America's Oldest (and Newest) Christians

...This boy was equally the picture of robust health...

...mmediately following which, there was food and unsegregated socializing downstairs in the noisy Virgin Mary Hall...

...They shouldn't have to compete with Moslems for regular visas under the Egyptian.quota...

...The mental wrench of leaving Egypt was more distressing for Dr...

...Here were all the dark-skinned men sitting on one side of the aisle, all the dark-skinned women on the other, the gilded icons and murals of the Apostles, of the Last Supper, of the blonde, blue-eyed Madonna and her blue-eyed Child, of St...

...Mina's shrine, west of Alexandria near where Montgomery stopped Rommel, cures leprosy and other skin ailments...

...Father Mina may have said that they are proud of their heritage and love to learn about it, but now more than a few were trying to escape St...

...As is the older Dr...

...No, at bottom it's of course an economic one...

...For seventeen years Edward's brother, who needed a shave on this holy day, served in the Egyptian army...

...Failing the discovery of a monstrous oil field, he didn't see Egypt making economic headway, meaning that the squeeze on his people would continue and the sheikhs might even take power somehow...

...Here was the jovial, childless Father Mina in his white-and-gold hood and vestments at the altar, chanting the tremendously old prayers in Arabic, backed up by the young deacon Magdi and the acolytes...

...Edward nibbled an Egyptian sweet while heaping praise on America...

...It's well known, the jolly father had said in the library upstairs a few days previously, that the dust from the ruins of St...

...Clearly victims of religious persecution, those wanting to leave Egypt and having no relatives in Brooklyn, L.A., or Pompano Beach ought to be admitted to the U.S...

...Yet there were also signs for anybody in the know that St...

...The eight-year-old he called over and lovingly presented was stocky, the picture of health...

...Above all, here were the kids, kids underfoot, everywhere kids, kids being the only thing besides history, wit, and misery Egypt has plenty of...

...He knows, having some Moslem acquaintances...

...Would it spell the end of the Copts in Egypt if they did...

...Yet if there is anything the hospitable and talkative Father Mina relishes discussing as much as the lives and miraculous works of the martyrs, it's his people's attachment to their homeland through thick and thin-5,000 years old, persecuted for the last 2,000 years, the Copts only started forming their diaspora after Gamal Abdel Nasser's revolution in 1952, and only really started leaving in droves around 1968...

...All this from the tall, dark, unsmiling, clean-shaven young man in his white robe and red sash now attending the beatific Father Mina as many of the worshippers, divided by gender, lined up to take communion...

...a decade, was there with his family, and his ex–Egyptian army officer brother, here a few months, was there with his...

...Unlike Father Mina, he warns about the Moslems who are coming to the U.S., which he says they hate, and who take cynical advantage of American hospitality and liberty to foment a totalitarian revolution in Egypt...

...But following this, you'd hardly see in any jail the radiant mothers of those infants previously baptized parading up and down with their newborns as other women who have never heard of Gloria Steinem ululated with joy and menfolk squinted into camcorders...

...as refugees, asylum seekers...

...George's and appreciate that this is a nation of extensive civil rights, where defendants are to be considered innocent until proven otherwise, the worst criminals have the right to the best defense, and even foreigners who sneak in have the right to an entire series of hearings and appeals stretching for years before deportation...

...He too emigrated because he felt discriminated against, and had to confess that he had a hard time containing himself when Sheikh Rahman was given endless time on CNN and elsewhere to spread his cunning poison...

...On the other hand, no one disputes that the number of Copts in Egypt is large, at least equal to the number of Jews in Israel, and that converted and purpose-built churches bearing the stubby double cross have been sprouting across North America lately—there's even a desert monastery halfway between L.A...

...Chronically harassed by the Moslems, they were also maltreated by the blue-eyed Crusaders...

...Meanwhile, the terror and incitement to terror continue...

...Yes, he says "Moslems," not "fundamentalists" or "some Moslems...

...He wasn't sure—it was late in the day, maybe too late...

...Graduated from medical school in Cairo in 1970, he had to spend the next five years in the army, "a waste...

...These are prime human rights violations that the press and government of Dr...

...George spearing a writhing green dragon...

...Mark converting the Copts...

...His Coptic identity conspired with the general impossibility of making an honest, decent living in Egypt to force his emigration...

...Is this a jail...

...Like Father Mina, he's full of stories about the ongoing miracles of long-dead saints and Coptic popes...

...For another thing, Father Mina every so often switched the chanting into accented but definite English...

...Edward, in the U.S...

...Are Americans just stupid, is it a question of international politics, or does secret money passing through hidden channels explain it...

...In other words, Edward's brother was vividly homesick and wished to believe that it will be possible for him to return...

...Guirguis agreed, for Copts to be given preference by the Immigration and Naturalization Service...

...And he remains bitter and pessimistic about Egypt, the land of the previous 1,500-plus generations of Copts...

...What Mubarak should have done ten years ago, according to the bright-eyed young deacon with his tales of miracles, was to kill 10,000 of what are called in America the fundamentalists...

...It's unlikely, for the same reason that Clinton wouldn't mention the Copts in his news conference with Mubarak—to do so would embarrass a crucial ally at a dicey time...

...The brothers disagree on the inevitability of an Islamic republic in languid Egypt...

...George's is brand new...

...Maybe in jail you could have a priest circulating and handing out unused portions of communion bread among the congregation, and having his ring kissed, as Father Mina was now doing...

...Youssef's adopted Country are supposed to be dedicated to exposing and stopping...

...Sheikh Rahman's admirers went around Egypt torching churches and murdering Copts pretty much with impunity well before President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime gets more than $2 billion annually from the U.S., pulled out the stops last year and sent in the army...

...Yes, Coptic priests are encouraged to marry—"It's better that way, don't youthink...

...hat the revolution is coming with a high degree T of probability the two Coptic doctors were agreed...

...Edward ceases heaping praise on America when it comes to the sheikh being allowed to slip into this country despite being listed as a bad guy, or the Egyptian alleged killer of Rabbi Meir Kahane being sentenced on a lesser charge, or the suspects in the World Trade Center affair being represented by excellent Jewish legal talent...

...The present rules effectively trap the Christians of the Nile in the land which has been theirs since history began to be written, but which the doctors agreed is probably on the verge of an Islamic revolution, one that will take a fearful toll on the non-Moslems at hand before it burns itself out in bigotry and failure...

...For example, there were the warm coats racked in the vestibule...

...It was time, Dr...

...Ezzat Youssef, a pin-striped oncologist...

...The fact is that Americans are very naive and altogether too nice, and it may well be too late in Egypt—the same themes would be sounded by board members Dr...

...The sheikhs tell the masses that they're wretched because Mubarak flouts the Koran, but in fact there's too little arable land, no natural resources, private enterprise is smothered by corruption and bureaucracy, the Moslems have too many babies, and furthermore the country mortgaged its future by warring against "the Jews" for thirty years...

...He'll stay...

...And then he went right on to explain that middle-class Coptic parents realized that in a new, post-colonial Egypt, where Islam was in the constitution as the state religion and pan-Arabism all the rage, their children would suffer from a very thick, quite low glass ceiling...

...and Las Vegas...

...Youssef said, and Dr...

...There were infants who had just been baptized, and little girls in snow-white dresses with superbly intelligent chocolate-brown eyes who joined their fidgety older and younger brothers in nagging their loving parents for greenbacks to stuff into the poor box...

...Why were they so respectful...

...Father Mina smiled his nonstop smile...

...Because he didn't, Mubarak now will have to kill many more, and even this may not work...

...A young woman teacher with the cross tattooed on the inside of her wrist—something you see a lot of in Egypt, especially in the countryside where Copts raise pigs and make wine had posted herself at the door...

...They agree, however, that these are very old Christians who have always tended to get incoming and going...

...The so-called economy of Egypt is such a black hole and the regime has proved itself so helpless to cope with it, that an Islamic republic, which has never yet been tried in that relatively easygoing, civilized land, seems increasingly worth trying, and not to the masses alone...

...The two jobs that Dr...

...So Father Mina, who earned a degree in engineering before heeding the call, let himself be drawn out...

...This is Archie Bunker country, home to cops and firemen, studded with pizza joints...

...That's what the Copts in Egypt face every day...

...Only those Egyptians who can show a close relative already here may hope to come now—the rest, unless they're prepared to sneak in, must wait in the pipeline for years...

...Is this a religious problem...

...We have had faith in the Lord for twenty centuries...

...Hence the Copts whom Father Mina and his wife found living in New York in 1972, when he was sent to minister to them, had emigrated to give themselves and especially their kids a fair chance, and not because of actual Moslem violence, which lay in the past and the future...

...administration is likely to order the INS to put Copts on its refugee list...

...Both of these population figures are certainly inflated...

...It came only after tourists and policemen began to be killed and the regime feared for its only hard-currency earner, not to mention its survival...

...And so the country of his birth, his childhood, his young manhood, and his sweetest and bitterest memories, seems destined for a period of misrule by men who consider his people fair game...

...No, Father Mina and his wife, who holds a master's degree in nursing and a Ph.D...

...Mark, they have had to put up with discrimination in the best of times, pillage and massacre and martyrdom in the worst...

...You know the World Trade Center...

...Asked what the chances are that the rank-and-file soldiers, uncomplicated Moslems, would mutiny, he shook his head...

...Father Mina is glad to tell you that his people are well acquainted with trouble—in fact, ever since their conversion from sun-worship by St...

...Will the U.S.-backed regime be able to squelch the militant Islamic clerics and their bright-eyed followers...

...George's isn't really in the Old Country...

...Were he not a Copt, he could have won an appointment at a government hospital, obviating the need to finance a private practice...

...Why, look at what the American doctors had done for his son, born prematurely weighing just two pounds...

...his disapproving amazement T was voiced also by Doctors Guirguis and Youssef...

...They will do as they are told...

...Today he has not one but two offices in Brooklyn, is prosperous enough to sit on the church board...

...She was making sure no one got out, no matter how creative his or her excuse...

...An outsider didn't have the heart to tell Drs...

...oung Magdi, the deacon of St...

...No, it certainly wasn't a jail...

...Why didn't they ask him about the burning of churches, the murders of Copts done with his encouragement...

...She had insisted, in vain, that she had to leave for just a minute to place an urgent phone call...

...asked a teenaged girl...

...Also, if centuries and millennia of usage mark the churches and monasteries of Egypt, it being hard to build or even repair a church or synagogue in a Moslem country, the interior of St...

...The father had worn his weekday black robes and a puffy black turban and silver cross and had stressed that the Copts are the original, the only true Egyptians...

...To which Edward's brother, the Egyptian patriot, responded by saying that America doesn't have a monopoly on such miracles...

...The Copts are still too few in America, and have been here too briefly, to be able to lobby for the interests of their helpless brethren against what the men and women of Foggy Bottom naturally advise Warren Christopher and the White House is the national interest...

...Nevertheless, Dr...

...the backyards, plaster B ut the subtlest and best sign that this church is in the U.S., not in Cairo or Alexandria or Assuit, was the relative absence of worry on the faces of adults like Edward or even of his lately arrived, very homesick brother with the five o'clock shadow...

...The sheikh made fools out of his ignorant and much-toorespectful interviewers...

...Father Mina's namesake was martyred by the Romans before Constantine had that dream...

...If on his arrival there were only four Coptic churches in North America, now there are seventy-five, leading him to estimate that while there are nine million Copts remaining in Egypt, the diaspora contains a million...

...Few of the English-speaking teenagers born in this country or brought here as infants took 'communion...

...Worse than impotent, the regime is seen as rotten, inefficient, irresponsible, in a word uncaring...

...His own son, born prematurely in Egypt, had been cared for by Egyptian doctors, and look at him now...

...A state of siege won't help...

...Indeed, said Father Mina, who revisits the Vatican-like headquarters of the church in Alexandria regularly, the crackdown, the state of siege that Amnesty International complains of, has nothing to do with protecting the Copts...

...Fayez Guirguis, an obstetrician-gynecologist who immigrated in 1981, was hopeful that the World Trade Center bomb would open American eyes somewhat to the fact that the militants are waging an international offensive and are not just after the Egyptian government or the Copts...

...George's, however, and it's as if you were in neither Brooklyn nor Italy but Egypt.,Here were the positive clouds of incense associated with the Eastern branches of Christianity...

...Here were the candles...

...He said he hoped that Clinton would bring them up when he welcomed Mubarak in a few days...

...E ven more Copts would be moving to America, Father Mina said, if they didn't have to compete for visas with both sensible and fundamentalist Egyptian Moslems...

...Educated men, in some measure sophisticated, keeping tales of miracles to themselves if indeed they believe them at all, they sit on the board of St...

...Because he's supposed to be a man of God...

...Many, by no means all...

...There are worshippers and faithful socializers who come by subway—we are speaking of the Bay Ridge neighborhood in deepest Brooklyn—and there are those who drive over, parking up and down the neat, Italian-American streets with their tomato vines in saints on the lawn, and at least one decal on a storm window telling the world, "I'm NRA and I vote...

...But they agree that the indulgence shown by the American authorities and system towards Sheikh Rahman and his Brooklyn and Jersey City cohorts is amazing...

...The Copts in the land where their church was born, where it never gets truly cold, and where until very recently all of them lived are going through a difficult time...

...Asked what the fate of the peace treaty with Israel would be if the bearded ones take over, he said over the din, "Straight into the garbage can...

...Yet plenty of Moslem doctors have also turned their backs on the mess and despair of their native land and made their way to America...

...Guirguis than the American paper chase with a naturalized brother already here, an immigrant's visa wasn't hard to get...

...He says Americans don't know the Moslems like the Copts do, an echo of Father Mina's remark that only the Copts and the Jews from the Arab countries really know what Islam is...

...Granted, the European and American historians are dubious about St...

...Now that there's peace with Israel and the bill has come due, the Christians suffer the most because they're not quite as poor and they're the minority...

...His naturalized brother, on whose invitation he, his wife, and their kids were accorded visas, was complacent...

...The freedom, safety, rationality, size, expertise, generosity, and tolerance of this country made it the only one where he could now imagine living—the fact that he knew of fellow Copts in Brooklyn who had been mugged or whose apartments or businesses had been burglarized worried him very little...

...So they, like the Maronites of Lebanon and at the end of the day the Bosnian Moslems, and unlike the Israelis with their still-potent lobby and reputed nuclear stockpile, must be ranked as minor players at best by the practitioners of liberal Realpolitik...

...George's before the end of services and the beginning of Sunday school...

...They aren't Arabs, and would not abandon Christianity for Islam when the Arabs burst out of the desert and conquered the banks of the Nile some thirteen centuries ago...

...Nor would you be likely to see a kid in Egypt wearing a satinized Mets jacket or another with his trousers held up by Bart Simpson suspenders...

...When it's put to Magdi that he is making a great and perhaps unfair generalization, that surely most Moslem newcomers in this country mind their own business just as he does, he says yes, maybe, but even they curse America among themselves and were pleased about the World Trade Center bombing...

...George's, came from Alexandria by himself last year, quitting engineering school, because he saw little future for himself in Egypt—he hopes to finish his studies and settle here...

...I'm a religious man, not a politician," the priest begged off when asked what finally kindled this exodus...

...These churches serve a diaspora swollen by the violent turn of events in Egypt, where Islamic groupings like the one inspired long-distance by Sheikh Rahman of Jersey City are out to make a theocratic state on the Iranian or Sudanese model...

...Enter St...

...in hospital administration, have no children...

...Guirguis and Dr...

...He has American-born kids...

...With the same jolly, indeed delightful smile, he said that everything in the New World is all right, however...

...Youssef...

...Then he took his specialty training, also in Cairo, and finally got married, but couldn't afford to set up a practice...

...The state-censored TV allows the sheikhs to tell viewers that Christians are infidels, that their property and blood are forfeit...

...Youssef and Guirguis that unless the insurgents depose Mubarak, and start officially and in an organized way doing to the Copts what Khomeini did to the Iranian Jews, Zoroastrians, and Bahais, no U.S...

...Youssef believes must be done before Egypt can hope for anything—halving the birthrate and teaching the masses to read and write—are quite beyond this government, as they were beyond those preceding it...

...It's no exaggeration to say that Father Mina's homeland is today in a state of siege...