN I CARE TO REMEMBER! ANYWAY WE ALL STILL HERE. SO HAPPY HANUCCA TILL NEXT YEAR.

Suzy Vidal

In Ishmael's house (Sir Martin Gilbert)

 IN  ISHMAEL'S HOUSE
A HISTORY OF JEWS IN MUSLIM LANDS

By Sir Martin Gilbert

Yale University Press, New Haven and London

(Click here to see the link)

STRONLGY RECOMMENDED TO US JEWS OF ARAB COUNTRIES:

VERY SERIOUSLY  RESEARCHED AND WELL DOCUMENTED

THE WORK OF A TRUE HISTORIAN
ALSO AUTHOR OF ABOUT 80 OTHER BOOKS
AND OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHER OF WINSTON CHURCHILL;


EVERY SENTENCE HAS BEEN WEIGHED AND HAS ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD;
ASTONISHING AS WELL AS TEACHING US ABOUT OUR OWN PAST IN THAT LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS AMONGST OTHER ARAB LANDS.

Le Shana Tova

Allow me to wish you a wonderful Jewish New Year.
Le Shana Tova to all my friends.
Let us hope in a brilliant future and peace in the M.E.
We have already paid our due!! Mish Keda?

Sultana Latifa or Suzy Vidal as you wish

Ayam El Bamia

The days of bamia (cornes grecques)

 

Ah bamia that most delightful vegetable known to Greeks, Turks and Arabs in general.

There are two types of Bamia. One is small and the other long.

The small ones are best because the long ones leave slimy threads and it’s nauseating.

So rather than have that impression it is preferable not to cook the long Bamia.

It is a very long job to prepare Bamia. It has a little hat on top and you have to eliminate it going round and not cutting it off. Then the tip is slightly cut off, not too much because the bamia will open!

Having prepared your vegetables, you wash them and prepare your tomato sauce not forgetting to add lamoun (lemon), felfel (pepper) as much as you can bear, the usual korkum (curcuma), kumein (cumin) and the gracious basal, (onion).

It is to be noted that our tomato sauces were always prepared from Fresh tomatoes therefore giving out all the aroma of tomatoes with the spices.

Then you add your bamia to your sauce and allow simmering for a long time. Be careful not to agitate (!) them, because as soon as they start cooking they become very fragile!

Always accompanied with roz (rice).

Outa ou basal were the main ingredients of peasants. They ate a tomato or an onion with their eish baladi (peasant bread).

And when they went to the army because they did not understand the meaning of left and right, a tomato was put in one hand and an onion in the other.

So the corporal cried out outa, bassala for left and right!

Enjoy this most delightful meal. It will fly you to the stars!  

Halawa: a typical Egyptian depilatory

Halawa: a typical Egyptian depilatory.  
  

There were two halawas in Egypt: one was the depilatory that came to us from Pharaoh’s times and the other one, the halva, which we in Cairo called Halawa.

Hairy legs, arms or armpits, moustachioed upper lip and other secret

parts were very poorly considered. Foreign women were distinctive by

their hairy bodies. Perhaps the most distasteful sight in summer was to see

long armpit hairs waving in the breeze, not mentioning the stale smell they produced.

My halawa today is a candy sugar depilatory of the very old days. The ladies then were very conscious their appeance, taking milk baths and massaging essential oils into their bodies to make them smooth, desirable and caressing!!

We think that today we have invented all the beauty products or essential oils whereas in truth people like Cleopatra or Nefertiti knew them!

When you have cooked your halawa (recipe on demand here) and it has been pulled and twisted adding a spot of saliva to make it malleable, you stretch it out on your forearm and shutting your eyes, pull it off in one decisive movement. You can suffer it out in a solitary session or have a martyrdom-shared one! Armpits were sore spots and the halawa had to be pulled out correctly and swiftly before the pain hit you. Anyone trying to pull off the sugar depilatory and failing was in for intense suffering.

Sometimes the armpits bled, but that was because the sticky halawa had not been pulled out correctly or quickly enough.

The nightmarish part was the inside of the knees. You had to twist your body to spread out the paste and it was practically impossible to pull unless you were a contortionist in a circus.

To look human and not apish, you stuck the halawa on your moustache and after a quick agonising jerk your smooth upper lip was rewarding.

It is not any worse than going to the dentist’s! 

A fool once said that to be beautiful, one must suffer!

Ayam el Dahk

The days of laughter

A Jewish mother receives a long awaited telephone call from her only son.

“Hi mom.”

“My son! And how are you?”

“Mom, I’ve got news for you! I just got married!”

“Mazel Tov my son! And who is she, do we know her?”

“No. I don’t think so. Mom I have to tell you she is Christian.”

“Oh well my boy, we are all children of God, so welcome to your wife;”

“Hey mom I have to tell you something else.”

“Yes my son, what else?”

“Well, she has four kids.”

“Four kids? Well you have a family now.”

“Hey mom, I have to tell you something else: we have no place to live!”

“Well my son, that is no problem. You and your wife can have my bedroom, the kids: 2 in your old room and 2 in the spare room.”

“Hey mom and where will you sleep?”

“Don’t worry son, as soon I as put down the phone, I’ll drop dead.”

 

The days of SHAKSHOUKA

AYAM EL SHAKSHOUKA

The days of SHAKSHOUKA 

That lovely name was one I hated. You will say “what a difficult person to please”.

That was my mom’s opinion too!

What was a shakshouka? First and above all you prepared the spiciest tomato sauce possible.

Not just a drop but a pan full of it. It was so spicy.

you could light a cigarette with it or fly off in a rocket! 

When it was ready and boiling, you broke fresh eggs in it one after the other.

Immediately the eggs consolidated except the centre, which remained soft.

The usual roz be senebar (rice with kernels) was prepared because shakshouka without rice was not shakshouka.

Each person helped himself to rice and added an egg with its very spicy sauce. Mmmm.

What a delight!

But not for yours truly.

When finally to please my mom I did eat shakshouka, my lips were chapped, torn and hurt by that sauce not to talk of the egg that had become red in the process!!!

Was I really too difficult to please?

Considering things today: yes I think I was difficult to please! 

The days of KOSSa Mahshi

AYAM EL KOSSA MAHSHI

The days of KOSSA Mahshi: (stuffed courgettes)

Still today I dream of our kossa mahshi in Egypt!

Though I am considered a good cook, I have never managed to obtain the taste of those Mahshis of my past!

IT IS PROBABLY DUE TO THE KOSSA ITSELF; here we have fat and watery courgettes not at all convenient for el mashi. In Italy they have those delicious zucchini almost as good as the Egyptian ones.

To prepare kossa mashi you need above all a NAKHWARA. It’s an instrument to void the insides of the courgettes without making a hole at the other end.

You insert the Nakhwara and turn it delicately till you have only the outer skin left.

Your stuffing will need to be prepared as well. As no minced meat was found, you had to mince it with that old-fashioned machine. You needed good arms for that.

Then roz (rice) was added to the minced meat, basal (onions),  malh (salt) lamoun (lemon) korkom (curcuma), kamoun (cumin), ou zeit (and oil), karafs ( minced parsley) that gives it a cheerful colouring.

Mix all this with CLEAN hands and stuff your courgettes one by one without breaking the courgettes.

In a very large pan quickly fry the stuffed courgettes and then put them in a spicy tomato sauce you have prepared yourself. And don’t forget to add the inside of the courgettes you have cleaned out with the nakhwara.

The secret of success is to let your mahshi cook gently and for a long time.

The ones I prefer are the slightly burned ones!!!

This delight will take you to the top of the world!

The days of baccala

The days of baccala: (cod, morue)

When my mother prepared Baccala, I went on strike. For her and my father it was a real delight, not for Sultana.

« Mais mange un bout, c’est délicieux !’

« Non ! »

Baccala at the outset is dried cod in salt. It is hung out in the air to dry.

It has a strange aspect, like a greyish dead leaf. Of course the smell is tremendous;

So you bought your baccala at the market and put it in a basin with water overnight.

This way it lost a good part of its salt.

As it could not be cooked in that state, the old-fashioned mincing machine was attached to a table and the baccala, cut into smaller pieces, was introduced one after the other into the horn-like opening and the handle twisted. That was how meat and baccala were minced.

The operation was repeated as many times as was necessary using strength and patience!

Finally when all the baccala was minced, my mother added a boiled potato and an egg and

kneaded it till it became a unified paste. Then one after the other she formed balls the size of a golf ball. When all the paste had been turned into balls, it was time to fry them. There were no deep fryers so it was a slow job to fry all these balls.

After that a very spicy tomato sauce was prepared from fresh tomatoes tabaan (of course) and one by one the baccala balls were put into the sauce to absorb part of it. It was served with rice greatly appreciated with every meal!

I do not know if I could ever eat baccala even now! But I keep baccala day in my mind and I remember what an extraordinary cook my mother was!

The days of molo: yesterday and today

 

Etfadallou ! Bel hana oul sheffa

Molo is our new affectionate word for molokeya.

In the dictionaries they call it Jews’ mallow.

Can it mean that we Jews have been eating it from time immemorial?

What is it and how was it prepared in Egypt?

Foremost and above all it was a fresh long stem with leaves on it of a deep green colour bought on the local market.

It was washed in running water and shaken out.

Put on a newspaper and spread out on our balcony in the sun, it was put to dry.

This was an important stage because when it was not dried properly it produced long slimy threads, which were disgusting.

Once the molokeya was dry, it went back to the kitchen on our marble working table and all the leaves picked out one by one from the stem.

These leaves were shredded with a half-moon, till they became a paste.

Do you think that was the end of the job? Not at all!

Previously, a chicken was cooked whole and the broth was ready waiting for “the making of” that dish.

The molo was added to the chicken broth and brought to boil.

Meanwhile you cleaned out several garlic cloves and you started crushing them in an eed hon

(Mortar and pestle).

Ding ding ding. The whole building heard this lovely sound.

The ta-leya was the name for the frying part:

You poured oil in a pan, added the shredded garlic generously, then the kosbara (coriander) that had been ground beforehand.

Threw all this in a pan, fried it then added it to the broth containing your molo.

Et voila! A hard half day’s work but what a delight.

It was always shared with the neighbours!

How we ate it: first you put grilled bread in your dish.

Then with the second helping you put white rice and chicken (or vice versa!).

Every one loved molokeya except my uncle Marco from Salonica who refused to eat it.

As a matter of fact his wife, my aunt Judith had to come to us to eat it. Marco refused to kiss his wife when she had eaten molokeya!!!

Molokeya today

Having left Egypt does not mean we no longer eat molokeya. But what a difference!

You buy the dried leaves at an Egyptian grocery. My dried leaves come all the way from Milan from my sister who lives there, leaves brought over from Egypt. These dried leaves are added to your homemade broth thickened with spinach.

The rest is pretty much the same. You go about your ta-leya but instead of cleaning garlic cloves there is now garlic paste. You add two good spoons of your paste and put it with the coriander for a fry-up.

I go all the way to Holland to buy my ground coriander, that’s how much we still love our molo.

Even my children who are Europeans are crazy about it.

When they were young they called molokeya “mokoleya”.

The molo day is not the one to start a diet because no one will stop at two helpings! I don’t!

It is now an international dish!

Molo from Milan bought from an Egyptian grocer, coriander from Holland, rice from Italy or china, eaten in Europe!

That’s what I really am. Un peu de tout!

Sultana Latifa

Nonna Sarah's treatment for high blood pressure

 

This is "the" one treatment I remember clearly!

Today i may be looking for my keys or eyeglasses or anything else but my nonna's high blood pressure treatment I remember clearly. And that was around 1948!

The leech (sangsues) doctor regularly came to my grandparents. When my nonna said she had a babour (réchaud) in her head, it meant that it was time to apply those leeches.

Was he a doctor?
i do not know. but he knew his job.

My nonna sat on a sofa in her darkened room and he took one worm after another and pressing its jaw gripped my nonna's white skin on her temple. He put three or four worms on each side and nonna sat there with a basin full of water waiting for the worm to have drunk her blood and fall off.

As a child I sat on one of the stools and watched fascinated. From thin little things they grew and grew till they became fat and dropped in the basin.

They left little holes in my nonna's white skin (she came from Smyrna).

She would rest in her darkened room and feel better till it was time again to stop "el babour" with the visit of the "leech doctor."

 

Sultana Latifa

taken from The Jasmine Necklace Trilogy.

Kassat el Hawa

Kassat el Hawa: sucking glasses, ventouses.

For breathing difficulties or bronchitis, those precious kassat el hawa were applied to your back. Kassat el hawa were similar to drinking glasses except they had a rounded bottom and smaller neck.

You prepared a torch and soaked it in alcohol then put a match to it. The patient outsetched on his abdomen, you turned the torch in the kassat and quickly applied them to the back. You looked like a tortoise with a glass roof.

The patient had to keep still till the skin inside the kassat turned bluish and looked as though ready to explode.

What a relief when those kassat made that kissing noise and your back was liberated!

However there were marks on your back: black and blue moons or half moons. These remained for a few months. When summer came along and the marks had not faded out, it was embarrassing in a swimsuit. But then you knew who had been ill that winter.

Sultana Latia (Suzy Vidal)

taken from THE JASMINE NECKLACE TRILOGY

Our bath today and yesterday!

Today you can have hot water for your bath at the turn of your tap.

I’m going to tell you how it was more than 65 years ago in Egypt.

Friday pre Shabbat bath was a ceremony.

The first step was to buy the petrol from a peddler passing by with his donkey and crying out “gas, gas.”

My mother stuck her head out of the balcony and shouted “gas, gas”.

The peddler looked up and my mother motioned him to come up through ‘l’escalier de service’ (five storeys) with his gas in a container on his shoulder. We did not think then that it was inhuman or undignified.

He left his donkey unattended with a big bag of oats tied to its head eating while the man went up.

Your primus was then filled with el gas. The Primus was every family’s prized possession. Standing on three legs that would hold the recipient, it had a small ashtray-like mould in which you poured some alcohol and then you started pumping.

You scratched a match and when you were lucky it lit up the primus.

If you were unlucky it boomed up in your face sometimes causing severe burns.

But through time, we had become experts in lighting the Primus correctly.

The water was heated up in a recuperated oil safiha, pail, put in the corner of the bathroom.

In my home we had three copper toshts (basins) of different sizes.

The very small one was to put the loofa and Naboulsy soap; there was also a pitcher to add the hot water to the cold one in another safiha. The biggest tosht was to stand in and wash ourselves.

The medium one was to rinse. You poured water with that lovely pitcher.

After your complete rinse, you slipped into your bournouss, put your feet in your aba-ib clogs, sabots, and clicked out of the bathroom.

The bath was then prepared for the next person and so on till every family member was ready for Shabbat.

Then one day Butagas entered our homes and hot water came flowing out like magic.

However lighting the Butagas was also treacherous.

If you turned the small handle that let out gas and did not light it immediately it lebbed, boomed, in your face too.

So modernism also required getting used to.

Has anyone thought of that poor “gas man?” and what happened to him when the Butagas took over?

Now we do not even have a butagas at all, our central heater in the cellar does it all.

Night and day your hot water is at your disposal! The whole system is not bigger that a fridge and it gives you Central Heating in your radiators and hot water.

It also works with gas: from the North Sea.

What an easy life we have now compared to our parents.

And still we complain!!! 

Suzy Vidal (Sultana Latifa)

Pessah

Once upon a very long time ago
Lived in the land of Egypt a Pharaoh
He was as mean as mean could be
So Moyshe wIth the plagues hit he
With panic and fear Egypt shook
Believers can read it in our Book
Regrets Pharaoh felt after they left
His chariots he gathered to be sent
Moyshe with his arms the sea opened
A mighty miracle had just happened
With his cell phone Moyshe called the Lord
Adonai heard him and closed the road
With a Seder we celebrate this feat
We call it Pessah, it's a lovely feast!

Sultana Latifa

Building bridges and being able to cross them

As years go by it seems to me that it is easier to build a real bridge such as Le Pont des Anglais in Cairo or Le Pont Aléxandre in Paris or the great Golden Gate uniting two parts of a town or two cities than building bridges between cultures, races or countries.

It is saddening to see that. But people are more and more cautious of who they talk or give their trust to, let alone bonding with others.

When I was a child, I did not know I was building bridges. The entire world around me was a friendly place. My friends were respectively, Greeks, Armenians, Jews etc. At school we had Moslems, Catholics the rare Protestant, I even had a Chinese friend…

It is true that I was lucky to live in The Extaday Hotel where lots of people came to live temporarily during the hard years of 1948 and 1949. But we as children did not bother about the problems of the “older’ ones! War or no war, we played. Our only worry was to find the hiding place of one of ours when playing “cache cache” And we quarrelled as children do making it up very quickly as long as the adults did not add their grain of salt.

Today, January 27^th 2010 is the 65^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz that deadly, murderous camp in Poland.

The President of Israel was invited to the Bundestag and made a speech in Hebrew.

Talk about building bridges!!!

He is a fantastic man able to put aside the past and tend a friendly hand.

And it is what is lacking most in this troubled world, people who can lead us to peace.

As an elderly woman today I find myself yearning for the days I built countless bridges.

Maybe these days will come back.

In an ideal world we should hold hands and build these bridges together.

Suzy Vidal (Sultana Latifa)

poetry

When

When life has almost gone by

And it's inevitable to say goodbye

Your mind tells you how short it was

The events of your exile, fighting for life

Then putting children into the world

And imagine that they too will one day

Be as old as you are now!

You would want to be at their side

To guide them but you know it cannot be

The only hope is that you have given them

The education and strength to fight and face it all

Sultana Latifa

Being Jewish

Being Jewish is in some ways being different

from the majority

Being Jewish is waking up every morning and

Thanking Melekh Aolam

Being Jewish is the constant fear of witnessing

Israel disappear

Being an Egyptian Jew is that non-ending pain

In your heart

Being an Egyptian Jew is realising that we are

The last of the Mohicans

Being an Egyptian Jew makes you doubly different

From everyone!

Sultana Latifa

My Eternity

It's in the eyes of children

That I find innocence

it's in the laughter of children

That I find joy

It's in the games of children

That I find knowledge

It's in the trust of children

That I find hope

It's in my grandchildren

That i shall find eternity.

Sultana Latifa

A salute to all our martyrs

Liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, 27th Jan 2010



A salute to all our martyrs

 

And so you thought you could do away with us?
For all your horrendous efforts I say:YOU FAILED!
Here i am a Jew telling you to your face: SHAME
SHAME on you and your leaders who drove you
SHAME on you who listened to their telling you
SHAME on all those who knew but did nothing
To all the  Ukrainians, Lithuanians,Poles, Germans
taking pleasure in your jobs i say YOU LOST
Some of you are still alive but will never enter paradise
Because WE shall bar you from entering there
Just as you barred us from life...even the newborn!
What had they done to you those innocent babes?
I vindicative? Compared to you i am more than angelic

 Do not delude yourselves: we shall never forget

Our children,  their children and those after them
Will be standing facing you to say HALT not heil!

Suzy Vidal (Sultana latifa)