Thread by @tekaldas

Today I published an op-ed arguing that freeing the #EverGiven showed that, with the right resources & chances, Egyptians are as capable as anyone, but they often lack those resources

Today would've been my father Elhami's 74th birthday. He left Egypt due to that reality

Thread

He grew up in a working class family in the Masr Qadima quarter of Cairo. As late as 2003, the road in front of their family home still wasn't properly paved. In state schools his grades were quite low. One year his parents managed to send him to a private school & he excelled

However, the following year his family couldn't afford tuition and he returned to public schools with similar performance. Thanks to Nasser's free higher education reforms he barely managed to attend Asyut University where he studied agricultural engineering.

After university he was drafted into the military and had an extended time there as it was in the lead up to the 73 war, which he served during. After finishing his service following the war he took a job in which he was meant to educate farmers on modern agricultural techniques.

He used to joke that the rail journey to reach work cost more than his pay. A brother & sister of his had already immigrated to the US at the time and seeing his career was a dead end, he decided to emigrate as well; first to Greece where he loaded soda trucks for 2 years to save

He then managed to move to the US barely speaking English. He went to Boston since that's where his siblings settled. He cleaned hotels & worked as a dishwasher to pay bills. This Egyptian trained agricultural engineer in blizzard-friendly Massachusetts decided on a career change

Mass at the time was working to be a tech hub & had a free electronics program to train people to work in the sector. My dad signed up & while many dropped out he finished & got a job at a local tech firm producing medical equipment. He worked on troubleshooting their electronics

Soon after starting his new job, my mom was visiting the US to see her uncle who was teaching at MIT. He had first moved to Cambridge to do his PhD on an Egyptian govt scholarship, but because of political differences, they cut his funding. Then MIT replaced it in to keep him

My mother met my father during the visit & they really hit it off. Corresponded for a year and decided to get married. She then moved to the US to join him. She first worked in retail, where she bought the stylish outfit you see me sporting in the photo with the two of them above

Those family photos were taken before my first trip to Egypt to meet my family. My mom insisted we go because she feared her grandparents would pass before they'd get to meet me. We wouldn't go back again for 16 years due to cost. Countless relatives went unseen for over a decade

She soon got an entry level book keeping job at a local bank where she worked her way up until becoming the bank's CFO before finally moving on to a larger institution.

My mother, Sally, is a force in her own right who warrants a whole other thread, but today isn't her birthday and this thread is long enough so we'll save that for another day 😉

Nearly all my parents siblings eventually moved to the US. All had successful careers as well.

Egypt lost them all & their potential because it created an inhospitable space for them. It lost countless others like them who excelled elsewhere. It continues to lose Egyptians every day for the same reasons. There's an entire ministry in Egypt just to court our huge diaspora

Despite feeling driven to leave, my dad never stopped loving Egypt & seeing himself as an Egyptian. Him and my mother always instilled in us a sense of pride at our heritage & he always had deep nostalgia for his homeland. His favorite tie had a hieroglyphic alphabet chart on it

But for him, Egypt was history. It didn't permit a future. I remember as a student I said I wanted to be a diplomat & hoped I'd be posted to Egypt to get to live there & improve US policy in the region. He was shocked. He asked incredulously, "I left & came here so you go back?!"

Despair about a future in Egypt is a reality to this day. Upon arriving there to live in 2008 I was constantly asked by Egyptians how to emigrate. The past several years felt like an endless series of going away parties as friends slowly decided they needed to resettle elsewhere

Egypt's ruling elite have watched generations of Egyptians emigrate & excel while they continue to lie to the people, themselves & their foreign partners claiming Egyptians just aren't "ready." Ready for independence, ready for self-rule. All an excuse for autocracy & corruption

It's a cynical ploy. They grossly underfund education, squander money on pet projects & mega projects that enrich themselves & their partners, impose an impenetrable web of incoherent bureaucracy on the economy while the ruling class carves out exemptions for itself, legal & not

They co-opt & weaken the judiciary, stuff parliament with their cronies & refuse to devolve any real power to local govts which they also control denying the public any means to petition for change or respect for their rights as written in the constitutions they cynically drafted

And so we leave. Millions of Egyptians have left & continue to leave. Millions miss their homes & families, but fear for their children & their future

It didn't need to be this way. It doesn't need to be this way. Egyptians, if allowed, can build a country with a future for them

Egypt is a wonderful place and the people of Egypt are no less than the people of any nation. But their rulers are much less than many. While their rulers tell Egyptians they are a burden to them & the state, it is the rulers who are a burden for Egypt and Egyptians.

Here’s one more picture of him. This was when he was still in Greece with a lot of hair and a bell bottom suit with killer oversized lapels.

Happy birthday Dad and thank you for more than you got to see or know.