Birds of Passage - Panther S. Author:Robert Sole For four decades, from 1916 to 1958, family gatherings at the Batrakani household are an excuse to gossip, eat molokhiya, and tell endless stories. Energetic and cosmopolitan, their family fate is entwined with that of their adopted land, Egypt, as it is caught in the upheavals of the twentieth century. Georges Bey Batrakani is the patriarch o... more »f this family of Greek Catholic, French-speaking Syrians, living in a Muslim Cairo run by the British. He is driven by the need to achieve the wealth necessary for the luxury he craves. His chosen method is to manufacture the tarboosh, or fez, worn by every member of the Egyptian establishment. As long as the tarboosh holds sway, the family flourishes. But in 1952, everything must change. Egyptians take the reins of power for the first time since the pharaohs, and the tarboosh becomes an anathema. The Batrakanis, birds of passage, their love affair with Egypt at an end, must move on to a new exile elsewhere.« less