It was 1951 when Victor Cadranel was attending a masked ball at the Athénée Royale in Élizabetheville, Zaire. Now known as Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2,500 Jews chose to make the Congo their home, bringing their Ottoman culture to the heart of Africa. To prepare for the masked ball, Victor’s mother Esther sent him the traditional Ottoman dress, and of course, the fez. Without a doubt, Sephardic Jews who migrated from the Ottoman Empire, took the Ottoman culture, ...
