Interview

By: Amanda

            Merna Ebeid is a 16 year old sophomore at C. Milton Wright who lives in my neighborhood.  She was born in Egypt, and then her family moved to Florida.  Last year she moved in across the street from me and soon after became my best friend.  I decided to interview her for this project to learn more about her and her family.  Learning about her life in Egypt was fascinating.

Q: Why did your family decide to move to America?

A: It’s because my dad had a job as a pharmacist in Egypt.  He got job offers from a lot of places and first he got one in Kuwait, which is where my brother Mark was born.  After that he got an offer to work in Florida.  In Egypt, there is only a 10% Christian population because most people there are Muslim, so there was a lot of persecution against Christians so we decided to move here.

Q: What part of Egypt are you from?

A: I was born in Alexandria, which used to be the old capitol.

Q: How old were you when you moved?

A: I was four or five years old, and my younger brother Mark was around three

Q: Do you still do anything Egyptian like eating Egyptian food? 

A: Yea, we eat a lot of Egyptian food.  We don’t go out to eat often, so my mom still uses a lot of recipes that she used in Egypt.

Q: Are there any other customs you participate in? 

A: We go to an Egyptian church from time to time.  We are always late to things, and my parents say that it is because we are Egyptian.

Q: Were there ever times where you were made fun of for being Egyptian?

A: Not for being particularly Egyptian.  When I was in third grade people made fun of me for having really curly hair.  My friends always make fun of me for being late.  They call it our Egyptian lateness.  They always like to double our estimated time and that is actually when we get there.  It is always a shock to them when we come on time.

Q: Do your parents ever tell stories about life in Egypt?

A: Yes, they always like to keep up with the news on what is happening in Egypt.  On New Year’s Day in Egypt, there was a car bomb outside a church and it blew up, and 23 people were killed and over 70 were injured.  My mom knows people who go to that church, and it is scary because if we hadn’t moved we could have been in that church when the bomb went off.

Q: Do you know any differences between here and Egypt? 

A: Yea, here it is a lot cleaner than in Egypt.  Here has a lot of nice roads, we have a lot more say in government, and here they tolerate all religions. 

Q: Do you have any relatives living in Egypt?

A: Yes, I have about 20 cousins and an aunt living there.  Sometimes we talk to them, but they don’t know a lot of English so it’s hard to communicate.  They yell over the phone because they don’t really know how to use it. 

Q: Would you ever plan on going back? 

A: Yea, I have wanted to go for a long time.  My parents said that our family might go back my junior or senior year to visit.  It would be nice since I have not been there since I was five.

Q: What language did you and your parents speak in Egypt? 

A: We spoke Arabic, which was not the official language at the time, but since the Muslims took over now the official language is Arabic.

Q: Do you have anything in your house that is Egyptian? 

A: I have pictures of us that were taken in Egypt, and we have little golden statues of Egyptian kings.  I have a little dress that I wore as a baby that’s Egyptian.  I also have some golden jewelry that I wore there.

Q: Was it hard to learn English when you got here?

A: I was in preschool when I got to Florida, and I spoke Arabic, but I was able to transition to English pretty quickly.  I think I would have had more trouble if I had come in elementary school.

Q: Do you speak Arabic in your house? 

A: No, but my parents speak to each other in Arabic all the time.  I don’t understand most of it anymore, but I am still able to understand a few phrases.