KOMING 2 KALEE-4-NEEEyA
- James Smith
- Temple
- EGYPT, April-20-1980
- 20
Hence forth, the story begins with my mother and father coming to California from Egypt in 1980 to escape religious oppression. They came here because my mom’s uncle lives here, in Los Angeles, and has been for a while since he came from Canada. They figured he could help show them around and give them a hand until they get the feel for things on their own. They paid $200 a month to stay with him in one extra bedroom he had in the house.
They left Egypt to escape the discriminating Muslims that were terrorizing the country and bringing hate and violence to the lives of the Christians like my parents. The racism, or shall I say “religionism”, made it impossible to get a decent job and make a living as a Christian citizen of Egypt. They had no legal papers, no money and no friends except for my mom’s uncle Maher.... they were lost cases. They had tourist visas that they had to renew every month for $100; which was just more money out of their pockets that they had to spend rather than invest towards a house of their own… making their mission that much harder.
My dad got his first job as a dairy product deliveryman working 18 hours day illegally under the management of the truck driver who drove the truck. He would carry the heavy crates to the doors while the truck driver stayed in the cool truck... so my dad was doing the tough part of that guy’s job while making not even a quarter of the pay. He worked 18-hour days at a rate of 15 dollars a day, which is a little less than a dollar an hour. During this time my mom had gone back to Egypt to save my dad money since she couldn’t find work. My dads work schedule upgraded a bit as it had to do for him to get by and he began delivering newspapers and working at the gas station at the same time. He was working 20 hours a day with only 4 hours to sleep and eat in between.
After a year of waking up at 4 am and sleeping at 11pm we fast forward a bit and my dad is working at a huge assembly factory mixing chemicals compounds to form certain plastics for air filters, it smelled and it was tedious work but it had to be done. My mom came down working at a burger stand (Bob's Big Boy) finally, intrigued, after seeing how much money the restaurant business can bring they decided to open up a restaurant serving Mexican food. It was my moms “genius” idea and after about a year and half they realized that their business was horrible, and it was costing more in maintenance than it was bringing in profits. They ended up having to sell the business and losing money; their restaurant was open for only two years and it hadn’t done much but waste time, money and effort.
Finally a break in 1985, my parent’s neighbors had told my father about his company (Avery Dennison) and how it was looking for employees. he applied and got the job after lying and saying he was previously a quality assurance (QA) associate. He had a very strong knowledge of chemistry from college and he knew a lot about horticulture as well. He got the job and after working several much tougher jobs, this was a breeze for him. He worked about half as hard as he used to and the manager of the company was very impressed with his work ethic and determination to GET THE JOB DONE!!! He continued committing good deeds and slowly began getting promoted from QA to senior QA analyst… the top dog of his field. After being layed-off and transferring to another division to do the same thing... that company ALSO began laying off employees for lack of funds. They fired as many as 70 workers in one day to “save money”. The workers were all doing their job right, but there were not enough customers that wanted to buy their products. After a serious case of bad luck he then became an agricultural inspector aid testing and inspecting imported plants and foods to see if they were certified and legal, and also to prevent the spread of diseases, bacteria and other pests.