Book Review: Aaron Zevy’s Schlepping Across the Nile

From the first sentences in Aaron Zevy’s delightful short story collection, Schlepping Across the Nile, you can tell that the writing is very comfortable with itself. Zevy is a modern-day Central Canadian socialite: his style is wholly conversational and unabashedly bilingual—an inspired play on the lingo of Toronto and Montreal’s diasporic communities where he grew up. In my interview with him, he admitted that the stories “are not highbrow.” The stories, most of which take place in Toronto and sometimes Montreal, range from his youth to adult life and feature convivial encounters that speak to his Egyptian and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. But for these kinds of anecdotes, where routine and daily circumstance are translated into cheeky dramedies, entertainment value matters more than polished prose.

“I still don’t know the answer,” Zevy replies, when I inquire about his voice as an author. “I think I have been called upon to tell stories… I was never sure if the work would transcend my circle of friends and family.” But clearly it has. While references to Egyptian dishes, Haggadic passages, and Sephardic customs might be lost on the less interested reader, all will appreciate mawkish tales from Zevy’s youth,  “Seinfeldian” date stories, or automotive escapades from Toronto’s suburbs. This anthology is a tour de force of vignettes that would ideally be told over coffee at a diner. But Zevy has comfortably transcribed them so that anybody, anywhere can enjoy their joviality and feel that they’re kibitzing along with him. 

Zevy’s parents left Egypt in 1956, after the Suez Crisis, when the country became increasingly hostile to its Jewish citizens. This mass flight is known among the diaspora as “ the Second Exodus.” Some of Zevy’s relatives have “better,”, (aka more harrowing) exodus stories while others, like Zevy’s mother, recall their escape with mundanity. Only in his later years did he—unsuccessfully—probe his mother for details, who “was too tired and hungry to start recounting old tales.” His family’s memories of Egypt, its customs and way of life, were all brought to Canada and have clearly been an inspiring source of creativity. “Schlepping,” Zevy tells me, “is not a political book.”  While the second exodus was a vital chapter in the Egyptian Jew story, émigrés like Zevy’s parents looked back on their years in North Africa with fondness and kept bitter melancholy at a safe distance— they thought they had “had a good run.” 

Some of Schlepping’s most resonant tales involve the cuisine of Zevy’s Ashkenazi-Sephardi family. In one particularly succulent story, “Egyptian Soup,” no less than 14 different dishes, ingredients, and concoctions are mentioned as he recalls some cross-cultural hijinx from his childhood. “I invited Stevie Sheen for lunch tomorrow,” says Zevy to his painfully indifferent mother, “just soup and grilled cheese sandwich…. All the [Canadian] moms serve it.” But as any good graduate of adolescence should know, there is no easy escape from familial embarrassment: “Stevie and I were watching The Flintstones when my mom came out with a tray and innocently asked Stevie if he would like some kaak” (a savoury Arabic delicacy). In another story, “Home Made Cake,” the naturalized Canadians of the family muse over a Greek bakery from their Cairo years. What begins as praise for a storied patisserie turns into a brief genealogy of the Zevy family, fit with all the embellishment one would expect of reminiscence. 

Schlepping introduces us to a smorgasbord of Jewish customs practiced (and not practiced ) by Zevy’s friends and family. In “The Kotel” he describes being guilted into a trip to the Wailing Wall after visiting Jerusalem for a night: “You can’t go to Jerusalem without going to the Kotel,” his sister tells him. In “Our Father, Our King” he unabashedly recalls that he has “not fasted nor gone to synagogue in 20 years,” but then goes to shul with his brother in the following paragraph. Many of his stories are set against the backdrop of Judaism, where he portrays himself as an unapologetic heretic. The anecdotes in Schlepping are a coterie of cultural tidbits that Jews anywhere would encounter, secular or otherwise. 

You can read Schlepping Across the Nile for free on Amazon. Click this link to download the novel.

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