Port Said

I have a deeply personal post I need to write, but it won't make sense without the context. So I'm going to break it up into multiple parts. They might seem disconnected to begin with.

This is part two. Part one is here.

On the 22nd of September, 1949, Ronaldo Fabri got on a boat, leaving behind a country on the brink of revolution.

Egypt in 1949 was a country with a long history and fresh wounds. The second World War had ended just four years earlier. One year ago, Egypt and her allies had lost an all-out war against Israel in a humiliating defeat. The Muslim Brotherhood had grown into a powerful political force. Anti-British sentiment was surging.

By this time, Egypt had undergone many waves of colonisation. The native people of Egypt, the Copts, had been ruled by invaders from Meshwesh, Nubia, Persia, Greece, Rome, Arabia, Turkey, and Britain. Now, it seemed, the Arab colonisers wanted Egypt back.

But Ron wasn't thinking about any of that as he watched the busy streets of Cairo drift into the distance. It was a perfect day– 74° and clear, open skies.¹ Sunlight reflected off the Mediterranean, interrupted by the fishing dive of a Caspian Tern. The warm, salty air was filled with the splash of oars, circling gulls, and the huffs of the Arab man hired to row their small wooden boat. Ron was with his father, and their luggage was weighing them worryingly down. They had just said a final goodbye to the wooden quay of Port Said, and the country they had called home for generations.

Ron had been born 17 years earlier, in Alexandria. It was a bustling, cosmopolitan port city, full of Greeks, Italians, French, Jews, Armenians, Syrians, British, and Arab Egyptians. The city’s architecture reflected this mix: grand Belle Époque mansions, colonial clubs, Ottoman villas, and dusty souks sat together along the boulevards. At home, Ron's family spoke their native Italian, and he went to a French school, where he learned to speak fluent English.

The small wooden launch carrying Ron and his father now bumped gently against the gangway ramp of the Continental, a grand passenger ship anchored offshore. The two men climbed aboard, leaving their luggage to be winched up after them. Three passenger decks and a huge smokestack towered above.²

Intellectually, Ron knew that it was far too dangerous to stay in Egypt. Arab sentiment towards Europeans and Jews had taken a sharp turn. Revolution seemed inevitable. Ron's mother had already departed for England with his older brother, Edwin. Ron had different plans. He was to seek work in the farthest corner of the world: Australia. Should things work out well, he would send word to the Italian consulate in London, where Edwin would regularly visit in hope of news from Down Under.

The Continental would arrive in Sydney one month later. Ron would be offered a job the moment he stepped off the boat. He would soon send word to Edwin. Eight years later the Fabri family was reunited. They settled in Melbourne.

In 1958, a year after his mother and brother's arrival in Australia, Ron would marry Giuseppina Di Stefano (Pina for short). They moved to a small house in Caulfield, and in 1960, welcomed their first child into the world. They wanted to name her Maria-Louisa, but the priest deemed that name too foreign, so they chose Marie-Louise Victoria Fabri instead.

Marie-Louise, or Marlou for short, is my mother.