My Villa

By Antoine R Rahil

Moving to a new land out of choice is one thing. Forced to flee and never being permitted back to your homeland is quite another. Rahil weaves his melodic memories of growing up in Palestine, his early life as a refugee in Egypt, and later, his daring move to Canada, alone. “I felt that my wings were not good enough to fly.” But he surely had wings. Get to know Antoine in this honest reminiscence of a life full of boldness, faith, and a dash of humour.

As a retired psychologist with time to muse, self-proclaimed philosopher Antoine Rahil lives with his wife in Toronto, Ontario. This is his first book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Antoine R Rahil
• Release date: May 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781773028316

Book preview

9781773028316.jpg

From the Holy Land to the Niagara Escarpment

My Villa

Antoine R. Rahil

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

My Villa

Introduction

Memories from Palestine

PART ONE

Section One: Palestine

Memories from Egypt

Section Two: Egypt

FROM 1948 TO 1964: MY LIFE AS A REFUGEE IN EGYPT

Memories from My Bachelor Days

Section Three: Canada

FROM 1964 TO THE PRESENT: AN IMMIGRANT IN CANADA

A Family Man

PART TWO: RETIREMENT

1. Memories and Nostalgia

2. On Death and Dying

3. To My Daughters

4. Psychology and Me

5. Intelligence and Wisdom

6. On Religion and Faith

7. God and Time

8. My Body, My Soul, and My Mind

9. The Fifties and the 21st Century

10. What About Palestine?

Conclusion

Copyright

Dedication

I dedicate this book to the memory of my mother Helen, who brought me into this world. She could hear me but could not see me. She lost her sight during her pregnancy from a brain tumour.

I saw her and heard her but was too young to know her.

Also to the memory of my dear good father. Even after his departure he continues to inspire me with a wealth of good advice.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to express my gratitude to the most important people in my life. First to my dear wife, Layla, who put up with my annoying character. She helped me in reviewing the manuscript, inspired, and encouraged me. To my dear daughters, Romy, the eldest, and Régine, the youngest, the most precious jewels of my life. They taught me the meaning of unselfish love. May God bless them and their families.

I’d like to thank Mike for his encouragement to write my autobiography.

Thanks to other friends like Renato and his family, his brother, Andre, Joe and his wife. Also to my cousins, Robert, and Enver, and his wife Mariel.

And to all those people who, after listening to bits and pieces of my life, told me that I should write my autobiography because they saw something unusual and worth telling.

I still feel that my life is an ordinary one like many others.

It does not matter what I think one way or another. Here it is.

Note: most names have been changed for privacy. Only names of my parents, brother and sister, family cousins and other relatives are unchanged.

My Villa

Why my villa?

Each one of us likes to have a villa.

For some, the villa was built and waiting for them when they arrived in this world.

For others, they had to build their own villa starting from scratch.

I am from the latter category.

With one hand, I was stubbornly building mine.

With the other hand, I was trying to survive the challenges of every day.

Now I have my villa and I am proud of it. No one can steal it from me.

My villa is my home and my family.

Introduction

Two events left a tremendous effect on my life. The first took place on March 17, 1946 when my mother passed away. The second took place on a gloomy day in April 1948 when we left our home and were prevented from returning forever. Although I was very young to be aware of the ramifications of these events, they affected me unconsciously then and, consciously, later in life.

I started this book with an idea or a daydream, as with most of my wishes and projects in life. Sometimes I succeed in making them come true and other times I do not get what I had wished or planned for. I guess that is the difference between a successful story and a failed one. I take full and total responsibility for all events in my life and their outcomes. I blame no one for my failures and I take no credit for my successes. I owe no one anything and no one owes me. I will leave with a zero balance.

The book is divided in two main sections. Section one is more about the events that took place during my life. I try as much as possible to narrate them in a chronological manner. In the first section, and now looking back, I feel that my life is divided into three periods according to location and time, first in Palestine (from 1943 to 1948); secondly, in Egypt as a refugee (from 1948 to 1964) and finally, in Canada where I have been since 1964 till the present. Sometimes I feel that I have had two lives or as if I am two persons in one. The first one in the Middle East from birth to age 20 and the second person in Canada, from 20 up to the present, at 72 years of age.

In section two, I share with the reader my retired life from late 2006 to 2016. It is not about events or actions. It is rather about my thoughts, a mental dwelling, my feeling of nostalgia, my reflection on my life, and reviewing all the people whom I have met, the living and the departed, what I did and what I did not do but wanted to do. Sometimes I feel a sense of accomplishment and pride; other times I feel a sense of failure and loss. It is much easier to judge others than judge one’s own self.

I am writing about the early years of my life, by relying on memory and the hearsay of my immediate family and relatives about events of my life and my reactions to these events.

With retirement came a time of emptiness. I had the time to ponder my past and ask myself about the accountability of my accomplishments. I realize that life is a journey with ups and downs. Being out of the rat race, I came face to face with myself.

Life could be complicated. Some will find it difficult to follow all the events. Please be patient when reading the book because events may interfere with one another or overlap. Don’t be hasty and think I am making a mistake. I lived life as it came. Only in my old age did I start giving it some meaning. I am still searching and pondering what went on in my seventy some years.

My reason for writing the book is to share the trip with others, and I have kept the events close to reality.

Now that I am reaching the terminus of my life, I have some answers but definitely not all the answers.

For now, I am content with myself and convinced that I was born to die.

My father, quoting Shakespeare, used to say, All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. My question is: did I choose the role that I played or did someone else designate and assign the role for me?

For what it’s worth, life is good only if you live it fully. I remember the movie War and Peace. At the end of the film was written, It is important to love your life because if you love your life, you love God.

Memories from Palestine

My father’s family, and siblings in Jerusalem, Palestine: my grandmother Eugenie Rahil (maiden name Yamine) surrounded by her 7 sons and one daughter. My father is standing second from the left.

My brother with mom and my aunt in 1935 in Jerusalem: from left to right, Aunt Elizabeth, Romeo-Raphael and Mom Helen wearing a hat.

My maternal grand mother Hafiza Mikhail Rock Morcos, born August 28 1872, died in Bethlehem on May 10, 1918.

My sister Vilma in 1938 in Jerusalem.

My birthplace on Mamilla Street in Jerusalem, Palestine. I used to play on the balcony, in the middle on the top floor.

Before my birth. In the 1930s, the Rahil family at my grandfather’s home in Ein Karim celebrating carnival. My mother Helen, front row to the left, holding my sister Vilma who is playing with my brother Romeo’s hat. My father is standing in the back row in the middle.

My uncle John Serena , brother of my mother.

PART ONE

Section One: Palestine

From my birth in 1943 to 1948, my roots were in Palestine, my infancy and early years, in Jerusalem.

Before I embark on telling my journey, I should like to clarify some details about my name and provide some background information about my roots on both sides (that of my father and my mother), details on where I came from and why I go under two family names: El-Khazen and Rahil. This is what was told to me in 1963 by my paternal uncle, George Rahil El-Khazen (RIP):

When the Middle East, including Lebanon and Palestine, were both part of the Ottoman Empire, a member of the El-Khazen family from the Kesserwan District in Mount Lebanon was forced to leave his home by the Turkish authorities. He found refuge in a small village in Palestine. There, he fell in love with a young woman whose first name was Rahil (in the Old Testament, Rachel). The couple married and had several children. The children were known as the children of Rahil.

Since Palestine and Lebanon were both under the Ottoman authorities and the El-Khazen fugitive belonged to the Christian minorities living under Islamic rules, the father encouraged the idea of calling them the children of Rahil for fear the Turkish authorities would continue harassing his children. Those are my Palestinian ancestors and I am possibly one descendant of this family.

In 1988, I was visiting my birthplace, Jerusalem, and I requested an original baptismal and birth certificate from the Franciscan priest at St. Savior Latin Parish. He was from Lebanon and was responsible for the documentation of the parishioners. The priest added on my baptismal certificate the family name of El-Khazen after he wrote Antoine Rafik Rahil (my name). I asked him why. He said, being from Lebanon, he knew that the Rahil of Palestine is a branch of El-Khazen.

In 1948, after our exodus from Palestine to Egypt, I was known as Rafik Rahil and that lasted for my first 3 years of schooling at Pensionnat St. Joseph de l’Apparition in Cairo. When I changed schools and went to the Patriarchal Greek Catholic College, a boys’ only school, with my brother, I was known as Rafik Khazen and not Rahil.

The reason for that change in my family name was that my older brother, Raphael (RIP), who was already a student in this Catholic College since our arrival in Egypt in 1948, was registered as Raphael Khazen and not Raphael Rahil. This was because the director of the school, father Joseph Tawil (RIP) thought that the name Rahil sounded a bit Jewish and since Egypt was at war with the Zionist regime of Palestine, it might cause a problem with the Egyptian government. So, when my time came to leave the girls’ school of St. Joseph that I was attending as a kindergarten student (this school accepted boys only in the primary grades) and join the college with my brother, it was normal that I become Rafik Khazen and not Rafik Rahil.

Now, in Canada, my name is Antoine Rafik Rahil. Like most of the events in my life, nothing was simple, and even a name has to be explained and/or justified in detail.¹

At times, I feel that I have to apologize for existing, never mind for living. Am I one too many on this crowded planet? It seems that the Palestinian dilemma is an endless one and a unique situation in modern history. Is it my fault that my parents decided to conceive me in Palestine? I wish they had done it far away, maybe in Japan or in Iceland, or how about Argentina? By the way, I would have been happy in Buenos Aires. I love to dance to a tango rhythm.

Now back to the story of my names. When I was doing my training in clinical psychology, for my master’s, in the early eighties at the Douglas Hospital (a McGill University teaching hospital) in Montréal for the mentally insane, some of the medicated patients used to confuse my first name Rafik with traffic. Consequently, my supervisor asked me if I had another first name. I told him that my Christian name is Antoine, and so, I changed it, because it was easier for the patients.

Now, sometimes, I use my unofficial name Antoine Rafik Rahil El-Khazen but for practical reasons and living in a western society, I settled down with the official name of Antoine Rafik Rahil, as it is shorter. Antoine reminds me of my Catholic faith; Rafik reminds me of my Middle Eastern culture, and Rahil is in memory of my late father and my Palestinian heritage. Now that I am in my retirement years and I have the luxury to choose the name I want, I decided to add, unofficially, the El-Khazen name, following my recent research that taught me that Rahil is a branch of El-Khazen.

I desire that my children and grandchildren and all my offspring, wherever they might be, in many generations to come, remember that the country of origin of El-Khazen is Palestine and that is not an opinion, it is a fact, like the sun that rises every morning from the east.

I will attempt to demystify the confusion. My first name is Rafik. It is an Arabic word that means comrade. My baptismal name is Anton, an Eastern European name, in English, Anthony, in French, Antoine. In the Middle East, it is preferable for practical reasons to have two names. One would be local, like Rafik and the other for Christian minorities, the name of a saint.

The family name is El-Khazen, but the Rahil name is a branch of El-Khazen and not the other way around. According to the National Research Center under Family Name History, the country of origin of El-Khazen is Palestine. One can find El-Khazen in Syria and in Lebanon. Through DNA testing, the El-Khazen family can trace their origins to Jericho, Palestine to 8500 BC. In more recent times, in the 9th century, El-Khazen was found in Nablus, Palestine.

Now, on my mother’s side, for Helen Anton Youssef SERENA (RIP), the country of origin of the SERENA family is Italy. According to my maternal uncle, John, his ancestors arrived in Palestine from Europe during the crusades.

My paternal grandmother’s maiden name is Eugenie YAMINE and the country of origin of YAMINE is Lebanon.

My maternal grandmother’s complete name is Hafiza Mikhail Rock MORCOS and the country of origin of Morcos is Palestine.

My maternal grandfather’s complete name is Anton Youssef SERENA.

My ancestry from both sides (El Khazen and Serena) and origins are shared with three countries: Palestine, Lebanon and Italy.

The chronological information, places, locations, names of people and major events are based mainly on two sources: from memory, and from stories told to me by my parents and other members of the family, close relatives, and first and distant cousins, over the years.

I was born on December 29, 1943 in Jerusalem, Palestine. For reasons unknown to me, the official certificate of birth I had until 1988 stated that I was born January first 1945. In 1988, I found out my real birthdate, after a trip to Jerusalem.

My parents as well as my grandparents and great grandparents on both sides were born in Palestine. I was baptized on March 19, 1944 at St. Savior Roman Catholic church in Jerusalem by a Franciscan priest.

I should like to give some specific and concrete details about my family, as the names are registered in St. Savior Church in Jerusalem:

My father, Ribhi Raffoul Mikhail Rahil, was born at Ain-Karim, a small village outside of Jerusalem, on November 2, 1897. He died in Cairo on September 1, 1977.

My mother, Helen Anton Youssef Serena, was born in Jerusalem on May 4, 1911. She died in Jerusalem on March 17, 1946.

My parents had three children. The oldest, Romeo Romanus-Raphael was born in Jerusalem on July 7, 1934. He died in Cairo on January 22, 2002. My sister Vilma Wilma-Maria was born in Jerusalem on May 9, 1938. She is now living in Cairo.

As a child I would often spend days in bed struggling with high fever, pain in my tonsils and ears or some infection in my intestine. My weak spots were my nose, throat, and ears. I feel that I was not born with a golden spoon; I was born with a spoon full of vinegar in my mouth. Later in Egypt, I would suffer at least once a year from typhoid or throat infection. My sister once told me that at times my parents thought I would not live to be an adult. They made a vow to St. Anthony, and when I was three years of age, they dressed me as a Franciscan monk for a whole year, so I would survive, and here I am at 72 writing this story.

I have some visual and auditory memories of my early years. I am known to have a good memory, especially for details. Sometimes I have a spontaneous flashback, a quick glimpse of certain pictures of our home in Palestine on Mammilla Street right outside the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. We lived on the third floor of an old building that had big, white stones on the outside where I used to play with my brother and sister on the street, and sometimes in the hallway entrance of the building or on the stairs. The building had three apartments, one apartment on each floor.

Our apartment was on the third and top floor. When you came up to the third floor, there was a metal door, and a metal fence to the right, which separated the stairs from the living and dining rooms. Once you entered the family room, you saw a big balcony where I used to play alone or with someone else. The family room was connected to the dining room. From the dining room, you would exit to another huge balcony or a rooftop at the back of the house where there were lots of plants in different kinds of pots; some were made of metal, others were made of clay.

The apartment had four or five big rooms. I remember three big rooms with huge grey doors. For some reason, I can recall some of the furniture in the rooms. My maternal bachelor uncle, John, who lived with us, had one room for himself. My sister told me recently on Skype that he shared this big bedroom with his sister, my aunt Elizabeth. There was a big piece of furniture, most likely a closet, with a big oval mirror on its door. As a kid, I used to stand next to my uncle looking up, watching him shave. With his shaving brush, he would put some shaving foam on my face and the tip of my nose to make me laugh.

The living room had a shiny set of two or three big couches. The couches were made of dark wood for the armrests and frames. The seats and the backs were covered with a silver oriental design, decorated with shiny purple-blue silk material. I could see a long-standing piece of furniture in the corner. Later on, I was told it was a British-made gramophone. I remember, visually, the famous trademark, His Master’s Voice, with the symbol of a little dog looking at a huge, old-fashioned speaker. I also remember a huge tree in the opposite corner of what was the living room. It looked like a pine tree with all kinds of shiny ornaments hanging from every branch. I guess this was Christmastime. The picture I have is of an old Christmas tree reaching high to the ceiling.

Sometimes, when playing on the front balcony, I used to stick my head between two metal posts or bars and watch cars going up and down the street. I’ve liked cars ever since I can remember.

A few metres from our building, to the left, there was a pile of sand bags, and on top were 3 or 4 British soldiers, with their famous almost flat helmets, dressed in their khaki military uniform. I don’t recall them in long pants, and the visual I carry is that they wore shorts. They always had their rifles on their shoulders, and on the sandbags was a machine gun. The checkpoint was surrounded by barbed wires.

As a young boy, everything seemed to be huge, and tall. My uncle, my father, and the British soldiers were all like the Incredible Hulk.

Across the street there was a pond surrounded by tall trees called Mammilla Pond. The name of the street, and the little forest that carried the same name as the street, stayed with me all these years. Maybe because I heard about it many times from my parents, or I have a visual memory of the big wall on the outside that surrounded it, and the deep green colour of the pond with the huge trees.

I still remember the trembling sound that started mostly after sunset and went on for what seemed an endless night. This was when our home became the target of Zionist groups that were getting closer every day to our neighbourhood.

Here, I should like to insert a quick note, based on what I learned from my father and from books I read trying to discover my past and the past of the family, about the events of our last few months before our flight to Egypt. Besides the Haganah armed settlers, who later became the Israeli army, also known as the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), there were two groups outlawed by the British occupying army and the British authorities. One was the Irgun Zvai Leumi, and the other was the Stern gang, headed by Avraham Stern. Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir both were active members of these terrorist groups. Both later became prime ministers of Israel.

On a happier note, I still remember some of the toys my father used to buy from the famous British store, Spinneys. He would buy us little cars in beautiful, shiny colours. I remember since an early age the word Mecano accompanied a visual of a big box that contained a construction set of two colours, green and red.

Later on, I was told that this was a special toy that my father bought for my brother, Romeo, on some particular occasion. My brother was careful about this toy. He told me later that he did not allow anyone to play with it, even our cousins who used to come on holiday from Egypt to Palestine. My brother still remembered that one of our cousins was also careful with his toy that my father had bought him. He would hide his toy car to keep it new and shiny, and played with our toys.

At times my sister and my brother would take me downstairs to play on the sidewalk. We all played with my paternal uncle’s car while he was visiting my father. The car was blue with only two doors at the front like a box-truck. I would sit on the wooden bench in the back and my brother would pretend to be the driver. My father later told me that it was an Italian Fiat.

Also, I have this memory of my maternal uncle who would arrive from one of his trips to Tel Aviv carrying some toys for the three of us. My mother told me that her brother had a girlfriend who came from Germany and lived in Tel Aviv. One day he came home and pulled from his raincoat pocket a small puppy. When the puppy grew older, he would go out on the balcony and wait for my uncle a few minutes before his arrival. My mother believed that our dog had a sixth sense. Apparently, the dog was run over by a British army truck accidentally, while running around on the street.

Later on, my mother would often tell me with nostalgia about the good times they had with friends and relatives. They would have dancing parties to the tune of the Italian-French singer Tino Rossi. Sometimes, with nostalgia and tears, she would sing the famous song J’attendrai ton retour le jour et la nuit…. Translated into English, I will wait for your return day and night. The image I had was the tiny kitchen of our first apartment in Cairo while she was cooking a delicious Mejadara, a mixture of rice and lentil mixed with fried onions and spiced with cumin, salt and black pepper. Apparently, the cumin prevents and reduces the accumulation of gas that accompanies eating legumes.

Some of my mother’s