Jeanette Sagues was born in Cairo in 1948, the daughter of Maurice and Victoire Harouche, a couple with family roots extending along the entire southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Victoire’s mother came from Syria, while her father, who was born in Palestine and was a naturalized French citizen, had moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where he became the director of the lycée français. Jeanette’s paternal grandfather, who was born in Turkey, got married in Syria with a woman originally from Thessaloniki, and after his wife death settled in Cairo with his five children. At twenty, Victoire, driven by a desire for emancipation, moved to Sudan to work as a secretary in a trading company. After a few years, she was transferred back to Cairo, to the same office as Maurice, the man who would become her husband. They married in 1943 and had three children: Jacques, Jeannette, and Francine.
The Sagues family began their life in the popular neighborhood of Bab El Louk and then moved to a larger house in the Zamalek area, in the northern part of Gezira Island on the Nile. At home, the parents spoke to each other in Ladino, while French was the language of the wider family. Victoire was particularly attentive to preserving the family’s Jewish identity. Although not religious, they observed Jewish holidays, keeping traditions alive. At the same time, Victoire encouraged her children to maintain their French identity by speaking the language and studying in French schools. Despite their strong connection to French culture and their participation in European circles, the Sagues family’s cultural identity was further enriched in the domestic context. At home, they also spoke Arabic with the servants, and Victoire prepared typical Oriental dishes such as molokhia, sambusek, and menena.
Jeanette fondly recalls Sunday trips to the pyramids and family excursions to the “Barrage,” the historic dam on the Nile. Summer, however, brought mixed feelings. The family would board the SS Esperia in order to travel to Europe, where the parents visited friends and relatives, while the children spent vacations in Switzerland and France in kinderheims, of which Jeanette has less enthusiastic memories.
In 1956, at the end of one of these vacations, which typically lasted a couple of months, Victoire was with her children in Ravenna, where her sister lived. There, she received a telegram from her husband Maurice informing her of the dangerous tensions sparked by the Suez Canal crisis and urging her to stay in Europe for their safety. Victoire refused to stay and boarded a ship with her children to return to Egypt. By the time of their return, the war had broken out in full force. Maurice was arrested and imprisoned for a week, while VIctoire received an expulsion order. Jeanette vividly remembers the nightly bombings: every evening, the lights had to remain off, and the windows were covered with blue paper to prevent any light from escaping.
When Maurice was finally released, the family was forced to leave the country. Not knowing where to go, they decided to flee to Paris, where Victoire’s brother lived. Thus, on a tense and frenzied morning, the family left home for the last time, never to return.
On December 28, 1956, the Sagues family landed in Paris. In the first few months, they stayed with Jeanette’s uncles, and a few days after their arrival, Jeanette was thrust into a new reality, immediately starting school. Although she already spoke French, the change was traumatic. This feeling returned in 1958 when the family moved to Milan, where Maurice had found a new job. Changing country, house, language, and school presented a new challenge for Jeanette.
There’s this chapter that I keep in my heart
Trascrizione
Jeanette Sagues:I was ten years old when I was in Italy, fed up because, well…I couldn’t take all these changes anymore: already three different countries in the first ten years (of my life). They enrolled me [in school] because I had to do fifth grade, so I went to fifth grade in a school that was completely on the opposite side to my house in the Piazzale Brescia.
Interviewer
Where did you live at the time?
Jeanette Sagues
The Viale Argonne, still there, [in the] Città Studi [neighborhood]. My mother accompanied me [to school] the first time, she accompanied me the second time, and then she said, “Now dear, you go alone, because I can’t go out so early in the morning.” [I was] ten years old, without knowing a word of Italian. So, there’s this chapter that I keep in my heart: I would take tram 38 from the terminus, get on the tram, and there was always the same tram driver. There was still a conductor back then, to whom I paid 30 lira. I had my 10-lira coins that my mom gave me, I would get my ticket, and I was terrified because I had to spend forty minutes on the tram without knowing Italian, having to pay attention to where to get off…and then this tram driver took pity on me, I remember once he said to me, “Come here, little girl” [in the Milanese dialect]. He would take my school bag, because there were no backpacks, I had my leather school bag, he would put it down [on the floor], tell me to hold on to the handle, and I would travel the whole way there with him teaching me Italian.
Interviewer
The driver or the conductor?
Jeanette Sagues
The driver, because I would get on the tram and go to the driver and say the words I had learned, “Please, let the little girl get off at the Piazza Brescia, thank you.” These were the words they had taught me. And after one or two [times], at a certain point, the tram driver said to me, “Come here,” and I [said to him], “I am French, I don’t understand Italian.” So, he became fond of me, and little by little, he would speak to me in Italian, so much so that the first sentence I managed to say was, “It is forbidden to talk to the driver who must not be distracted from driving.” So, I asked him, “Why are you talking to me? You shouldn’t talk to me because you have to drive,” and he said, “No, for you, I can talk to you.” Then he would let me off at the Piazzale Brescia, and I had to walk down the whole of the Via Domenichino, but there were no traffic lights. He would tell me to wait by motioning with his hand, then he would go “cling” with his foot, and that’s when I knew I could cross. Until I heard “cling,” I wouldn’t cross.
While her mother continued to socialize with friends from Cairo whom she had rediscovered in Milan, Jeanette made friends with her schoolmates and some peers from the Milanese Jewish community. At seventeen, she participated in a trip to Israel organized by the Federation of Young Italian Jews, but she was disappointed, perceiving it as a “propaganda trip.” Shortly afterward, Jeanette became involved in the student movements of 1968. This experience led her to reconsider her relationship with Judaism and her own identity.
I was searching for an identity within these struggles
Trascrizione
Jeanette Sagues:
1968 came along and I got passionate about it. I got passionate because I knew, first with this Stefano who was studying medicine, the occupation, and it reminded me a lot of the Jewish environment, like “we are similar, we are us, we have to defend ourselves, you can say whatever nonsense you like, but we are us”…so for me, it was very important. Then I met another guy who later became my husband, my first husband, who was studying architecture, and I left Stefano, the story ended and I got together with this other guy. 1968 was in full flow, so I participated, I was exactly twenty years old, with a lot of…I mean, I was searching for an identity within these struggles.
After starting work as a secretary thanks to her knowledge of languages and her studies as an interpreter, Jeanette later found employment as a French teacher in a vocational training school, where she continued to work until retirement. As an adult, through her relationship with her daughters and grandchildren, Jeanette reconciled with her Jewish identity. Moreover, in 2008, she had the opportunity to return to Egypt, retracing the steps of her life in Cairo, representing an important moment in coming to terms with her past.
it was like I was returning to a mother who had left me when I was a child
Trascrizione
Jeanette Sagues:
Well, it was a very moving, very emotional experience, because—if I can summarize—it was like I was returning to a mother who had left me when I was a child, and when I showed up again as an adult, she didn’t recognize me, but I did!
