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Pieces of My Soul: A Jewish Past in Egypt
Raised into an amazing world, the author’s childhood was that of a privileged girl with an exotic background, Jewish and francophone in a predominantly Muslim and Arab society. Although punctuated by political crises, in her youthful eyes her early life was easy, happy, and comfortable until it was broken into a Before and After.
She and her family were ordinary people pushed out of their corner of the earth by colliding political interests. Dispossessed and uprooted, they crossed continents and oceans in search of safety, peace, and stability. Decades later, losing her country of birth may have made it more precious to her. Was she stuck in a nostalgic longing for that distant land?
She decided to go back. But what does it mean to confront your past?
It turned out that the girl of yesteryears was not the woman who returned to her native city in 2006. Back in Cairo she couldn’t help but look at it through a flood of memories, ghosts that followed her around, unbidden. Her history came to life with almost every step as she experienced layers of emotion. What she had not anticipated, though, was the ambiguity of being a stranger in a familiar place, overwhelmed by feelings of intimate familiarity coupled with a sense of intense foreignness.
She and her family were ordinary people pushed out of their corner of the earth by colliding political interests. Dispossessed and uprooted, they crossed continents and oceans in search of safety, peace, and stability. Decades later, losing her country of birth may have made it more precious to her. Was she stuck in a nostalgic longing for that distant land?
She decided to go back. But what does it mean to confront your past?
It turned out that the girl of yesteryears was not the woman who returned to her native city in 2006. Back in Cairo she couldn’t help but look at it through a flood of memories, ghosts that followed her around, unbidden. Her history came to life with almost every step as she experienced layers of emotion. What she had not anticipated, though, was the ambiguity of being a stranger in a familiar place, overwhelmed by feelings of intimate familiarity coupled with a sense of intense foreignness.
518 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 16, 2025
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