Zevy Stories

From the Jewish Book Council

Review By Nina Schneider - August 12, 2024

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.

From Midwest Reviews

Schlepping Across the Nile: Collected Stories gathers vignettes and memoirs from Aaron Zevy's first three books, compiling them into an adventure story that follows the odyssey of the first-born son of an Ashkenazi father and Sephardic mother. Zevy opens his tale with the trademark humor that made his prior publications major attractions:

"This story begins with a phone call from my cousin Morris. It also begins with something I almost never do when getting a phone call from my cousin Morris. I answer it. Right away, I am reminded of the benefit of screening."

Like too many who deem themselves successful in relationships, Morris holds the answer to almost every dilemma Zevy faces in his life:

“Your problem is you go out with Ashkenazi women instead of finding yourself a nice Egyptian Jewish woman. Somebody with similar history, food and culture. Someone you have something in common with.”

The solution, besides adhering more strictly to screening one's phone calls? Take up the challenge with a journey that explores Egyptian Jewish ancestry and legacy.

Schlepping Across the Nile is a memoir, travelogue, and ethnic inspection steeped in elements of misadventure and high drama. It embraces a range of Jewish traditions and experiences, from a blind date during Seder to the special ironies of his family's experiences:

"My favorite part of the seder is L’dor Va Dor. In every generation we are to regard ourselves as if we ourselves had gone out of Egypt. I love that. Because this is when my mom would say 'I did go out of Egypt.'”

That wry sense of humor and ironic inspections mentioned previously keeps these stories light, but thought-provoking.

Whether it's hurling a juicy Arabic insult during a poker game by Egyptians or listening to blind date war stories, Zevy embeds his writing with personal experience, observational prowess, and just plain fun. These elements are punctuated with black and white photos throughout for added visual impact.

While the likely audience for this literary and social observation will be Jewish readers, Zevy's ability to reach beyond a set ethnic group to engage, educate, and entertain audiences of all origins makes Schlepping Across the Nile of widespread attraction to anyone who seeking a series of rollicking fun, interesting short works.

Whether Zevy is making observations about generational differences in the process of pursuing love and dates or steeped in Jewish traditions and heritage, his works offer inspections that are cemented by his dry insights throughout:

"...‘blind’ is such a misnomer that it is laughable. This generation has seen more pictures of their prospective dates than I have of my entire family collectively. When we went in blind, we really went in blind. Armed with no more, especially if the set up was from a female friend, than weathered adjectives about bubbly personalities and shared interests, and creatively ambitious promises about looks."

Libraries and readers looking for particularly compelling short vignettes about love, life, and culture will find Schlepping Across the Nile a major attraction. It's not just for audiences of Jewish readers, but highly recommended for book clubs and discussion groups looking for an easy read that holds deceptively thought-provoking impact.

From Publisher's Weekly

Powered by love and written with the can-you-top-this? punchiness of a born dinner-time storyteller, this charming, conversational, and often uproarious collection from Zevy (author of Almost the Truth: Stories and Lies) about his family and upbringing often turns on surprising bits of language. Like thousands of Jews, his parents, an Ashkenazi father and Sephardic mother, were forced out of Egypt in 1956; raising a family in suburban Montreal, they spoke French in the house and spiced the conversation with lively Arabic words and phrases. These include one that—in Zevy’s telling—means something like “leave me alone” but literally translates as “enema.” More telling is a phrase meaning “the story is wearing a bedsheet,” used to say there’s more to a tale than might be readily apparent.

Zevy pares these memories to the bone, their telling here as crisp as well-honed stand-up routines. But all their punchlines and incisive character portraiture they’re also swaddled in bedsheets. Reading these stories—of drinking games at family seders, of trying to land a big client for the family business, of introducing a complex Chinese poker variant to octogenarian Egyptian Jews, of the mystery of snapshots of topless women on a beach in a family photo album—is both a pleasure and an immersion, as close an invitation to imagine this family’s most joyous moments of sharing and laughter.

Some stories Zevy says he’s telling for the first time. Others feel like the best kind of family ritual, with Zevy even acknowledging what details got invented to score bigger laughs in the re-telling. He even carps that the thunder of one doozy, about a blind date, has been stolen, a little, by its vague similarity to a Seinfeld premise. That just makes it funnier, as does his occasional twists, like the marvelous swindle he pulls to make readers think the one about driving a tractor on a kibbutz is going to be sexy.

Takeaway: Hilarious, touching stories of an Egyptian Jewish family’s life in North America.

From Krikus Reviews

Zevy offers episodic reminiscences of his life and family history in this memoir.

The stories with which the author begins this volume look back to his family’s history of membership in the huge Jewish community that existed in Egypt before the 1956 Suez Crisis, which precipitated the emigration of his mother, father, aunts, and uncles to Montreal, Canada. The stories his relatives tell about these years have a resigned quality: “If anything, they all remembered their life in Egypt as halcyon days,” Zevy writes. “It had been a place which was good for the Jews. And then it wasn’t.” From this beginning, the narrative expands in many directions, most of which reflect on some aspect of the author’s Jewishness. Recalling an encounter with a Galilean rabbi, for instance, Zevy writes, “I eat bread on Passover, I do not fast on Yom Kippur, I drive a car and light a fire on shabbat,” adding puckishly, “and I have, more than once, coveted my neighbor’s wife.” There are more generalized stories balancing these Judaism-themed chapters; “I Shall Be Released,” for example, is the story of the Angel of Death visiting the narrator and needing to use the bathroom (“He has the requisite goatee and a cowlick which looks like it is held down by gel. He is wearing khakis and a button-down shirt. If I didn’t know he was the Angel of Death I would have guessed he was an assistant manager at Whole Foods”); the two end up playing chess and talking about music. In “Looking for Maurice,” the author is inspired by the appearance of a picture by the French painter Maurice Utrillo in the background of a family photo to talk about the artist and reflect on the painting.

This kind of mish-mash of autobiographical whimsy and nostalgia is usually as tedious as listening to someone narrate a large family album, but Zevy spares his readers this discomfort. He mainly does so through zestful storytelling and a persistent wry humor that almost always lands (in the story “Straight Sets,” for instance, he writes of his father, “If you closed your eyes, you would think you were listening to the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat,” adding: “If Sadat was the owner of a powder coating company and not the President of Egypt”). The author creates the feeling of a warm story-session in the living room of a funny, charismatic friend skilled at keeping his audience engaged. At almost every point, he’s ready with a sharp observation or a punchy zinger, as in the story “Shesh Besh,” which recounts the narrator’s blind dinner date with an online match (TorontoCityGirl44): “She does not fake-reach for her purse when the bill arrives,” Zevy writes. “Which, to be honest, I appreciate.” Some will enjoy the droll “kids-these-days” notes that the author occasionally strikes (deadpan observations about emojis and the like). Throughout the book, the narrative momentum is sustained—readers will seldom be tempted to stop turning the pages.

A consistently engaging collection of family stories and personal anecdotes.

From Blue Ink Reviews

Prolific humorist Aaron Zevy returns with his latest collection of tales— a mix of truth and imagination—in Schlepping Across the Nile. Many stories are selected from his previous books.

Zevy’s father, an Ashkenazi Jew (of central European descent), and his mother, a Sephardic Jew (of Spanish/Portuguese descent) were once part of an 80,000 strong Jewish-Egyptian community. They were expelled from Egypt after the 1956 Suez Crisis—the “second exodus,” writes Zevy. Immigrating to Canada, “We were the other Jews,” he jests.

Zevy’s preference for Sephardic customs and food provide fodder for some of his humor. His constant complaining about Ashkenazi food at a Passover Seder becomes the cue for a drinking game among the younger participants.

French, Arabic, English, and Hebrew are used interchangeably in most family dialogue. This polyglot of languages results in farcical misunderstandings. Family reminiscing about a favorite bakery, Home Made Cake, becomes “Om Met Kek” in Zevy’s mind. Upon discovering the name was English, not Arabic, the author becomes the butt of many family jokes.

A poignant entry reminiscing about his recently deceased mother highlights Zevy’s versatility. “Because that is my mother.” “And I will miss her,” he writes with heartfelt emotion.

Zevy’s Seinfeld-esque, self-deprecating humor makes him instantly relatable and charming. The author’s trademark staccato sentences, profanities and punchlines are also used to great effect. For example: “I tell people that the ‘schlepping’ in the title is a nod to my father’s Ashkenaz side. But that’s not really true. I never heard him say it. I just think it’s a funny word.”

Zevy is masterful with his craft, and readers of any stripe will find droll humor within these pages.