Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt by Jean Naggar

Author:Jean Naggar [Naggar, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

After the end of the Second World War, we gathered in London every fall to celebrate the High Holidays with my mother’s family, staying at St. James’s Court in a service flat. Uncle Ellis and his family had their permanent home there. St. James’s Court, in Victoria, was steps from Buckingham Palace and, more importantly, close to Victoria Station where Patricia, Judy, and I boarded our train to Brighton and Roedean year after year. The old-fashioned elevator at St. James’s Court was a small, clanging metal cage with glass walls. It was propelled by a uniformed attendant who stood to one side pulling on a rope to move it to its destination. The public hallways had a fusty smell, a mixture of stale cigarette smoke and furniture polish. The furnishings were dark mahogany enlivened with shiny brass fittings. Faded, comfortable, chintz-covered couches sat next to high-backed chairs in the living room, facing a gas fire grate.

I loved the beds in our service flat. They were unusually high with dark mahogany frames and headboards, and I had to climb up and then would bounce onto my bed collapsing happily into silky smooth snowy linens, the damp and cold outside held at bay by several blankets, eiderdowns and soft down pillows. The thought of sinking into the sensuous warmth and splendor of the generous furnishings and welcoming mattress and drifting into sleep sustained me through my mother’s frenetic London pace and the seeping chill of London’s gloomy weather.

The Spanish and Portuguese synagogue at Lauderdale Road in Maida Vale was where my parents had first met and where we attended services rather than at the oldest Sephardic synagogue, Bevis Marks, which was situated in the City, the teeming financial center of London.

Arriving at St. James’s Court signaled the final phase in our long summer absence from home. We had vacationed in the Swiss Alps or in Chamonix; we had stopped off in Paris, with a focus on seeing the Paris family and attending the designer fashion shows. New clothes lay packed in layers of tissue paper in our suitcases, and sturdy hat boxes housed the latest creations from my mother’s milliner, Madame Dupuy Brival, whose tiny atelier was on the top floor of a small building on the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré.

My stomach churned with suppressed excitement as we settled into our rooms in London, early fall casting a metallic gray light through the leaded windows, the phones ringing continuously from other hotels where uncles, aunts, and cousins were staying. Judy and Derrick, whose home was across the courtyard, dropped by to see if I could be released from my unpacking to go for a walk. The world hummed happily around me as my mother and Susan’s governess unpacked, hung up dresses in the tall dark wardrobes with mirrors on the doors, the air inside heavy with the smell of varnish, wood, and furniture polish.

By early afternoon, we had started preparations for the evening. My mother and my aunts hurried down to

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