Franco-Egyptian writer Robert Solé left Egypt at the age of 18 for France in order to study journalism.
The Jewish and French communities in Egypt no longer felt welcome at that time, in the 1950s, and Solé felt the urge to turn the page and leave the country.
Speaking in Cairo last week, Solé said he went on to find fulfilment in his early passion for writing, later joining the prestigious French newspaper Le Monde.
Twenty years later, the writer decided to return to Egypt, to revisit what he described as "a beautiful childhood," in Cairo's Heliopolis, which he said had begun to haunt him.
This drive created a need in the writer for a new kind of writing, one that didn't depend completely on facts and stories that he can't control, as in journalism, he needed another type of writing, where his imagination can be free.
"I wanted to write pages and pages about Egypt, about myself and those who are like me," said Solé. "I looked into the archives and met a family that looked like mine, and wrote their story in Le Tarbouche," he explained.
That novel was published in1992, and Solé has gone on to write six novels since then, as well as the non-fiction The Egypt Lover’s Dictionary.
Solé came to Egypt last week to launch his latest novel, Hotel Mahrajane, at the French Institute in Cairo, and to speak about his experience with different kinds of writing.
Hotel Mahrajane
"Although this is my sixth novel, I consider it the first, for two reasons; the first is that I started writing its first pages at the age of 19 and never finished it or came back to it until 15 years later.
"The second reason is that all of my other novels were about Egypt, where I mixed fiction with facts and reality, but in this one I let my imagination work free from any facts or realities; it is pure fiction," Solé said.
"The city where the hotel is located is called Nari. Don't look for it on the map,” warned Solé, who said the setting of his novel was a mixture of Heliopolis and Alexandria.
The protagonist of Solé's novel is a young man who dreams of entering the private beach of a hotel that overlooks the ocean. The novel takes place for the most part between 1956 and 1970, although there are some later events.
Expulsion of Jews and French
For 20 years Solé didn't want to come back to Egypt, not wanting to besmirch the memories of his treasured childhood.
"It was so good and I didn't want to remember it. Heliopolis was a small city in the middle of the desert. It was different than it is now. I was 10 in 1956, when the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt began, but that wasn't what affected me."
What affected Solé more than the expulsion of the Jews was that of many French living in Egypt at the time.
"I studied at a French Lycee school and all the teachers were expelled. Expelling the Jews was a tragedy to a lot of people who suffered it. Some people didn't know where to go. But for me, I suddenly didn't find my teachers at school."
The Jewish community, according to Solé, owned most of the big shops in Egypt but not all were wealthy; the Jewish community included people of all classes.
2011 revolution and its aftermath
Egyptians love conspiracy theories, and are keen to explain political events as the result of conspiracies, Solé asserted while discussing the 2011 revolution.
"The whole world followed what happened in Egypt, unlike any other revolution, because of Tahrir Square, where all the television channels were based," he said.
"People in Egypt say there is a conspiracy, but we don't work this way, our media don't work this way, we write and say what we see; we don't meet and agree to write bad stuff about Egypt," Solé said.
But the media loves simple things, he argued. For instance, the Western media didn't want to see the bad things about the revolution.
"The media in the West reported the burning of churches in 2013 and broadcast the /images of the millions who took to the streets, but what happened in Rabaa Square changed everything," Solé argued.
The experienced journalist said that comparing Egypt to a European country isn’t possible and the comparison was not a fair one. "The French police make mistakes but we don't torture people in police stations. I don't think we can compare Egypt to France or any other country."
Speaking about the current situation, Solé said he sees two key problems – the lack of security and the struggling economy.
"It is unfortunate that there are no tourists and I feel like everything is being done to keep them out of Egypt and to remind them not to come to Egypt," he said.
"The kids in Egypt are happy and this is the power that Egypt has and should be reinforced, but religion has more presence in public life here than it should," he also commented. "Religiosity is good but we have to have critical thinking."
France's integration problem
One audience member drew parallels between Solé's experience as an immigrant to France six decades ago, and the experience of the second and third generation Arab immigrants to the country who have been in the spotlight in the light of the recent attacks in Paris.
"I'm a first generation immigrant; my culture was French and it was my first language in Egypt too, and for this reason it wasn't hard for me to integrate into French society,” he said, saying that he hadn't suffered from any xenophobia.
"I can't compare myself to those who are living in the suburbs, who are having a hard time integrating into French society," he said.
"I'm an immigrant but they were born and raised there, some of them couldn't completely integrate and they went for jihad, but there are millions of Muslims and people from Arab origins who do live and are able to integrate."
"Not every person there who fails to integrate carries a Kalashnikov; only a few were brainwashed and went to Syria, and we have to look at the reasons for that," he concluded.
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