MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD MIXES BITTER WITH THE SWEET
Gabrielle Glaser
The Oregonian
Sunday, September 09, 2007
L ucette Lagnado’s luminous memoir, "The Man in the White Sharkskin
Suit: My Family’s Exodus From Old Cairo to the New World," begins in
wartime Cairo, outside a sun-drenched cafe where a girl of 20 enjoys
a coffee — and the attentions of a much-older man-about-town who
favors dressing in a white sharkskin suit. The two, Edith and Leon,
would marry in the Sephardic Jewish community in which they grew up
and eventually become the author’s parents.
Lagnado, an investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has a
national reputation for covering the struggles of the poor, the elderly
and the uninsured within the health care system. Her compassion for
the voiceless and the forgotten is little wonder: In this memoir,
Lagnado traces the lives and disintegrating world of her parents,
an urbane Cairo where roses perfumed the air and wealthy residents
conversed in French, Greek, Dutch, English, Italian and Armenian.
Among Leon’s consorts: King Farouk I and British Army officers,
who called him "The Captain."
Lagnado spares nothing in the retelling, portraying her father, 55 when
she was born, in all his complexities: his gambling, his womanizing,
his mysterious business practices, his deep love of his family and
his devotion to Judaism. Poor, shy Edith, young enough to be Leon’s
daughter, is bullied by his domineering family into staying in her
unhappy marriage. Tension was rife: Zarifa, the author’s grandmother,
found Edith, trained as a librarian, a poor housekeeper — a verdict
"like a death sentence" in a community where such skills were
paramount.
Zarifa’s love unfurled each day in magical, curative cooking —
aromatic chickens stuffed with apricots or olives; okra-and-lamb stews;
meatballs with sour cherries.
Meanwhile, a real death sentence looms for Egyptian Jews. Leon’s
sister, her husband and children, who lived in Italy, died
at Auschwitz. After the war, most of Cairo’s Jews emigrated to
Israel. King Farouk abdicated, and Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized
Egyptian industry. Leon hangs on, with his little princess Lucette,
known as Loulou, his constant companion. But finally doors close even
for Leon, and the family prepares to leave in 1963. "Ragaouna Masr,"
Leon cries as Alexandria’s harbor drifts out of sight.
The family lights in Paris and eventually sails to New York, at odds in
a cold new universe shared by so many immigrants from sunny climes. The
Lagnados shiver, their thin coats useless against the winter chill. The
Captain of Cairo limps along New York streets, selling ties to put
food on the table. His Egyptian princess is at his side.
When Lagnado is diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease — in Egypt,
doctors thought the symptoms were cat-scratch fever — she finds
care at Manhattan’s temple of science, Memorial Sloan-Kettering,
with a kindly patrician doctor educated at Yale. Leon and Edith hold
fast to faith, summoning an ancient rabbi said to possess special
powers. As his youngest child undergoes radiation, Leon feeds her
olives. Like the other round fruits Zarifa tucked into her meats,
the olives were life-giving: the only morsels Lagnado could keep down.
The family, though, is shattered. By the late 1980s, the four children
have scattered. Edith suffers multiple strokes, her knowledge of
literature all but erased. Leon, afflicted with Alzheimer’s and
Parkinson’s, eventually succumbs.
But for us, Leon’s youngest daughter keeps him, and his beloved Cairo,
alive, young and vital, in this tender and captivating memoir.