Juliana Maio was born in Egypt, but expelled from the country with her family during the Suez Crisis. She was raised in France, completed her higher education in the United States, and today, Juliana practices entertainment law in Los Angeles. She has spoken both domestically and abroad about the Arab Spring. Her novel, City of the Sun (Greenleaf Book Group Press), is now available. She is blogging here today for Jewish Book Council and MyJewishLearning.
Little did I know what I was getting myself into when one day I decided to delve back into my Jewish Egyptian roots. I was born in Egypt but expelled with my family during the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis when I was 3 years old. We moved to France but ended up immigrating to the United States when I was 17. My life had been too busy and chaotic to journey back into the past until one day I was struck by a sort of midlife crisis. It was not the passage of time nor the meaning of life that kept me awake at night, but rather the nagging need to discover the truth about my people’s roots. Who were those Jews living in Egypt? What were they doing there? And what went wrong? I did not want anecdotes. I wanted hard facts.… >> READ FULL ARTICLE
