Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Coptic Crossings

While de-icing my car this morning and wondering if I had enough washer fluid, riots broke out in Egypt. While snow and sleet covered the ground beneath me, the streets were set ablaze in Cairo. But I didn't know any of this.

Nor was I aware of the events later in the day during an unlikely encounter with an Egyptian family over a cup of hot chocolate. In the basement coffee shop of the New York State Department of Education, I crossed paths with a family far from home, who either hid their concern or had not yet learned of the unrest in their country.

Now, as the crisis in Egypt continues, I can only think of this family.

I had driven to Albany with a young woman I work with who needed to drop off a career services application. After double checking her paper work, we meandered to the small café near the building’s exit, to warm up before driving back to the Schenectady.

The State-worker lunch crowds had subsided and the café was completely empty, except for four employees who seemed to be much more jovial than I would expect from someone wiping the counters of a windowless one-room cafeteria.

As we approached the cash register, a wide-grinned middle-aged man came from behind the buffet and offered us each a sample of Turkish delight. With the winter freeze just outside the walls of the cafeteria, I instantly imaged the Chronicles of Narnia and the Winter Queen with her bottomless cache of Turkish delights. Otherwise, I had never encountered much less tasted this Middle Eastern delicacy.

A citrus flavored jelly-like cube covered with confectioner sugar, the dessert looked more like a sample of fine cheese, which the gentleman assured us it was not.

“A gift from the Middle East, from Egypt” he offered. “Enjoy!” And with that, we each hesitantly took a bite, and eventually our faces and heavy coats were covered with white sugar.

I was overjoyed by the unexpected hospitality and warmth. At this point, there was really no need for hot chocolate, but the Styrofoam cups were already filled and steaming hot, so we sat down in the adjacent eating area.

A short time later the gentleman and his wife and sister joined us in the room for their own lunch, pita bread and falafel. As they chatted quietly in Arabic, I waited for a quiet pause in which I could ask where in Egypt they were from. “Cairo,” the wife replied. “Much different from here.”

I imagined the arid desert climate and almost 8 million inhabitants, bustling market places as well as the modern amenities of a mega-city. I asked what Cairo is like and she provided a litany of exciting tourist sites. However, what I would have really liked to know is what her kitchen looked like and what kind of flowers grew in her window sills.

But what she did share was her obvious sense of pride about her home and culture, a place and its people that she misses yet cannot return to, except for short visits. It is a clash within the Egyptian community that caused her and her family to immigrate to the United States three years ago.

The family is Coptic, native Egyptian Christians, who as a religious minority, are subject to significant discrimination in their country. While Egyptian Christians represent a rather large minority, 10% of the population, there is an ongoing struggle for religious freedom.

Having settled in the town of Colonie, the couple has found reasonable work cooking and serving meals at the State education building. Their sons are well-adjusted, studying at Hudson Valley Community College and Colonie High School. However, the parents miss their careers and livelihoods in Cairo, the wife a college-educated librarian and her husband a French professor at a university.

Neither have found work in their respective fields and have surely struggled to preserve their integrity and identity in this economy. However, there is one thing that has kept this family close to home, especially during the bleak winter months when the glow of the Nile River must seem oceans away – and that is their faith community.

The couple shared joyfully about their local church, an Egyptian Coptic church on Madison Avenue in Albany. The moment they mentioned Madison Avenue, I asked whether the building used to be a Presbyterian church.

Sure enough, their church on 820 Madison Avenue, is the very church in which my grandparents and parents were married, the same church in which my mother grew up.

The yellow-brick and limestone building was built in 1897 and enlarged ten years later. Its Romanesque arched windows and doorways pour light down the long center aisle, which my parents lined with candles on their wedding day.

Sold by the Albany Presbytery in the early 1990’s and soon purchased by the local Coptic community, the church is now full of life as it once was.

“You must come and visit!” offered the wife of the couple at the cafeteria. With two services and prayers spoken in Coptic, what she emphasized was the gathering time afterward. “Food! Plenty of food we have to share!” And somehow, I knew I would be welcomed.

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