I grew up in Savannah, Georgia. My parents were the founders of the first Coptic Orthodox church in the city, having successfully gathered the handful of local Copts in 2002– an effort to ground these immigrant families in the Deep South, a place far-removed from the clusters of diaspora in other states, like New York and New Jersey, or bustling, diverse urban hubs of the Deep South, like Atlanta. Lacking both the funds and a diocese that would be able to accommodate such a small congregation, our resolve was nevertheless strengthened; our tiny community’s thirst for our ancient faith enabled us to conduct liturgy, once a month, in the corners of an Episcopal church.
My brother and I, along with two other boys, were the only Coptic youth in the entire city. For that reason, my childhood in this cobblestoned town was punctured by an acute awareness of my identity. It is an existence that, from what I’ve long encountered, many Copts in the West simply cannot relate to, oftentimes growing up insulated by nearby Coptic churches that were a dime a dozen and the simple knowledge that Teta and Gedo lived just down the street.
To clarify, my naming this divergence in experience is not an admonition. Growing up, I was jealous of other Copts, and in many ways, I still am. This seeming “disconnect” from other Copts was, and is, both a blessing and a curse. It was a curse because I was forced to grapple with who I was more often than not. I’d visit family up north without a lick of Arabic on my tongue, baffled as my relatives casually mentioned names I could never imagine hearing on the streets back home, much less in the classroom. And yet, it was a blessing because I was constrained– not by the natural bend of the diasporic bubble, but instead by the constant knowledge that I was neither black nor white, neither Catholic nor Protestant, neither here nor there, but instead somewhere in between– and without– my own people. It left me with no choice but to embrace the unfamiliar, the foreign, and to mold a community made up of people that were anything but me.
So I navigated and explained my existence to those who would listen in this quaint coastal city. I had to make my own space, and I do not regret it. There was power in crafting language that could effectively describe my identity to the communities I was grafted onto. That intercommunal exchange of history, resistance, and struggle enabled me to further develop my inquiries about state violence and discrimination. Indeed, this blessing magnified my capacity as a double minority to recognize the atrocity that was Troy Davis’ unjust execution by the state.
Troy was a black man from Savannah accused of killing a law enforcement agent in 1989. The cruel (in)justice system chained him to death row for 19 years, setting three different execution dates before finally ending his life in 2011. The lack of any physical evidence tying him to the crime and the eventual retractions and/or amendments of seven out of the nine testimonies that contributed to his initial conviction underscored the reality that was the structural violence daily committed against black and brown bodies in this country. Human rights organizations around the world called it a “catastrophic failure.”
I remember the uproar in my hometown. I remember seeing reports of “vandals” memorializing Troy at the entrance of the high school I attended my freshman year, Sol C. Johnson. I remember it all. And I haven’t forgotten. Nor have I forgotten the lack of Coptic interest in Troy’s murder. At the time, it didn’t cross my mind. Besides, why should Copts have cared? We weren’t beholden to the interests of other minority groups. At least, that’s the falsehood I had internalized.
Three weeks after Troy’s execution, the Maspero Massacre occurred. Some 26 Copts were killed by the Egyptian army after protesting against the destruction of a church in Upper Egypt. I remember the haunting silence of the people around me. But why should others have cared? They weren’t beholden to the interests of Copts, after all. It was us and only us for ourselves. Right?
Wrong.
Over the years that have since passed, I’ve become increasingly aware of what Nadia Marzouki describes as the “appropriation” of Southwest Asian/North Afrikan (SWANA, an alternative to Middle Eastern) Christianity by conservative politicians in America, and it is in the context of my upbringing that I bear witness to the status of Copts as “prisoners of highly polarized political scenes.” That is, we are often both tokenized by the right “for the purposes of bigoted political agendas” while the left engages in dismissal and invalidation of our suffering. When far-right officials like Senator Ted Cruz, who champion themselves “allies” of persecuted Christians, go on to derail conferences dedicated to our struggles by declaring “if you do not stand with Israel…then I will not stand with you,” how are we to respond? When self-proclaimed activists tell me that the Palm Sunday Bombings were an attack “on all Egyptians” and that my commentary on sectarianism is a “severely reductive exaggeration,” what do I do? How do we address this dangerous binary of cooptation and ignorance?
Today, nearly eight years after Troy’s murder, I recognize the power that young diaspora Copts, as a generation acculturated to political life and struggle outside of Egypt, can wield on their own. Organizations such as Coptic Voice and Eshhad are a testament to that. Although we are not of this world, we are instructed to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” That transformation enables us to bear the Fruit of the Spirit rather than neglecting justice, mercy, and faith– the same hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees for which they were condemned by Christ.
I often meditate on the life of Mother Maria of Paris, or Mother Maria Skobtsova, an Orthodox nun whose resistance against Nazi fascism saw her martyred in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Before her death, she wrote the following:
“We should make every effort to ensure that each of our initiatives is the common work of all those who stand in need of it…the way of God lies through love of people. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked.”
Now, I see things I did not see before as I continue to meet other Copts who live out their faith, practicing solidarity with other oppressed peoples and acting for justice wherever it is needed.
I see that the tanks that crushed the bodies of my people in 2011 were subsidized by my own government. This same government deployed a hyper militarized police force, armed with combat gear and tear gas, to the streets of Ferguson and St. Louis as black communities mobilized to declare that their lives matter.
I see that just as author Mary Fawzy so eloquently stated, Coptic persecution cannot, and should not, be divorced from solidarity with Palestinians struggling against Zionist settler-colonialism.
I see that we cannot demand reparations and redress for our own people in Minya and Beni Suef while denying reparations and redress for black communities in America.
I see that my own silence is complicity elsewhere, and I hope you do too.
“Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees,
Who write misfortune,
Which they have prescribed
To rob the needy of justice,
And to take what is right from the poor of My people,
That widows may be their prey,
And that they may rob the fatherless.
What will you do in the day of punishment,
And in the desolation which will come from afar?
To whom will you flee for help?
And where will you leave your glory?”
– Isaiah 10:1-3
Raphael Eissa is a Coptic activist and writer raised in Savannah, Georgia. He graduated from the University of Georgia with degrees in Political Science and International Affairs. Raphael has conducted research on state violations of physical integrity rights for the Sub-National Analysis of Repression Project, and volunteers with Eshhad: Center for the Protection of Minorities to aggregate and collate sectarian incidents throughout Egypt. As a passionate community organizer, he advocates for the causes of oppressed peoples around the world, supporting the black struggle, Coptic human rights, Palestinian liberation, recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and more. He currently works with Deep Center, a youth justice and arts education non-profit, and is a member of the National Students for Justice in Palestine Steering Committee.
