What My Uncles’ Suicides Taught Me

My mother sobbed behind a locked door in a far, dark corner of our Mojave Desert home one fall afternoon.

“Mom!” I yelled, my dainty knuckles banging on her bedroom door till they hurt. “What’s going on?”

At 7 years old, I knew this was uncharacteristic behavior even for my sometimes moody mother.

“Leave me alone,” I heard her say between sobs as I jiggled the doorknob.

My mother had just gotten a phone call.

When she finally emerged after what seemed like hours—her hazel eyes puffy and somber— she revealed that her favorite brother had died. Her handsome younger sibling, the one she likened to a young Kirk Douglas, was 33.

My uncle Victor had shot himself in a Chicago hotel room.

It took me decades to piece together some of the details of my uncle’s life and death from my Egyptian-Jewish family. Victor was a smart, confident youth in Cairo who enjoyed teasing my mother by locking her in the bathroom, sneaking out with her to the cinema to watch Westerns, and dreaming of a better life in America.

My mother and uncle were among seven siblings of their large, religious family headed by their hard-working father, a jeweler and amateur cantor, and his wife. My mother managed to leave Egypt with her older brother—and her father’s blessing—when she was 21 years old. With the rise of then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s fiery brand of Arab nationalism, Cairo had lost much of its cosmopolitan flair. Its Jewish population, along with my mother’s prospects for finding a nice Jewish husband, were dwindling by the day.

Victor had pleaded to join his siblings, but my grandfather urged him to stay in the country a while longer. He adored Victor and didn’t know when he and my grandmother would be able to see him again.

Victor yielded to his father’s wishes and days before he was due to leave Egypt, he was ensnared by the ugly tentacles of war.

The first time my uncle tried to kill himself was after Egyptian authorities detained him during Israel’s Six Day War in 1967 with Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. He, along with other Jewish men in Egypt up to age 65, were held in prison camps for at least two years. While told their detention was for their own protection, they were clearly viewed as enemies and potential collaborators with Israel.

Though lesser known, this dark chapter in Egyptian history was not unlike the shameful detention of Japanese-Americans in the Western United States during World War II. In both cases, residents and citizens were singled out and held captive because their ethnicity or religion presumably linked them to an “enemy” country.

The Jews in Egypt who were rounded up during the Six Day War talked of being crammed into rooms so tightly that they had to sleep head to toe. They included store clerks, entrepreneurs and college students. They spoke of being forced to crawl around on their elbows and knees over sand until they bled. They recalled prison leaders who openly admired Hitler’s murderous Nazi regime and threatened their detainees with a similar fate. Perhaps the uncertainty and fear would drive anyone mad.

After my uncle was released from detention in his early 20s, the scars of his internal struggle evident on his left wrist, he immigrated to America but was never the same. He was noticeably withdrawn around family and struggled to hold down a job in the Land of Opportunity, the same land he had dreamed about living in since he was a young boy.

The more I learned about my family, the more I wondered how much my uncle’s suicide in 1980 was a result of his horrible and unjust circumstances. Was he an overlooked casualty of Arab nationalism or the intractable Arab-Israeli conflict, or did mental illness lurk in our family?

I eventually learned that my uncle wasn’t the only one in our large family to suffer from persecution in his native Cairo or from his own troubled mind.

Another of my mother’s relatives was placed on psychiatric medication before he died of natural causes in his 40s. He, too, had been the target of antisemitism, once beaten severely on the streets of Cairo.

And a few years ago, after a boisterous Passover Seder at my parents’ home where we feasted on lamb, stuffed grape leaves and almond macaroons, a cousin revealed another suicide in the family. My mom’s uncle Albert, who reportedly had a gambling problem, swallowed poison—something akin to Clorox or Drano—to end his life in Cairo. He immediately regretted his decision.

“He went to his brother, a doctor, and asked him to reverse the poison,” our cousin said.  “His brother tried to reverse it but then he died in his arms.”

Albert, who died at the age of 20, before my mother was born, never met his unborn child. His son was born the next month and died tragically at the age of 2,. I don’t know much about his life beyond these sparse details. But the year was 1933 and Egypt was still reeling from the Great Depression. He may have been a victim of circumstance more than anything else.

For my part, I recall sitting in my seventh-grade science class as a brace-faced and nerdy pre-teen in Barstow feeling so awkward and such intense hatred for myself that I wanted to die. I didn’t even know why.

That scene made sense when I was diagnosed with ADHD around my 40th birthday, something that’s more recognizable today and harder to identify in females.

The first time I walked into an ADHD support group in a Sherman Oaks Denny’s, I felt as if I had just landed on a different planet—one that was clearly my own. As we took turns sharing and celebrating our wins for the week over greasy burgers, towering ice cream shakes and crispy fries under the guidance of a petite, firebrand therapist known as “Dr. B,” I knew that I had found more than a support group. I had found a family.

Through the ups and downs in my life, I’ve had the luxury of going to therapists and life coaches and to dear friends with whom I could have raw and honest conversations. It pains me to know that my deceased relatives did not have that same acceptance or support system.

Because May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m keenly aware that my uncles lived in a time, place and culture in which such challenges were rarely discussed. How did victims of persecution, addiction and circumstance cope in conservative and religious societies where mental health issues were largely taboo? Would my uncles still be alive today if they hadn’t been discriminated against as a religious minority? Would they be alive now if they had been born into a different culture or at a time when mental health care was less stigmatized?

The idea that mental illness afflicts only a small fraction of people or families is a myth. Almost half of U.S. adults—46 percent—will experience a mental disorder during their lifetime, according to a 2005 study in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Every country struggles with its own brand of injustice that can negatively impact mental health. In the U.S., racism, social injustices and other forms of discrimination might push someone who is struggling—or just anyone—over the edge. While my parents are immigrants from Egypt, I have fair skin and hazel eyes and have avoided some of the discrimination that others cannot avoid. But I am acutely aware of the psychological and physiological tolls that social inequities can take on people.

By sharing their stories, I hope to honor my uncle, Victor, and my great uncle, Albert. I also acknowledge their persecution and their pain.

When I look at old black-and-white photos of my handsome Uncle Victor and my striking Uncle Albert, I can’t help but wonder how all our lives might have been different if only their circumstances had been different.

If I could speak to my late uncles now, I would tell them this: I’m so sorry you went through what you did. I’m so sorry that we couldn’t help you when you needed it the most.

Most of all, I promise you this: I will not be silent. I will use my voice to help shatter oppressive and harmful stereotypes, stigmas, and taboos that exist even in 21^st-century America. Because both silence and stigma can be deadly.

And if my own pain ever becomes so intense that I may want to die, I will remember you and reach out for help. And when I sense that pain in others, I will do what I can to get them the help they need. Not simply because I can, but because you, in your final moments, could not.

Note: If you need emotional support or are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Brenda Gazzar is a Southern California-based freelance writer working on a memoir about her stints studying and working in the Middle East to better understand her Egyptian-Jewish family.