The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (14 page)

Pouspous looked at me anxiously, as I strained to remember.

“Gebnah,” I finally cried out. My father smiled, and the cat grabbed the cheese and polished it off, then stood at attention, waiting for a few more tasty Arabic lessons.

If Dad was in a particularly good mood, he'd decide we should all feast on sardines. That was a freebie, because the Arabic word for sardines was exactly the same as the French—
sardines.
But to make sure I'd get some learning under my belt, he taught me to say the word for fish, instead. “Samak,” I told Pouspous, holding up a tantalizing sardine, but not letting her have it.

I wanted her to learn the word, too. “Samak,” I repeated sternly.

The cat blinked, as though she found Arabic befuddling. My father comforted her by slipping her another sardine, no strings attached.

I would never have as gentle a teacher, or as creative. Though he was known for being tough and stern, he was neither to me as we sat side by side, day after day, and practiced random words and phrases—whatever came into his line of vision: the cars floating along Malaka Nazli, the lively alleyway by the side of our house, the pretty girls who walked by and smiled our way, and any and all attributes connected to my cat, from the shades of her varicolored fur to her abiding passion for hard, salty
gebnah.

It was all great sport for my brothers, who thought I was hopelessly inept and that my father was wasting his time. Arabic required a strong, guttural “h” sound. There were comical and even embarrassing results. The word for street is
harah,
pronounced with a harsh, emphatic “h.” I seemed only able to say
kharah,
which is Arabic for “crap.” I kept stumbling over the simplest words, the most basic sounds, and my brothers laughed and laughed.

My father emerged as my staunch defender, ordering them out of his room, then calmly resuming my Arabic lesson, with only Pouspous on hand.

“Mogrem,” he shouted after them, “Ibn'el Kalb.”

Those were two Arabic expressions I was delighted to memorize and say out loud. They meant: “Criminals, sons of dogs.”

“Loulou, non,” my father told me firmly and in French.

 

MY FATHER BEGAN AN
international campaign to obtain a second opinion about his condition, and then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. He sought out specialists everywhere from England to France to Italy to America. He sent out letters courteously requesting the expert medical advice of the world-renowned doctors.

The specialists he selected were nothing if not exotic. They included a British knight; the director of an orthopedic clinic in Milan; and the renowned head of a medical institute in Bologna. He also hoped to connect with American specialists, and sent several copies of the large, ancient radiographies to my cousin Edouard, who had left shortly after his son's bris, and was now settled in San Diego, along with his wife and child.

Sir Reginal Son-Jones of London reaffirmed my dad's faith in the English with his immediate and gracious reply. He said he would like to examine him personally, and invited him to come immediately to England where “I will do all I can to help you.” But he also noted his belief that surgery was inevitable: “Most certainly the nail will need to be removed.”

My father enlisted the help of his nephew Salomone, who was living in Milan. Salomone had left Cairo in 1949 and returned to Italy, where he undertook an obsessive search to chronicle his parents' and younger sister's final days. He married an American woman—also from a prominent Aleppo Jewish family—but insisted on taking her to Milan to live. Still conscious of his debt to Zarifa and Leon for the years on Malaka Nazli, Salomone had gotten into the habit of saying prayers every night in his room, invoking my father's name. He didn't blink at the rather quixotic nature of the request. If Oncle Leon wanted him to tote large X-rays and medical reports to different European specialists, that is what he would do. He willingly accepted the packages containing the translucent black-and-white images showing a hipbone, a thigh bone, and broken pieces of a nail, along with an accompanying medical report.

The verdict was the same everywhere: my father almost surely needed another operation to repair the damage left by the other surgery, and to take out the broken pin that was causing pain and adding to the risk of complications. Yet physicians across Europe were optimistic that he would likely recover and walk normally again.

My dad, still traumatized by the memory of the hammer pounding the nail into his hip, as well as the months of anguished convalescence that followed, could not be persuaded to take the step, not even by the likes of Sir Reginald Son-Jones, or the equally eminent Professor Antonio Poli of the Instituto Gaetano Pini of Milan, or even by the distinguished Professor Scaglietti of the Instituto Ortopedico Rizzoli of Bologna.

From his perch by the window at Malaka Nazli, Dad continued his campaign. He scratched out letters to more noted experts at ever more distant medical outposts, hoping for the eighth, ninth, or tenth opinion that would be more to his liking: one that did not insist on another operation.

But he never made plans—actual travel plans—to go see any of these renowned physicians. Though the exodus of the Jews of Egypt was continuing, and my father now had the greatest impetus of all to leave—the possibility of obtaining more effective medical care than was available in Cairo—he still couldn't find it in himself to abandon Egypt. Instead, in between his cries and his prayers, he hoped that both the pain in his leg and the equally painful need to move would somehow vanish.

In San Diego, my cousin Edouard felt haunted by my father's letter. He detected desperation, even hopelessness—two qualities he had never seen in my father as he watched him from afar, a tall, confident, dreamlike figure in white striding through the streets of Cairo.

L
oulou, éloigne-toi du balcon,” my mother was crying; Come away from the balcony. I was at my favorite perch, looking down at the alleyway by the side of our house, Pouspous in my arms. Mom couldn't understand my fascination. She'd much rather I sit with my father at the window in his room: Wasn't watching pretty Malaka Nazli more fun than staring at some little side street filled with dirty urchins and peddlers? she asked reprovingly.

My father tried gentle suasion, coaxing me to return for more snacks and Arabic lessons. I'd hear him call out, “Loulou, Loulou.” He, too, was sure that I'd prefer the more opulent street life of Malaka Nazli with its vast lanes of traffic and its constant flow of passersby.

I loved Malaka Nazli, but I enjoyed my alleyway even more.

Each morning, Pouspous and I watched as streams of merchants wandered by, pushing their wheelbarrows laden with fresh produce. They had been a fixture of our neighborhood since my grandmother Zarifa's day, hawking whatever they could pile into their carts—grapes,
figs, green beans, oranges, celery, okra, tomatoes, mountains of potatoes, or sweet luscious
mesh-mesh,
apricots.

The vendors were all impoverished Egyptian fellahin. The contents of their carts were literally their only capital, the few piasters they made off the sales of their fruits or produce their chief source of income.

And some couldn't even afford a wheelbarrow or a carriage. Instead, they carried their inventory in large straw baskets perched on their heads, and sang to announce their arrival and what they were selling. It could be
samak
—fresh fish from the Nile—or grape leaves,
wara enab,
neatly tied together in small green bunches, or parsley, or my favorite of all, scented white rose petals.

Watching them turned into an obsession: I wondered how they maneuvered so gracefully with such a fragile, unwieldy burden. I couldn't figure out how they prevented the petals from blowing in the breeze and scattering all over the street. The problem consumed me until I realized that they covered the petals with a large damp white cloth, both to retain their freshness and to keep them from spilling or fluttering away.

A bushel of the blossoms cost only a couple of pennies. There was an eager market for them among housewives who used them to make rose petal jam, a time-honored concoction as popular now as it had been in my grandmother's day, or when my aunts lived around us. Tante Rebekah was renowned for
la confiture de roses,
a light flavorful jelly prepared with a mixture of lemon and sugar and, of course, fresh rose petals. Tante Leila loved making
maward
—rose water—an absolutely essential ingredient for baking, which imbued any pastry or cookie with the aroma of the flower.

It was said that the best petals were sold only one month of the year, when they weren't even pink, when they were alabaster white.

In the season of the rose petals, the day began with the vendor wandering the streets, chanting “El ward, el ward, lel charigh ya ward”—Roses, roses to make rose water—in a loud, piercing voice designed to reach even those who lived on the top floor of a building.

If someone popped their head out of the window and signaled to the vendor, he'd trudge upstairs with his overflowing basket and his little scale. He wasn't selling the actual flowers, of course, only their petals.
At times, he offered the heads of the flower, minus the stems, leaves, and thorns, and they had to be taken apart at home, petal by delicate petal, to be distilled to their essence.

Once they'd made their sale, the rose petal vendors would vanish into the crowded alley. Yet long after they were gone, I still heard the echo of their chant,
“Elward, elward”;
Roses, roses.

Even when the roses were not in season, the alleyway still exerted its hold on me. My favorite spectacles were the ones I could watch unfolding from the balcony.

On any given day, Arab men in white flowing robes would set up ceremonial tents of one sort or another. Both weddings and funeral memorial services required elaborate preparations, and the alley below our house was a favorite setting for both. From the early morning, I'd watch the men setting up lamps and laying down large carpets. Pouspous was my steady companion. She knew instinctively that if she let me hold her, I would feed her little bits of her favorite foods—cheese, pieces of bread, any leftover chicken or sardines I could get my hands on from the kitchen—so she'd settle comfortably in my arms, on the wide balcony railing.

Together, the two of us would observe the goings-on, and I'd stroke her to keep her still. She seemed as riveted as I was by the activity below. Every couple of days or so, I'd watch, hypnotized, as groups of strange men set up a large tent, carted dozens of wooden folding chairs inside, and began to spread elaborate carpets on the ground.

Once a tent was up, it was a game for me to figure out what was taking place inside. If I heard music from an orchestra, or sounds of people clapping and women making the strange whooping sound known as
zaghlouta,
where they cluck their tongues and tap their hands across their mouth, I knew there was a joyful celebration under way, most likely a wedding or an engagement party.

But often, I'd see somber men trooping in and out and there was no music at all—only loud cries by the professional mourners with amber paint on their faces, which shattered the day and the night, and I knew that someone had died. Like black, amber was the color of death.

I wasn't allowed anywhere near a funeral, even that of a relative, let alone a stranger's. My parents put their foot down whenever there was
a memorial service under way and my mother would order me to come immediately away from the balcony. It was as if I had to be kept away from death at any cost.

One morning, new neighbors moved into the street-level apartment in the building directly across the alleyway. It was a young Muslim couple, newlyweds who seemed very much in love. The groom was rather ordinary, and sullen, but the bride instantly became my friend. She was very pretty, with long dark hair, dark eyes, and a merry smile. She'd open the shutters each day, stand on the balcony, and wave and point to Pouspous. I'd wave back and hold the cat up in my arms. Finally, after some weeks of gesturing and shouted conversations from across the alley, she motioned to me to come around and visit.

I ran to my father and told him about my new grown-up companion: Could we go call on her?

My father seemed amused. Yes, of course, he said; he'd noticed our new neighbor from his window and would be delighted to take me to see her.

That afternoon, Leon and I ventured out to a nearby florist. We walked slowly, because he was still unsure of himself. We purchased an immense bouquet of roses, crimson and in full bloom. My father allowed me to carry them to the woman's apartment and watched, smiling, as I handed her the flowers.

My neighbor seemed surprised, almost flustered, by the size of the bouquet.

“What is your name?” she asked, as she took the flowers. In all those weeks, shouting across the alley, we had never introduced ourselves.

“Loulou,” I replied.

It was the only word I had spoken in what had been, so far, a silent transaction. She told me she was moved that a child would give her such a lovely gift and invited us both to come in and sit in her living room. It was simply furnished, and much smaller than ours, but also modern, not weighed down with the ancient sofas and tables we had in our house.

Our neighbor was even prettier up close than she seemed from across the alleyway. Extremely slender, her hair flowing past her shoulders almost to her waist, she was constantly smiling and laughing, chatting mostly with my father in animated Arabic.

He was clearly beguiled.

I could always tell when my father approved of a woman, and he only approved of attractive women. He believed that beauty was the one quality essential to a woman—more important than wealth, social status, family background, and certainly education. He was adamant on this score. I could have asked him why he bothered to give me Arabic lessons and insisted I study.

Our hostess suddenly jumped up and began to dash about the house, in search of a vase large enough to accommodate all of our flowers. Much of the visit was spent watching her running in and out, darting from one room to another, her husband nowhere to be seen.

She seemed so agitated, and I assumed it was because of the roses: we had brought far too many. It didn't occur to me that my father had unnerved her. She kept eyeing the thick bouquet, holding it up against the small bud vases she had on hand, and putting it down again. At last, she decided she would divide the flowers among multiple containers. She enlisted my help as she searched for empty Coca-Cola bottles, pots, tall glasses—whatever she had lying around in the kitchen. She'd place a couple of stems in one container, four in the other, until all two dozen roses were finally steeped in water and on display, here and there, in different corners of the apartment.

In a trademark gesture of Egyptian hospitality, the young bride brought out a platter of pastries—
konafah,
a delicacy made of shredded wheat stuffed with walnuts, and
ghorayebah,
a soft, pale white cookie topped with a single green pistachio. She made a point of offering the desserts to me first before serving them to my father, in the same way that in the middle of their intense chat in Arabic, she would turn and try to engage me in the conversation, as if to underscore that I was her principal guest, the one who had, after all, brought roses.

When she had a child, she informed me, she would name her Loulou, after me. “Even if it is a boy, he'll still be called ‘Loulou.'” She laughed. “Then you will have someone to play with besides that cat,” my neighbor added with a wink.

A couple of months later, I heard a loud cry from the courtyard. I ran to the balcony. Somber old men began setting up a tent, spreading dark crimson rugs on the ground. I could hear wails throughout the day
and night; the professional mourners were out in full force. My mother commanded me to leave the window at once.

“Loulou,” she said sternly, “Éloigne-toi de la fenêtre tout de suite. Il n'y a rien à voir.” There was nothing to see, she repeated.

This time I obeyed her, and walked to the corner of the dining room, sat on the Persian rug, and began to cry out loud like the mourners. I cried and cried. Pouspous joined me, and in a supremely tender gesture that endeared her to me forever, she began to lick away my tears, her small tongue darting across my cheek.

It was my friend, the young bride, who had died. The shutters across the alleyway were never open again. I never understood what had happened, and no one in my family would tell me, neither my mother, who surely knew more than she was letting on, or my father, who had befriended her that day we'd brought her roses. Her passing emerged as one of the great mysteries of my childhood in Cairo and one that I could never stop mulling over, especially in the months that followed when I suddenly found myself struck by a bewildering malady of my own. My own brush with illness would make me obsess even more over the loss of my lovely companion. I yearned for her supremely reassuring presence, smiling and waving from across the alley.