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0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Leah Kohen From NY Nov 06, 2009
SIPPING FROM THE NILE is a a work of art, a masterpiece. Jean Naggar gave a beautiful tribute to her family's legacy in Egypt. This memoir was very moving and inspiring. It evoked so much emotion within me. Her detailed yet not so verbose descriptions aroused each of my senses giving me the feeling as though I lived it myself for real. The book was eloquently written. The sentence structures were beautiful . The masterful skill of giving a detailed yet not verbose description were what drew me into the book even more being that I have an appreciation for good writing. I'd often find myself reading sentences over and over because I appreciated the skill of expressing an idea, or giving a description or giving over a life lesson, all of which were broad topics, neatly and concisely packaged in very few eloquently written sentences. This book touched my heart and had a strong impact on me. Reading a memoir is different than reading a novel. The story is moving but it is also very well written. The only way to understand what I mean is to read it. I highly recommend it.
The lost Worlds, an amazing memoir. Nov 04, 2009
This is the best book I have ever read. Ms. Jean Naggar is absolutely great writer that deserve well recognitions for her superb elegant writing. her story is the most inspiring story that can teach everyone how to deal with life's cruelty when it's thrown at us without any warning but Never bitterness, or hate! a lot to learn from this memoir. Everyone must read this amazing book.
This is from someone who had grown up in Egypt. and no I am not a Jew, but I have all the respect to someone so special as Ms. Jean. her memoir can make the difference..
Yes, Jews have the right to live among us in the world free. and Israel, as a nation, has the right to exists among Arab nations in peace. no one can OR will "G_D willing" changes or take this away either.
Thank you, Ms. Naggar for sharing this wonderful memory with us.
Mostafa S
The past is never gone Oct 11, 2009
I've never been to Egypt or even read much about it, but I feel as if I just returned from a guided tour of a fascinating place in a fascinating time. The combination of page-turning narrative and lovely writing made it difficult to put the book down. The descriptions and the sense of place are truly lessons in the craft of writing. Jean Naggar skillfully connects me to her world, dropping me into a foreign country and immediately making me feel at home. Her specific memories connect me to my own past: as she learns to swim, I relive my own swimming lessons on a Southern California beach far from her beach. She often elicits such memories, subtly revealing that despite how different our physical worlds might be, people are alike on many basic levels, especially as children discovering life. The combination of bringing us into both the writer's world and the reader's own seems to me to one of the main purposes of writing, and one of the most difficult, even though Jean Naggar makes it look easy. Surely one day the world will understand how connected we all are; narratives such as this are a step in that direction.
The title comes from the tradition that if you sip from the Nile before leaving, you will one day return. I love the final two lines: "The past is never gone. It is the foundation on which we build the present, every day of our lives." How perfectly they tie into those first words, the title, since being transported into that time is indeed sipping from the Nile. Jean Naggar leaves us with the hope that we will always be able to revisit the past through memory, enriching our present with each sip.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 A model of self-absorption Oct 04, 2009
The writer is the daughter of descendants of two of the most prominent Jewish families in pre-1956 Egypt: her father is a Mosseri from Cairo, her mother is a Smouha from Alexandria. Hence the strength and the weakness of the book.
On the one hand, the book offers the reader an outline of the history and the achievements of these prominent families and a glimpse into the conditions in which they lived.
On the other hand, at least the first half of the book is an excruciatingly detailed account of the privileges that these families enjoyed: very large houses in Cairo and Alexandria, summer vacations in Switzerland, boarding schools in England, etc, etc. This is all fine and amusing, but only if the author shows any empathy towards the ordinary Egyptians that her family lived amongst. Any at all.
This self-absorption and total lack of compassion is singular given the hardships that her own family exprienced in the 1950's when things went totally wrong. I would have thought that the deprivation that at least some of her relatives came to experience post-1956 would have made her understand the anti-European feelings of many Egyptians pre-1956 that eventually lead to the personal tragedies that took place.
I do not condone what happened in the 1950's, and I am not saying that any of it was excusable. In fact, I firmly believe that too many innocent people, including the writer and her family, were treated very badly and suffered totally unnecessarily. I only wished to read any indication of understanding of the reasons why things went wrong and/or an acknowledgement of the fact that ordinary Egyptians were discriminated against and had the right to be resentful.
Let me contrast Naggar's book with Mary Rowlatt's
A Family in Egypt
Mary Rowlatt was an English woman who belonged to the fifth generation of her family to make its home in Egypt and lead a privileged life there. In the 50's, she also had to leave the country (though under different conditions from Naggar's). But from Rowlatt's book, it is clear that the writer is keenly aware of the Egyptian people, deeply appreciative of their humanity and has strong feelings for their less-than-privileged living conditions.
Of course, one can argue that Mary Rowlatt's family didn't have to leave Egypt under the same conditions as Jean Naggar's, so let me give another example. No one suffered in the 50's and the 60's more than the Egyptian ex-Royal Family. Prince Hassan Aziz Hassan was one of the very few ex-royals who decided not to leave Egypt in the 1950's, so he suffered even more than the rest. In his book
In the House of Muhammad Ali: A Family Album, 1805-1952
he also writes in great detail about the privileged life that his family enjoyed. However, he makes it very clear by the end of the book that he understood the ordinary Egyptian people and that he greatly appreciated them. Not the military men who wreaked havoc on the country, but the ordinary Egyptians who suffered and continue to suffer to this day.
I expect those of us who survived difficult circumstances, and who did so well in life that we now have the time to read books, let alone the possibility to write them, to thank our stars and to look back on our ex-homeland with sympathy and with compassion.
'Sipping from the Nile' is Excellent Sep 23, 2009
Jean Naggar writes a very engrossing story of her childhood in Cairo before the opening of the Suez Canal in 1956. Her tale is both personal and historical so that the reader fully submersed in the history of the Jewish community in Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century with all the delicious tales from her childhood. I also found her use of family pictures to illustrate her tale a fabulous bonus. The descriptions of life within this wonderful extended, multicultural family living along the Nile River was so well written that I could not put down.
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