I haven't - yet - seen Nadia Kamel's Salata Baladi (House Salad), her documentary about her multi-national, multi-confessional extended family in Egypt. But today's BBC World Service program "Heart and Soul" (available here in podcast) provides a delightful introduction her film.
The notion of Egypt as a "land of opportunity" for Greeks, Italians, Lebanese, Armenians and others might strike readers as surprising - isn't Egypt a poor country, suffering high unemployment, a major aid recipient? Ah, but it was not always so.
And it wasn't just related to the construction and maintenance of the Suez Canal. The preponderance of French and Italian car mechanics made a lasting linguistic impression; names for car parts are Arabized versions of terms left behind by Jean-le-mecano.
When we lived in Alexandria in the early eighties, there were still remnants of these communities. The Greek had been the largest - several hundred thousand - though by 1983 they had dwindled to a couple of thousand. The others were even smaller. There was still a lingering sense of what Lawrence Durrell might have observed while gathering material for the Alexandria Quartet.
The BBC program features interviews with filmmaker Nadia Kamel (who was a longtime assistant to the late Youssef Chahine) and Professor Khaled Fahmy of New York University. They trace the often complicated family histories that resulted from this influx of foreigners into 19th and 20th century Egypt. For anyone who knows Egypt or Egyptians, the radio program's combination of music, excerpts from the film, and conversation succeeds in evoking the gentle warmth of Egyptians.
Egypt is not only Mediterranean and Levantine - but today it is easy to forget that it also has this rich multicultural heritage. Probably the best place to get a feel for this side of Egypt is Alexandria, the metropolis on the Mediterranean so dear to the heart of Youssef Chahine. Listen to the BBC podcast, and hear why Egypt does not always equate to Arab, Arab does not always connote Muslim, and Islam is not the only religion in the Middle East's most populous country.