My Ancestors, My Power

Today a Scotsman, an Indigenous Cree woman, an African Nova Scotian, and an Egyptian spoke about love. We came together online and did it in front of a wonderfully unexpectedly high number of people. In the context of celebrating Black History Month in Nova Scotia, we shared our personal experiences about the inspiration and challenges of our ancestors, how the past resonates today, and how to be a good ancestor for those to come. Through our stories, we spoke of love for the self that is indiscriminate from love for the ancestors, love for real connections, and for the power of authentic responsibility towards one another’s “future” history. And boy was it tough. But it was also courageous, heartbreaking, joyful, and liberating. Revolutionary even. Yes, love can do that.

Wait, that’s not everything. The magic was in the reception, folks. The flood of gratitude, acknowledgments, returned love, support, and declaration of NEED for more open dialogues like ours was unbelievable. Hence, this post! I gotta be honest, as a recent immigrant to Nova Scotia, I’ve had to re-evaluate my decision to settle here a few times. There’s still a bit of a journey to go in the Province before Indigenous women feel safe, immigrants like me can speak their tongue in public, people from South Asia can wear their garb freely, people with accents can get the same jobs as people without, and Black people are not terrified of the police. To say the least. But then, I’d get little signs here and there that confirm that I’m “home.” And today’s was kinda huge. 

So, in light of the rich topic of today’s conversation and the limited time that us four brave souls were given, I wanted to dive back into one specific question and give it a more detailed answer in writing. I was asked how I saw the stories of the past surfacing in the present moment. Out of respect for my ancestors, and in line with the celebratory feel of the day, I’m putting down a few bullet points about how our ancient Egyptian culture from thousands of years BC still lives through us in today’s Egypt.

The celebration continues: 

• The dead are alive – We have an Afro-centric emphasis on connecting with our dead. In ancient Egypt, people went to their lost ones’ tombs regularly to keep their souls from straying in the afterlife. In present day Egypt, we still do the same, though the prayers are different, owing to the current religions; Islam and Coptic Christianity. We even bake the same kinds of pastries that the ancients made on those occasions!
• The unseen – Egyptians always talk about the next life – it's as real for us as talk of anything else we can see or touch. In fact, our words always comprise elements of the “unseen” and intermingle them easily within the day to day conversations. This comes from the ancients as well. They were very religious and spiritual people no matter what the current religion was, and so are we today.
• The language – Coptic lives in churches, as well as in some words we use as part of our Egyptian Arabic dialect.
• Sebou’ – The “seventh day'' ritual celebrating a newborn baby who’s made it to its seventh day. The ceremony dates back thousands of years to the ancient ancestors, and celebrates both mother and child. The songs of Sebou’ include some Coptic words, and the ritual includes rites directly from the ancients, like ringing a mortar and pestle to embolden the baby, throwing salt around the mother to protect her, and whispering instructions in the baby’s ears to obey their parents and ward off evil.
• Spring festival and the calendar – We have the festival of spring “Sham El Neseem”, which the ancients used to celebrate the harvest season. The season is called “Shemu” in Coptic, hence the relation between the two names. The three seasons of ancient Egypt were:

• Akhet - the inundation (early September to early Jan): No farming was done at this time, as all the fields were flooded,

• Peret (early Jan to early May): The Growing Season, and 

• Shemu (early May to early September): The Harvesting Season 

These seasons are still observed by farmers all over Egypt. The Coptic calendar is still used by older people and Copts (Christian Egyptians). My grandma knows the names of the months in Coptic! The Nile decided these agricultural seasons, and the river is still a central force in modern Egypt. From circa 2700 BC, Egyptians have eaten the same traditional meal on Sham El Neseem: salted fish, onions, and eggs.

• Our food – we still eat the same kinds of bread that our ancient ancestors baked, they even look the same. Also, the famous "ful medammes" fava beans - we still cook them in the same pots as the ancients!
• Our names – there are Egyptians today whose names are Isis, Mena, and Ramsis, which are direct names of the ancient kings and queens.
• Our skin colour – Egyptians are typically either dark-skinned if their ancestors are from the South, or a “wheatish” colour with a direct reference to the most important crop of the land which dates back to the ancients. We never say olive skin, it's wheatish. I’m wheatish!
• Upper and Lower Egypt united – More than 5000 years ago, our ancestors worked hard to unite the two kingdoms of Egypt, and we stay united today thanks to them. Upper Egypt is the southern part of the land, and is slightly raised relative to the northern part, called Lower Egypt. The names Upper and Lower have to do with the direction of flow of the Nile from the South to the North, and then into the Delta and the Mediterranean Sea. We still use these same denotations when we describe, for example, the weather forecast on national TV or where someone’s home town is.