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FROM EGYPT TO AMERICA: A MULTILINGUAL'S STORY
Dr Maurice M. Mizrahi
mizrahim@cox.net
9 January 1994
The following material is not new. I wrote it in late 1968, about eight months
after arriving in the U.S. I was a research assistant to two university
professors who were commissioned by the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare to write a book to serve as a basic manual for bilingual education in
the U.S., a movement which began back then. They soon realized they had a
perfect case history of successful multilingual education right under their
eyes working for them, so they asked me to write my story, with emphasis on my
schooling. Then, they promptly published it in their 2-volume book,
*Bilingual
Education in the United States*, by Theodore Andersson and Mildred Boyer, U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1970. It was a successful study, and a
second
edition came out in 1978, published by National Education Laboratory
Publishers. I did not sign it primarily because I was afraid harm would come
to my parents, still in Egypt. Here is what I wrote back then:
[Late 1968]
FROM EGYPT TO AMERICA: A MULTILINGUAL'S STORY
---------------------------------------------
*Editors' note*: This autobiography was prepared on request and, as the cover
note shows, with some reluctance. The modest author is nineteen years of age
and at different stages of his life had mastered four languages. For purposes
of reproduction here we have abridged the text slightly, and occasionally
tampered with the punctuation. Otherwise, it is untouched. It stands, in our
opinion, as a monument to his control over English, his fourth language. The
cover note reads thus:
Dr. Andersson,
This is my epic, thrilling, breathtaking, heartbreaking autobiography. As I
did not know exactly what you wanted, I stuffed it with many details that you
might or you might not find of interest and relevance. Much more can be added
and much can be crossed out. As you suggested, I loathe talking about myself,
so I would like for the paper to be anonymous, for this and other reasons,
although all that I said is perfectly true.
Cordially,
(Signature withheld)
I am a multilingual. Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, where my family was
settled for over two generations, I am also a Jewish citizen of Italy, a native
speaker of French, and a prospective American. With this diversified
background, I can justly claim to be international and not to belong to any
specific culture, for which I am proud since I firmly believe that to be
identified with a people makes one prone to succumb to the ill effects of
nationalism and fanaticism which are all too often the causes of regrettable
clashes between people and are to be accounted for countless bloody and useless
wars.
I wish to tell my story primarily in order to show that the knowledge of
several languages cannot but have a beneficent influence on an individual's
life and will in no way hamper his talents and aptitudes in other fields but
will on the contrary intensify them and stimulate his intellectual activity and
potential by broadening his view upon the world we live in, allowing him to
express himself better, and making him aware of the fact that there exist other
cultures which are as fascinating and useful as his own.
A brief history of my family will better describe my origin. We are Sephardic
Jews, that is, descendants of the Israelites who lived in Spain until they were
driven out of the country in 1492, and have lived in Mediterranean countries
ever since. On my father's side, my grandfather was born in the island of
Rhodes, and my grandmother in the nearby city of Salonica. When they got
married, my grandfather, who was a tradesman, decided to settle down in Egypt,
which was at that time (1900) a very active and prosperous country and was
regarded by many as a land of opportunity. They used to speak several
languages with equal fluency, as multilingualism is a very marked
characteristic of Middle-Easterners. Among these were Turkish, Greek, Arabic,
and French. But Spanish, or a dialect of it called Ladino, was the language
most currently used in their rapidly expanding family.
None children were born to them, six boys and three girls, of which my father,
born in 1903, is the eldest. They had no specific nationality at that time, as
identification, travel, and citizenship documents were not of common usage.
But as time passed, they were asked to opt for a specific nationality. Since
the islands they came from were under Italian domination at that time, they
chose to become officially Italian citizens and were issued passport and
citizenship certificates by the Consulate. The number of Europeans in Egypt
was then considerably larger and they owned the major resources of the country,
thus holding the reins of its economy, which was therefore virtually in foreign
hands. The British Empire had a protectorate over Egypt and several bases for
armed forces, and owned the Suez Canal. This made Cairo a sort of
international community with a wide variation of juxtaposed ethnic groups, each
one having its own life, cultural events, schools, churches, and
characteristical activities, and the knowledge of *any* specific language or
set of languages was not required for leading a normal life in the country.
This is one of the chief reasons why the average Egyptian-born of Cairo was
always at least bilingual.
My father, uncles, and aunts were therefore sent to Italian State Public
Schools; but the French influence in the city was so overwhelmingly strong (as
the French are known to be excellent propagators of their own culture) that
this language did not take long to play a leading role in their lives. It was
regarded as the language of the elite and knowing it was an unmistakable sign
of being educated. They all subsequently left the country and were literally
scattered all over the world: they now live in Italy, France, Belgium, Spain,
Venezuela, Brazil, to name only a few. We do not exactly lack cosmopolitanism
in our family!
My mother's native language is Arabic. Her father, also a tradesman, came from
Syria and knew only Arabic and Hebrew. She received her formal education in a
French school. Then, when she married my father, it seemed natural that French
be adopted as the means of communication, since it was the only language they
knew in common well enough to make it their own. Their children, two boys and
two girls, of which I am the youngest, were unilingual in their early years and
French was their vernacular. Consequently, the latter slowly became the
language of our family and the only one spoken in our house.
When my sisters grew up to school age, my father decided that it would be
advisable for them to receive their education through the English language, as
a British uncle of his exerted pressure on him to that effect. The increasing
anglicization of Egypt and the arrival of new contingents of British armed
forces every day to face the threat of Rommel's advancing Nazi troops made them
believe that one day English would be the only language used in the country by
the power holders. Therefore, after a year in a French preschool (Jabès) they
went to an Irish nuns' school, Alvernia English Convent School, from
kindergarten to the seventh grade, then to St. Clare's college from the eighth
grade till they graduated.
After the second World War was over, my father changed his mind and decided
that we should be educated in our own mother tongue. Besides, the French
*lycées* had a reputation of being excellent institutions of learning and the
French curriculum of being utterly superior, in shape and in content, to the
others in function at that time. Consequently, my older sister, after getting
her Oxford degree, spent three years in the French *lycée* of Bab el Luk and
brilliantly obtained her baccalaureate in 1952. My younger sister was
stubbornly determined to go on studying in English and convinced my father to
let her complete her education at the American University in Cairo, from where
she graduated with a B.A. degree in 1956. She is the only member of our family
to have received a totally unilingual education.
My brother, since he started going to school in 1945, was educated entirely in
French, used French curricula, and took exams sent directly from France in the
same *lycée*. He also learned Latin, English, and Arabic, which were taught as
foreign languages. When he graduated in 1959 and obtained his baccalaureate in
Mathematics, there was no place for him to go and pursue further studies in
French, and he could not leave as he was not allowed to take any money with
him, so he had to apply at the University of Cairo, in the Faculty of
Engineering, where the media of instruction were Arabic and English, the latter
being used because very few textbooks were in Arabic and most professors had
received their degrees from English or American universities. The
psychological shock due to the abrupt change was great and detrimental. He
spent six years in this institution where he had an enormous trouble in
assimilating and integrating himself and always felt alienated. This dreadful
experience has had permanent ill effects on his mind and personality.
As for myself, the story is longer and more diversified. I had spent three
years in the *lycée*, from kindergarten to grade two, when, on the night of
October 26, 1956, Egypt was at war. France, Great Britain, and Israel attacked
Egypt simultaneously, as a consequence of new President Nasser's decision to
nationalize the Suez Canal and place its administration under the authority of
his government. Within the week that followed the outbreak of hostilities, all
French and English citizens were expelled overnight from the country and their
property was confiscated. All the French private schools were consequently
closed, including mine, so that when the situation went back to normal the
problem was to find a school where I would be admitted. It did not take long
for my father to decide that, as an Italian child, I would be sent to an
Italian school. The best one was the Scuola Italiana di Stato a Bulacco, an
institution under the direct supervision and sponsorship of the Italian
consulate. The children attending this school, the teachers, and the
administrators were exclusively part of the Italian community of Cairo and
Italian was the only language used, although the importance of knowing other
languages was stressed since the very early grades, since French *and* English
*and* Arabic were all taught one hour (or two) a week, at least in the two
grades (two and three) which I attended there. Surprisingly enough, even
though I did not know a single word of Italian when I went to class the first
day, I never felt like a stranger. The teacher paid special attention to me
and did not hesitate to use what little French she knew with me whenever she
thought I hadn't understood what she had said, and my classmates were extremely
friendly. They would let me participate in all their games, invite me over to
their places, and would never laugh at my difficulty in expressing myself in
Italian. In this welcoming and warm atmosphere, it did not take me more than
three months to speak the language with no accent at all and understand it
fairly well. At the end of the first year, I could speak Italian most fluently
and had many Italian friends, to the point where there was no way of
distinguishing me from them as far as background was concerned. Since on the
other hand French was constantly used at home because my father and I were the
only Italian speakers, at this stage of my life I was perfectly bilingual.
The second year at the Scuola Italiana passed without any problem: not only was
I fluent and proficient, but I also proved to be an excellent student in all
subjects. My father supervised me closely in my schoolwork and often spoke to
me in Italian, always trying to make me feel that after all I was Italian like
all the other children around me and that except maybe for a minor difference
in religion I belonged to their world and was not an outsider, and this
encouraged me very much. Never again in my life did I ever feel so close to
Italy, my supposed homeland that I have never seen. From that time until I
left Egypt several years later, I kept flooding the house with Italian
publications that I used to read and reread endlessly with everlasting
interest. Especially during those long summers in Cairo, I used to spend days
and days doing nothing but read Italian magazines like *Corriere dei Piccoli*,
*Albi del Falco*, *Albi della Rosa*, *La Settimana Enigmistica*, *Intrepido*,
etc., some of which were just translations of American comics, thus giving me
an early insight into American life and history. Very often I would go into
Italian crossword competitions with my father, and the constant search for
words added a great deal to my knowledge of the language. In brief, Italian
has played an important role in my life since then.
After two years in the Italian school, members of my family insisted that my
father send me back to the French *lycée* which had reopened in the meantime.
The Egyptian authorities had placed the *lycée* under their administration and
decided that it should be progressively converted into an Arab school. The
name was changed to *Lycée La Liberté*, then to *Lycée Al Horreya*, and there
were no more French teachers. The latter were replaced by educated Egyptian
bilinguals, most of whom had a European background and were themselves the
product of French schools. Little by little the French textbooks were
eliminated in favor of either the Arabic textbooks used in the public schools
or mimeographed handouts and rough paperbacks in French hastily prepared by
local teachers, many of whom did not hesitate to plagiarize ignominiously those
banned and rejected French books. The curriculum was agreed upon to be
identical in content to that of Egyptian public schools. The languages of
instruction would be both French and Arabic depending on the grade, the
subject, and the year. However, in senior high school, the students would
choose between an Arabic Section (in which Arabic would be the exclusive medium
of instruction and where French and English would be taught as second
languages) and a French-Arab section (in which both languages would be used).
The latter operated therefore according to a perfect bilingual program. Both
sections were subdivided into a Literature and Science subsection. The
examinations were officially issued by the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and
translated into French when the subject was taught in French. As an example,
in the tenth grade French-Arabic (Science) section, History, Geography, and
Civics, Biology and Geology, Art, Philosophy, and Arabic LIterature were taught
in Arabic whereas Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and French Literature and
Civilization were taught in French. Intermediate English was taught as a
foreign language according to a program of teaching English to native speakers
of Arabic. Spontaneously and not because of some school policy, only the
language in which the subject was taught was spoken in class.
Thus in October 1958 I went back to the school I had left two years earlier,
and it seemed so different that I had difficulty recognizing it. During my
first year there (*huitième*, i.e., fourth grade) everything was taught in
French but the importance given to Arabic as a subject was disproportionately
great. Most of the students were native speakers (of Arabic) and therefore the
required level of proficiency was relatively high, and as a matter of fact was
the same as that in the Egyptian public schools in the corresponding grade.
But unlike in the Italian school, I always felt that the attitude of the
teachers and the students toward the foreign element in the class was one of
scorn and condescendence as a reaction sprung from the awareness of their
recently acquired political and economic freedom. The atmosphere was markedly
hostile. Yet I knew that since for many complicated reasons I had to remain in
the country for an indefinite period as no specific plans for the future were
made yet, I *had* to learn Arabic by all means. After the revolution that
overthrew the monarchic regime, outbursts of Arab nationalism had led the
authorities to accelerate the process of de-Europeanizing all schools in the
country, and drastic measures were taken to spread out the language throughout
the republic and make its knowledge a *sine qua non* for leading a normal life
in the community.
Be it as it may, my first days in this school were a nightmare and the shock
was tremendous. I knew but very little of the language and could barely
decipher it. My father hired a private tutor knowing French who would come
twice a week to give me the basic intensive training that I badly needed. But
since the approach to Arabic was fallacious from the very beginning due to the
fact that I was forced to learn it against my will, I came to hate this
language with all my strength and regret all those endless days I had to spend
trying to 'swallow', slowly and patiently, Arabic grammar, Arabic poems, the
history of the Arab world, the principles of Arab democracy, and all those
thick and boring volumes of Arabic literature, much of which was filled with
antisemitic and anti-occidental propaganda. The fact that I was periodically
forced to write political themes against my people, against my race, and
against my values, or blaspheme aloud during frequent oral examinations,
aroused my anger to its paroxysm. As outbursts of violence and open revolt
were not permitted to me for obvious reasons, this only added to my isolation
and alienation from my environment. My only relief and consolation came from
the fact that I knew that this situation would not last eternally, that it was
only a transient, temporary state that I should regard merely as a useful
experience, and that it preceded the time when I would be free -- free to
develop my full potential, free to do whatever I wanted, and not having to
learn a loathed language belonging to a people hostile to me and whose constant
psychological persecution shook my nerves and resulted in a permanent feeling
of anxiety and insecurity which has never left me since. Besides, constant
outstanding scholastic achievement in every subject regardless of the medium of
instruction made me feel superior and look down, deep in my heart (since I
could not show it), at this mass of fanatics who were attempting to force me to
reject my ethnic, cultural, and religious heritage and who succeeded only in
adding to my determination to preserve it at all costs.
Patience became the catchword. I spent eight years in the bilingual school.
Since the importance of Arabic in it increased with every passing year to the
detriment of French, I grew to be fluent and proficient in it and did not have
any trouble at all following the courses. But I must add that I was always
reluctant to use this language and did not do it unless I absolutely had to.
Therefore I voluntarily never acquired mastery of it because I never cared to
and it repelled me. This brings me to an important conclusion that I wish to
emphasize: a person cannot, under any circumstances, be forced to learn a
language and make it his own if he does not want to and is strongly determined
to resist, no matter how overpowering external pressures seem to be.
When I came to be the equivalent of a high school junior, an unexpected
opportunity presented itself: the French Cultural Center, which had recently
reopened its doors, had decided to give the equivalent of French *lycée*
courses, for all grades starting from the seventh, to all foreign
(non-Egyptian) students who would be interested. I could hardly believe it and
yet it was true! My very last year in school would be spent in an utterly
French school, where real French curricula would be used, and I would end up
having not an equivalent of but *the* original French baccalaureate, the
supreme diploma I had always dreamt of obtaining. I can truthfully say that
the following year, embellished as it was by an enchanting romantic adventure,
was the most unforgettable of my life yet, and the relief I felt was comparable
in intensity to the shock I had experienced eight years earlier when I entered
the bilingual school. I had the impression that I was slowly awakening from a
long nightmare. The students were almost exclusively French or native
speakers, and the teachers were all French. I participated actively in many of
their cultural events, made several friends, studied hard but willingly in the
language I loved, and eventually, on the eighth of June, 1967, when the six-day
war opposing the Arab countries to their sworn enemy Israel was still raging in
the sands of the Sinai desert, I received my baccalaureate with highest honors,
having obtained nearly the maximum grade in both oral and written examinations,
whereas as much as 60 percent of all the students registered for this set of
tests, in France and throughout the world, were to fail that year.
It did not take me long to come back to the crude reality when the academic
year was over: the humiliation of defeat pushing the Egyptian authorities to
seek revenge on defenseless civilians, the situation of the few remaining Jews
in Egypt became extremely precarious. My parents and I (sole members of our
whole family left in Egypt) were saved from direct persecution by the mere fact
that we were nationals of a foreign country and were therefore under the
immediate protection of our consulate. At that time my brother-in-law, an
American attorney, was feverishly working at obtaining U.S. emergency immigrant
visas for us. When they were finally issued, a few days after the open war was
over, my father refused them as his pride forbade him to have to depend on
anybody, even his own children, after having worked incessantly all his life to
be financially independent, and as his age and health would not allow him to
start a completely new life from scratch in a foreign country. My visa was not
valid without them, so I had to leave Egypt, alone and penniless, with no hope
of ever going back. After a short visit with my uncle in Brussels, I was
issued a refugee visa allowing me to stay two years in the U.S. as a
'conditional entrant', before applying for permanent residence and then
citizenship.
Finally, I left the old world for the new and landed in New York on the 26th of
February, 1968, ready to start a new chapter of my life; eighteen years in a
prison were gone, buried and forgotten. At long last, I was entirely FREE!
The first problem that I had to face was the language barrier. The latter had
to be overthrown by all means as soon as possible as I was planning to complete
my education at a major university where I had been admitted. I had but a
theoretical, bookish knowledge of English, mainly acquired through personal
reading, and the more I learned about this language, the more fascinating and
fertile I found it, so that my interest in it never ceased to grow. As I
started to realize that the United States was such an overwhelmingly unilingual
country in which the ability to communicate in English was of primary
importance, I was somewhat frightened as I had never used that language in
everyday life. But I took this temporary inability as a challenge and decided
that the only way to learn a language is to speak it constantly, read as much
as possible in it, think in it, and associate with its native speakers
regardless of the frustration resulting from the inevitable and often hilarious
mistakes, or from the difficulty in finding the right words at the right time.
This feeling of incompleteness arising from one's inability to express one's
thoughts in perfectly structured, grammatically correct, understandable
sentences in a foreign language is what worried me most. But I overcame it;
and the method seemed to have good results for within a few months I was
satisfactorily fluent and felt so much at ease in English that language was no
longer a handicap. But I purposefully avoid to use in conversation those few
French words that have been incorporated untouched in the English language: I
can't pronounce them in the American way! I still have an accent of which time
will hopefully get rid. Since I started taking courses, I am a straight-A
student, at which I am the first to be surprised considering that I never
studied in English before. Now a year has passed since I set foot in this
friendly and welcoming Land of Freedom, and my fears are of a totally different
nature: I am afraid that as time passes the Americanizing pressures within the
melting pot will eventually erase the linguistic knowledge from my mind,
leaving me American and unilingual, as happened to my nieces!
An educator will retain from my story that throughout my school-life four
languages have been used as media for my instruction without my academic
achievement having in the least suffered from the various 'switches'. This is
the reason why I insisted so much on it: it is most remarkable that my
intelligence, talents and creativity have not been altered in any way (unless
they have been stimulated) by my acquired knowledge of several languages. It
is my firm conviction that multilingualism is a gratuitous asset that anybody
can obtain if he cares to and works at it early enough. It is the key to
tolerance and understanding between cultures, and from there to freedom and
peace.
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9 January 1994
And now, twenty-five years later, I can finally add:
Maurice Mizrahi
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