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)