The Arrogant Years

by Lucette Lagnado

  Mom seemed to fret a bit less on these holidays. Because there wasn’t much to do really in Ras el-Bar, my father tended to stay put and not go out night after night as was his wont in Cairo. For the duration of the vacation, he was the exemplary family man. Days were spent at the sandy beach, which my sister loved. Suzette was always upset when, come the late afternoon, the family packed up to go home. “Why can’t we stay,” she’d wail. It was a time when the family was—in its own way—happy.

  And then, the idyll was shattered.

  My father, who doted on my two brothers, was in the habit of giving Isaac candy in the evening—un bonbon—to help him fall asleep. It did, but late one night, after everyone had gone to bed, the family was woken up by my brother’s piercing screams. When Suzette turned on the light, she spotted the large rat and Isaac crying in a pool of his own blood. She, too, started screaming, and everyone realized that Isaac had been bitten by the rat, possibly one fond of Dad’s bonbons.

  The family packed up and raced back to Cairo, heading straight for the leading medical center, which had a special section for rabies. Kasr-el-Ainy Hospital followed the protocols of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. A century earlier, Louis Pasteur had discovered a vaccine for rabies, and his approach was still the model in this Middle Eastern city where hungry cats and dogs roamed even the most elegant streets, so that the disease—invariably fatal—was widespread. In cases such as my brother’s, where you had to assume the animal was rabid, treatment called for a series of painful intramuscular injections administered every day for forty days.

  The trips to Kasr-el-Ainy became a family affair. Everyone was traumatized and constantly reliving that awful night in Ras el-Bar—the rat, the blood, the sheer hysteria over what to do.

  My sister, who even as a little girl resented Dad, had her own perspective on the sordid affair: She blamed my father and his bonbons. To her mind, the rat had been lured by the piece of candy my brother was holding as he fell asleep. The events of that night in 1951 were played and replayed, analyzed and dissected, and Suzette’s disquieting take could never be proven or entirely dismissed.

  Mom would declare that the family—and Isaac in particular—had been given the mauvais oeil, the evil eye. That was how she understood that terrible night in Ras el-Bar when our entire summer holiday had been wrecked.

  The following year, it was my mother’s turn to be a victim. Shortly after giving birth to a baby girl we named Alexandra, Mom was diagnosed with typhoid fever. The disease that had killed Indji Cattaui nearly half a century earlier was still the scourge of Egypt. My mom’s fever raged and everyone around her gave up hope, especially when the baby caught the disease.

  But then a young doctor from L’Hôpital Israélite, the local Jewish hospital, arrived to pull off a miracle. Dr. Baroukh Kodsi was a Karaite Jew who was one of Cairo’s leading internists. He was especially adept at treating cases of typhoid and now, unlike the time of the pasha’s daughter, there was a powerful weapon at a doctor’s disposal—a drug named chloromycetin that was remarkably effective.

  Mom survived; my baby sister did not.

  It was the Curse of Alexandra, everybody said, being visited on a second generation. It had claimed yet another victim—a newborn infant who’d had the misfortune to be given my grandmother’s name and had lived on this earth barely a week.

  Bad luck comes in three, my parents believed: Jamais deux sans trois—never two without three. Edith, still weak from the typhoid and her loss, wondered what lay in store for all of us, what new calamity would strike the family.

  In 1952, seismic changes were taking place all around us, which only intensified Mom’s angst.

  The year had begun in a terrifying fashion, with mobs setting fires across the city, destroying British Cairo and European Cairo and Jewish Cairo.

  The demonstrators had targeted not simply foreign clubs and hotels but Jewish-owned department stores. They had unleashed their rage on Shepheard’s, beautiful, elegant, Shepheard’s. It burned to the ground, that quintessential symbol of empire—the exquisite terrace, the two bars, the lavish lobby, the tea salon where on that heady afternoon nearly a decade earlier, my father had declared his love for my mother and announced their engagement.

  Then, months after the fires, in July 1952, the military staged a coup against Farouk, forcing him to abdicate, and seized control.

  To the Egyptians who had chafed under the king and resented the rampant corruption, the revolution was a time of hope and renewal. But to Jewish families like mine, those days and weeks following his overthrow were terrifying—the tanks in the streets, the army everywhere in sight, the nagging, terrifying question: Who will watch over us now?

  The king, for all his flaws, had been the Jews’ friend and protector, much like his father, Fouad.

  Life in Egypt felt very tenuous. At home on Malaka Nazli Street, my parents wondered what to do. Both Mom and Dad had a fiercely Egyptian identity—my father, born in Syria, had lived in Cairo since he was an infant; my mom was a Cairene through and through. Neither could even imagine living elsewhere.

  Most devastating for Mom was her younger brother Félix’s decision to move to Israel. The two were close—their traumatic upbringing, marked by an absent, derelict father and a mother who was there but not there—had taught them to hold on to each other, to depend on each other. As for Alexandra, who was lonelier than ever in the little room where she resided by herself, she had lived for his visits. What would she do without her charming and unreliable son?

  My uncle’s mind was made up; as with so many Jews of Egypt in those turbulent years, Félix felt the future was elsewhere.

  Still, there were some hopeful signs. General Muhammad Naguib, who was installed as Egypt’s president after the revolution, seemed anxious to reassure the Jewish community. The military had a reputation of harboring anti-Semites, but Naguib was mild mannered, courtly, a gentleman as well as a moderate—who felt it was important to cement ties with key constituencies. In a widely publicized visit to the Gates of Heaven, he paid a call on the chief rabbi of Egypt, Rabbi Nahum, and the two men were photographed beaming as if they were the dearest of friends. Then, the general went to L’Hôpital Israélite, another stop in his bid to reassure the Jews of Egypt. As he toured the wards, he chatted with young Dr. Kodsi and other Jewish physicians. Naguib was trying hard to show that the new regime was as loyal to its Jewish population as the monarchy had been.

  As events swirled around them, my parents were anxious and distracted, not their usual vigilant selves.

  Nobody noticed when Suzette and César retreated to Dad’s room one morning to play their favorite game, pretending his bed was a trampoline. It was one of those tall old-fashioned metal beds with springs, and it was possible to jump up and down, bouncing ever closer to the ceiling. My sister would jump, and then César would try to beat her by jumping even higher. The window was open; as they jumped they could see clear across Malaka Nazli Street. They had played this game a million times, and usually my father or mother or one of the maids were somewhere nearby keeping a watchful eye.

  Suddenly, without notice, César fell, hard, off the bed and landed on the wooden floor. He began to wail. My mother rushed in and found him all bruised; it was impossible to tell if his arm was broken or badly sprained. My father was summoned.

  “Chodi lel barsoumi,” Mom cried as our porter rushed to get a taxi—take him to the bonesetter.

  This was the way of Old Cairo where there were many medical practitioners without medical degrees, yet who were trusted implicitly. These included the pharmacists, who were learned and could readily dispense advice on common maladies; the midwives, who were taught by their mothers how to deliver a child and were often favored by women over obstetricians; and, of course, the barsoumis, the bonesetters. Revered by some as greater than traditional doctors, the barsoumis were ordinary Egyptians who practiced a kind of folk medicine. They had no education, no license, yet they were renowned for being skillful a
nd intuitive. Theirs was a secret craft; a boy learned it from his father, who learned it from his father, who learned it from his father. Their knowledge of human anatomy—of the bone structure in particular—had been passed on for generations. Although they lacked many of the tools of modern medicine, they knew how to deal with broken bones as well as any orthopedic surgeon.

  Some were true miracle workers; they cared for injured babies and the frail elderly and anyone in between.

  César went off with Mom and Dad to the Mouski, the shopping district in Old Cairo where the bonesetter practiced. There were always throngs of people hoping to see him—ordinary fellaheen went because he charged very little, but so did more affluent Jews and Coptic Christians, who could have afforded any specialist in the city. But somehow on this day, there were longer lines even than usual that extended outside. My family found the bonesetter in his favorite position—seated on the floor—wearing his usual loose white ghalabeya or caftan. Patients waited their turn, and when they were finally face-to-face, they addressed him reverentially as “Ya doctor.” Next to him stood his assistant—not a registered nurse but a little boy, probably his own son and apprentice bonesetter. The child would hand the barsoumi bandages or pieces of wood that he used as splints. The bandages and wood were the extent of his medical supplies, along with a mysterious cream he’d use as he rubbed and manipulated the afflicted area.

  When my brother stepped up to be treated, the bonesetter applied a small amount of the ointment to César’s arm. He examined it carefully, delicately, and then shook his head. It was broken in several places, he declared, and there was nothing he could do—my brother had to be taken immediately to the hospital.

  My father nodded and paid him his fee—a few coins, because the bonesetter was a humble man who wouldn’t dream of taking a lot of money. The barsoumis were men of integrity: If a problem was beyond their competence, they knew it and would urge you to go find a traditional physician. But out in the countryside, where there were often no doctors, they were lifesavers. The bonesetters typically attended to large swaths of Egyptian peasants with no access to modern medicine and who couldn’t pay for it in any event.

  My father put César in another taxi and off they went with Mom to L’Hôpital Israélite, the famed Jewish hospital that was close to our house. In addition to local doctors, the hospital had Coptic Christain doctors as well as many European physicians on staff, including German Jews who had fled Nazi Germany during the war and enjoyed wonderful reputations. But as with any medical establishment, it was the luck of the draw as to who treated you.

  The physician who examined my brother was not their most distinguished. He was rash and incompetent—thoroughly unlike the bonesetter who had been so thoughtful and reflective. He peered at my brother’s arm and immediately declared that the only solution was to amputate.

  Edith and César as a little boy shortly before his accident, Egypt, circa 1952.

  He wanted to surgically cut off the broken arm rather than even try to fix it.

  My brother began crying again—he understood perfectly well what the doctor was proposing. My dad, who had a knack for finding top specialists at the drop of a hat, had obtained the name of an orthopedist with an office downtown. My parents grabbed another taxi and, César seated in between them, they made their way to Emad-el-Din, the elegant commercial street near the stock market, where Cairo’s leading doctors maintained private practices.

  The specialist was reassuring. My brother’s case was certainly challenging—he had sustained a complex fracture—but the arm could still be repaired and there was no talk of amputation. He prepared a cast and asked my brother to come in every few days for different procedures. It was a nerve-racking series of encounters, and my mother—who remained oddly calm in these trying circumstances—would stand by as the doctor worked on my brother while Dad sat in the waiting room. When faced with a medical crisis involving their children, my parents tended to get along remarkably well. If any of my siblings were ill, Mom and Dad set aside their differences and came together. Yet in this case, Mom emerged as the stronger of the two. She was no longer the frightened, helpless creature that had defined her persona throughout the marriage, from the day my father had brought her home to Malaka Nazli Street.

  It was as if her old toughness—the strength of character she’d shown as a teacher and disciplinarian of the little boys of Cattaui and even the ruffians in Le Sebil—revealed itself in these trying periods. She showed more of what the French call sang-froid than my dad, who was fine about paying the bills, but could actually get teary when the going got rough. Edith—though weakened by her own malady and loss—kept her cool in the face of this medical crisis, which included staying with César during every step of his ordeal.

  Rabies, broken bones, typhoid fever, the loss of a king, the death of an infant—what next? My mother was on guard for a new catastrophe.

  There had been more than three strikes of bad luck, yet she could not rest easy, could never feel the worst was over. We, the children, were the center of her life—why she had stayed in the marriage—but she constantly feared we would be taken away from her. In that sense she was exactly like my grandmother Alexandra: convinced we were in danger and more vulnerable to the evil eye than other children. To her mind, Suzette, César, and Isaac had all the qualities that made them potential victims—they were brainy, beautiful, charming—but instead of simply taking pride in that as other mothers would, she decided that some malevolent force out there was lurking, ready to pounce.

  “On nous a donné le mauvais oeil,” she would say darkly. Someone has given the family the evil eye. While she was fine during a crisis, afterward she would grow anxious and moody and retreat into a universe of fear and superstition. She, too, was prone to having des crises de nerfs—tantrums, nervous outbursts.

  It didn’t help that she felt profoundly lonely—bereft of friends, lacking any support system except for my grandmother Alexandra, who could hardly give anyone support. With Oncle Félix gone, my mom had lost a companion and sounding board. Her younger brother was flawed, troubled, undependable—but deeply loveable and she missed him terribly. Now that he was hundreds of miles away, living in a country at war with Egypt, it was hard even to exchange letters. Alexandra came over to the house on Malaka Nazli more frequently, careful to time her visits to those periods Dad wasn’t around. The two didn’t like each other and my grandmother preferred to avoid him altogether. She would venture in timidly, sit on a corner of the sofa, and quietly sip her café turc. My mother and grandmother would speak of Félix, how lost they both felt without him.

  My father was always out and about—with clients during much of the day, at synagogue in the evening, and then off to his mysterious nightly pleasures, pleasures that didn’t include Mom, so she felt completely neglected.

  The two never went out as a couple, never saw friends together, never went to a restaurant or to the cinema except with the children.

  The truth was that they were so fundamentally different, she had no interest in what he considered pleasurable. Mom could never sit still for a hand of poker, and she preferred to stay home in the evening rather than going out as he did to sample Cairo’s ample nocturnal fare. As for Dad’s passion for dancing, once upon a time as a young girl my mother had enjoyed the waltz, but she wasn’t a dancer in her soul as he was. She was shy and bookish, and terribly retiring.

  Her girlhood arrogance, the sense of self that had made her such a striking and memorable figure as she walked the streets of Sakakini, was gone, replaced instead by the melancholy and self-effacement that had overtaken her since the early days of her marriage, when she’d first realized she had made a terrible mistake, and before the children arrived one after the other to keep her busy.

  Another woman, in another era, another culture, would have found some means of escape, some refuge, perhaps by confiding in friends, or going back to work. But Mom didn’t have any friends. And that golden period when she’d
been a teacher seemed so far away. She was only thirty years old, yet she looked back on her years at Cattaui as if they had been the high point of her life, and she assumed that her stint as a career woman was over.

  That wasn’t merely her depression taking over. A married woman in Egypt could not work. To be sure, even in 1950s Cairo, there were women who held jobs—the pretty salesgirls of Cicurel, the occasional teacher or secretary. But these tended to be young and single or else they were old maids—vielles filles—with nobody to support them. For a married woman to seek work was unthinkable, because it meant her husband could no longer take care of his family.

  And yet the world was changing. Suddenly, there were women—Jewish women—who were forced to find employment as their husbands grappled with financial ruin. After the revolution, an increasingly capricious military regime confiscated this business or that and asked companies to limit their number of Jewish workers. Men who had been prosperous found themselves penniless and unemployed. But how could their wives even hope to earn a living?

  They weren’t trained to do much, these Levantine ladies of leisure. Like my grandmother Alexandra, they never anticipated a day when they’d need to support themselves. But several did know how to sew, one of the few practical skills a girl from a good family was taught. The ability to use a sewing machine became a lifeline: In a country where there was little ready-to-wear, women could still find work as seamstresses—couturières. And that is how some families with homes and servants—but no income anymore—survived: The wives did piecework.

  A couple of years after the revolution, people wanted to believe life was returning to normal, that they could enjoy themselves again.

  There were small lulls, periods of apparent stability, then it would seem once again as if Egypt was on the verge of unraveling. A way of life marked by civility and stability became intensely uncivil. There were constant edicts and decrees and policy changes. Some were of epic proportions, such as the decision to redistribute land by limiting the number of acres owned by any one family; others were harsh and cruel—a 1954 law authorized the arrest and detention of anyone who threatened “public order and security,” which led to the arrest of leaders of the Jewish community. Others were simply madcap—renaming streets, eliminating all royal titles such as pasha and bey.