These days, when incense smoke rises at St. Mina Coptic Orthodox Church, it carries with it prayers of thanks from Nashville's Egyptian community, who lost furniture and carpets to the flood instead of lives.
The Egyptian Christians live quietly, often gathering at the same places, a group persecuted in their Muslim-dominated homeland and granted asylum in the United States. In Middle Tennessee, they've grown from about 100 in the early 1990s to about 4,000 people today. One small Coptic church grew to four.
Many local volunteers and charitable groups learned about them earlier this month, when about 60 Egyptian families were flooded out of a single apartment complex off Murfreesboro Pike earlier this month.
Some arrived through a U.S. State Department visa lottery — 50,000 visas are set aside annually for people in countries with low immigration to the U.S. More than 4,000 Egyptians applied for those last year.
Some also apply for religious asylum. Copts are 5 percent to 15 percent of Egypt's population, and the U.S. recognizes they face subtle and overt discrimination in their homeland.
Once they get permission to come, Catholic Charities and other international nonprofits help settle them in Nashville and other cities. Some settled up north move to Tennessee for jobs with Gaylord Opryland and at the Tyson chicken processing plant in Shelbyville.
'A better future here'
Abdel Malak applied for the U.S. visa lottery even though winning would mean giving up his family-owned convenience store in Cairo.
He could not point to one incident that made up his mind to move — Malak just had the idea that any life in the U.S. would be better than a middle-class one in Egypt. He moved his wife and two children to Nashville 18 months ago.
Here, Malak carpools for nearly two hours to a Tyson plant in Shelbyville, working the night shift stacking chicken racks.
"Back in Egypt, I was the manager. Here, it's different," he said in Arabic, with his 17-year-old son, Bishoy, translating. "I felt there was a better future here."
rofessor Juan Campo, an expert on Coptic Christianity at University of California Santa Barbara, said the Coptic community calls itself one of the earliest Christians, tracing back to St. Mark, the patron saint of their church.
Saints and miracles are important to them, he said. It's visible at a St. Mina service in South Nashville. Members stand before paintings of their favorite saints, lighting candles and saying a quiet prayer. On the underside of their right wrist, many bear a tiny cross tattoo, applied after they're baptized.
Samer Salib is one who wears the sign proudly. Salib, whose last name means "cross," is a 20-year-old who arrived nearly three years ago with his family. At his suburban Cairo school, Salib said, Muslim teachers often ignored the Christian students, refusing to call on them in class and barring them from extracurricular activities. In more rural areas, Coptic Christians faced beatings and death.
In Nashville, he translates for other Egyptians and helped organized one of the first Coptic Boy Scout troops.
When his home phone rang last week, Salib's mother answered and called for him.
"It must be a call in English,'' he explained quietly.
He was instrumental in helping families in the flooded Millwood Manor Apartments in South Nashville understand how they could get help.
So was the Rev. Boutros Boutros of St. Mina, who translated for the newcomers who just lost their apartments and jobs in one swoop.
"They call me whenever something happens, and the church is here to help," he said. "There are a lot of families with just months and in some cases weeks in the country."
Three weeks after the flood, the Millwood apartment complex still shows signs of the damage. Moldy sofas and mattresses sit outside near jam-packed Dumpsters.
In the evening, Egyptian children sometimes run to greet the police cruisers that circle the complex, collecting candy from the officers inside.
The complex is, some of the Egyptians say, their first step before getting assimilated to life in the U.S.
"It's the first stage for us here,'' Salib said. "It's our first stop. Then, we leave and go on to better things."
By Chris Echegaray • THE TENNESSEAN • May 25, 2010
