Anoush Artinian’s Memories of Life in Egypt

Currently seventy-five years old, Anoush Artinian resides in Glendale, California. She anxiously waits to be interviewed as she sits at the edge of her couch seat while fiddling with her hands. Her excitement is noticeable as she grins and greets me in the living room of her cozy apartment. As I cue her to begin, she slowly explains the difficulties her family faced due to the socialistic government in Egypt in the 1950s. Her stories, each interesting and intricate, tell about the complication of leaving Egypt to come to an environment with more exercisable liberties. She explains how she sacrificed everything and had to start from scratch in order to lead a better life. Now, as a retiree she sews, reads, and cooks in her spare time. She appreciates her life and her five grandchildren. “Well, we survived,” she says, then continues to tell the stories of her endurance and efforts that got her where she is today.

I was born in Cairo, Egypt in Materiyah.  I had a wonderful childhood and I graduated from Armenian high school. There, it was mandatory to take four languages: Armenian, French, Arabic, and English. We lived in a three-story house with a live-in maid and my father had a delicatessen store.

I got married when I was twenty-two years old. Let me see, I met my husband through a friend on Christmas day. After one week you know, I got engaged. After five months I got married, which is very surprising. He was a sound engineer. He used to work at broadcasting and broadcasting belonged to the government.

We were citizens of Egypt and until 1953 Egypt was governed by the king, Farouk. In 1952, there was the revolution, and they threw the king out. The military services, they came to govern the country. In Egypt the population was Greek, Jews, Italian, and Armenian people. Whoever didn’t have Egyptian citizenship, they sent them out of the country. At Farouk’s time we used to live like the king. We could travel any time with any amount of money. But when Nasser came after the revolution, he closed all the doors. We couldn’t travel. We couldn’t take the amount of money that we wanted to go.

Nasser took over all of the businesses that belonged especially to the Armenian people. Because the Armenians are hard workers. They had factories and big businesses. That’s what happened you know to my husband’s brother. He had a laboratory and they used to produce almost forty products. And they told him, “Give me the keys. The laboratory doesn’t belong to you anymore.” It happened to my sister’s husband too. He had a big company of transportation trucks, almost twelve. But Nasser closed all the doors. We didn’t have American or foreign merchandise coming in so whatever they could produce in the country, that’s what we had. That’s why the economy was so bad. You know, the money is not the thing that he wanted to take over. He wanted to govern everything in the country: the employees, the merchandise that was coming in, the people. That’s why we came here to the United States. To be free and to work as whatever we want.

Actually, I had my neighbor. They took his son. They used to come, knock the door at night. They just took him to prison. And after a couple of months, they just sent them letters saying the day you have to be at the airport to go wherever you want. They took whoever didn’t have a citizenship of Egypt.

After Nasser came, he started to open public schools for the children. At that time, the peasant people didn’t know how to read and write. Mostly, they used to work in farms or in houses. But then he said he wanted to “zarkatsnell.” How do you say? To let them learn how to read and write so they can become more educated.

At that time the women didn’t vote. There was somebody standing over there, that would say, “you know you’re gonna vote here. Only for this person.” So you have to vote for him. I never voted in my life in Egypt.

From 1952 to 1967, I lived in Egypt while Nasser and the military coup were in rule. I left Egypt in 1967, January 7^th.  I went to Lebanon to be able to come here, to the United States. Some of the difficulties were that Nasser didn’t want to let citizens go out, you know. We had to be invited to Lebanon so we could go out of the country. He only let you go out of the country with five Egyptian pounds. Like five dollars only. He knows that you’re not going to come back, so whatever you have is gonna stay in the country. So that’s what we did. Each person had five Egypitan pounds. One dollar was sixty-seven Piaster. When I say Piaster, its like cents. We left the country with only ten suitcases. We left the house and whatever was in it. We locked the door and went.

It affected the family very hard. I’ll tell you why. Because I went to Lebanon with my three children only. Because my husband was working for the broadcasting, he had difficulty to get out of the country. He used to tape all the big singers and actors. They didn’t let him you know. So I left with my three kids. At that time my sister was in Lebanon. So I stayed with her two months. After two months they came to the United States. They rented a single apartment for me. Then I had to wait for my husband to come and after eleven months he and my brother-in-law came to join me. His brother and we lived another six months in Lebanon. End of June, July 1^st we left Lebanon and came here.

After being in a big house with four bedrooms, four balconies, we now had to live in one single room. In Egypt we had a huge building. We had cars, we had everything. We used to live like people live in Beverly Hills here. I never worked over there. When I came here, after three days they took me into a sewing factory in downtown. Since that, I  started working. When my husband came here, he worked for the bank. He was a tax officer. But when he started looking for a job, wherever he used to apply, they used to tell him, “You have an Egyptian citizenship. We cannot give you a job.” We worked overtime to make more money. After five years, we bought a little house and we survived…we survived There was an opening at Blue Cross and I worked there for another seventeen years.

The government now is still the same thing. Now the president is umm, let me remember. It’s Mubarak. He’s been in rule for a long time. Now, whoever wants to go to Egypt, they can go. They can come out and they have so much American merchandise. They took so many lessons from Americans. At that time, when we were living there, if you had the money, you could buy. If you didn’t have the money, you couldn’t buy. Now you can buy with credit cards.

Now there’s a very big difference in our new generation. I have to accept it for what it is. Now I am seventy-five years old. I have five grandchildren, and they are all beautiful.

Interviewed by Alida Artinian