This enter­tain­ing col­lec­tion of com­e­dy sketch­es offers the read­er a glimpse into the world of the Egypt­ian Jew­ish dias­po­ra. The son of a Sephardic moth­er and an Ashke­nazi father, Cana­di­an writer Aaron Zevy recalls the humor­ous, often exag­ger­at­ed fam­i­ly mem­o­ries par­tic­u­lar to his Sephardic side. His mis­sion is ​“to tell a good sto­ry,” and he often succeeds.

The author’s self-dep­re­cat­ing humor is rem­i­nis­cent of Gary Shteyngart’s. His schlep­py per­sona intro­duces us to a lit­tle-known Sephardic sub­cul­ture in Mon­tre­al. He often seems con­cerned about fit­ting in, and about his friends meet­ing his unusu­al and quirky family.

Zevy describes Sephardic food obses­sions, the sheer num­ber of lan­guages used with­in one sen­tence (Ara­bic, French, Eng­lish), and his family’s nos­tal­gia for Cairo despite the fact that they were expelled from Egypt ​“for the sec­ond time” — a ref­er­ence to Exodus. 

Zevy is on a mis­sion to extract details from his immi­grant par­ents and rel­a­tives. He explains that his fam­i­ly left Egypt after the 1956 Suez Cri­sis. ​“Every­one, it turns out, was fired on the same day. Their bank accounts were frozen and my Tante Lil­iane did spend some time in prison. My father, though born in Egypt, was Ashke­nazi and some­how man­aged to land him­self a pass­port … Per­haps it is the pas­sage of time but none of their sto­ries were told with any bit­ter­ness. If any­thing, they all remem­bered their life in Egypt as hal­cy­on days. It had been a place which was good for the Jews. And then it wasn’t.” 

“Home Made Cake,” an essay about a famous bak­ery in the Cairo sub­urb of Heliopo­lis, is a stand­out. As a child, Zevy used to hear his par­ents, aunts, and uncles swoon over the fan­tas­tic French pas­tries — espe­cial­ly the éclairs — they used to buy at a place Zevy knew only as ​“Om Met Kek.” ​“Pro­nounced very quick­ly,” he writes. ​“With no pause between each word … It sound­ed like all the oth­er Ara­bic names and expres­sions.” Zevy con­tin­ues: ​“Every time they spoke about the patis­serie on rue Ismaili Pasha I nev­er, not once, heard the words Home Made Cake. Only Om Met Kek.”

In ​“Hanono,” Zevy relates how he used to play pok­er in Hal­lan­dale, Flori­da with his late uncle ​“and his crew of octo­ge­nar­i­an Egyp­tians. So while I did not know how to speak Ara­bic, I could play pok­er in Ara­bic.… a real­ly lousy hand earned the Ara­bic des­ig­na­tion of a ​‘khara’ — just shit.” 

While not all twen­ty-five vignettes are equal­ly engag­ing, this col­lec­tion deliv­ers some good laughs as well as insights.