The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit

by Lucette Lagnado

  My mother would manage a valiant smile and blithely insist that her daughter, only twenty years old, was too busy going to college and minding her studies. None of the women believed her.

  And so we fled a congregation where we had found neither love nor friendship. My mom took me by the hand one Saturday morning, and we walked past Dad’s synagogue and didn’t stop until we arrived at another house of worship called the Shield of Young David. It was slightly more diverse; while worshippers were also from the Levant, there were Turks, Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, even Mexicans, in addition to the Egyptian and Syrian Jews.

  It was also roomier, with an airy women’s section whose graceful filigreed wooden partition made it possible to follow the entire service without straining. Taking her place in the first row, with me at her side, my mom sat down and never looked back. She began to make friends with the women around her. Her closest friend, a Moroccan immigrant she called Madame Marie, had a daughter, Celia, who was slightly older than me. Mom and Madame Marie confided to each other their angst about raising daughters in America.

  Edith in the backyard at Sixty-sixth Street, Brooklyn, our first real home outside of Egypt.

  I followed Mom’s lead. My best friends were Diana, a Syrian girl, and two sisters Grace and Rebecca whose parents were Turkish and Mexican. I looked up to Diana’s older sister, a pretty, sedate teenager named Marlene, with dark hair and dark eyes, who bore an aching resemblance to my own sister. I felt at home behind the partition, and at ease with these girls in a way that I never did at school.

  My mother never set foot in Dad’s synagogue again. The two prayed apart as they ate apart and slept apart and lived lives apart, except when it came to worrying about “pauvre Loulou,” and then they behaved like the most intimate married couple, so that I felt as if my maladies and crises were what kept us together as a family.

  I BECAME PART OF a bold experiment in our expatriate community: I was going to Hebrew school. The ancient language had long been an exclusively male domain, and the move marked a dramatic break with the past, an embrace of modernity and America’s egalitarian ways. Historically, women like my mom would sit in the synagogues of Cairo and Aleppo listening to prayers they could neither read nor comprehend.

  Hebrew school was every night of the week except Friday and Saturday, including classes early Sunday morning. The primary goal was still to educate the boys, of course, as they would have their coming-of-age or bar mitzvah ceremonies within a few years. The boys sat in the front of the room, enjoying the lion’s share of attention from the rabbis. Girls meekly took their place in the back, several rows behind.

  It was more cynicism than enlightenment that prodded our elders to educate us in the same way they were teaching our brothers. America was such a seductive society, and from their perch in Brooklyn, the rabbis recognized they faced a formidable threat—greater even than the anti-Semitic outbursts the community had occasionally faced in the Middle East. Their strategy was to circle the wagons—pushing faith and religious observance for both sexes as the antidote to a secular life.

  My teacher was a kindly, avuncular rabbi whose name, Baruch Ben Haim, meant the Blessed Son of Life. He had a no-nonsense approach to teaching. Unlike most of his rabbinical colleagues, he tended to treat boys and girls equally and gave us almost—almost—the same amount of attention.

  He had devised a fearsome system to gauge our progress. At any given moment, he could call on us and ask us to begin reading from a random text. We were supposed to keep reading until we made a mistake; then he’d count the number of words and verses we had read without stumbling. The stars were the children who could read a sentence or two or more; the dunces stumbled after a couple of words.

  It was all terrifying. I worried that he’d assign a text I wouldn’t be able to read, and I’d become the laughingstock of my class. I turned to my old Arabic teacher for help, confiding in Dad my struggles with Hebrew. He listened quietly, then handed me his prized red prayer book and signaled to me to read.

  The Hebrew lesson had begun.

  I read a few words, haltingly at first, but when I saw he wasn’t stopping me, I gained more confidence and continued. If I made an error or had trouble pronouncing a word, he would interrupt and show me the proper way to say it. He did so mildly, with the infinite patience he had shown when, at his bedside in Cairo with Pouspous in tow, he had taught me to speak Arabic by having me feed the cat pieces of cheese.

  Every evening, when I came home from Hebrew school, I’d join my father for a lesson. He would choose a book at random, open it at a page that suited his fancy, and point to a line he wanted me to read. Sometimes he selected a hymn, and he and I would chant it out loud together, with me hastening to follow him. Dad had a surprisingly strong voice and could carry a tune, so he was able to teach me melodies he had learned as a child and had carried inside him for more than sixty years.

  With the constant practice, the black letters began to make sense. I felt completely at ease leafing through the ancient books that were lying around the house. I realized that I had a natural affinity for Hebrew—a facility that I didn’t enjoy with Arabic or English.

  My father had become so much more reclusive since coming to America, and I, at seven going on eight, had devised a way to penetrate his hard shell. It wasn’t by confronting him head-on, like Suzette, or defying him, as my brothers were doing. It wasn’t even by engaging in idle chitchat like the men at the Congregation of Love and Friendship. Rather, we grew closer when I became his prayer companion, like Rabbi Halfon and Elie Mosseri. By sitting next to him and sharing his passion for the words that danced and floated on the pages of these impossibly frayed books, I formed a bond with him that transcended both the words and the pages.

  Leon with his red prayer book, Brooklyn, 1965.

  The lessons paid off in ways neither of us could have predicted. At Hebrew school, the rabbi would call on me, expecting me to falter after a couple of minutes, only to find that I could now read page after page, prayer after prayer, fluently, without tripping, and could decipher even the most complicated passages.

  Dad chuckled when I told him of my progress. Then he pointed to a new text and asked me to read: the lessons had to continue exactly as before.

  I was a far more passionate disciple than my brothers. I would grow up chatty and extroverted and expansive, able to make friends in a heartbeat and conduct animated conversations with the most diverse figures, relating to them on the basis of a mutually shared interest in food or literature or movies, but I would never feel as close to anyone as I did to my father those evenings we sat quietly side by side, mouthing phrases in a mysterious language, from books whose yellowed pages crumbled in our hand as we turned them.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Ballad of the Tie Salesman

  In the summer, when I was home from school, I loved to accompany my father to work. It was a treat for me, since most of my friends were away at camp or on vacation with their families, and I was left to my own devices. Mom was also relieved: she knew how restless I was in hot, deserted Bensonhurst, and was at a loss as to how to keep me busy and entertained when she barely had money for the household. “Pauvre Loulou,” she would sigh, what I needed were des vacances, she’d declare. But her idea of the perfect vacation—an upscale sleep-away camp in the Swiss Alps—like so many of her notions for me, was fanciful and utterly unattainable.

  I was riveted by what my father did, so setting out with him to Manhattan was like going on holiday. It was hardly a conventional job, being a tie salesman. But it was the only work he could get—requiring little capital and no infrastructure of any kind save a large cardboard box in which to cart his merchandise.

  Dad had no boss and no regular hours, he drew no salary, and his “office” was the streets and subways of New York. That is where he would buttonhole prospective customers, opening the brown rectangular box that was overflowing with dazzling ties of every hue.

  They all bore elegan
t labels that said “100% Silk” and “Made in France” or “Made in Italy.” Strangers would pause, taken by his charm and the beauty of some of his merchandise. And perhaps they were also moved by the sight of this tall, dignified old man trying to earn a living in the streets and train stations of New York City.

  I’d see him heading for the door with the flat box that was the centerpiece of his business. He dressed neatly, donning even on the hottest days a jacket and tie, along with a jaunty straw hat. In addition to the box, he would carry a large yellow manila envelope that served as his briefcase. It contained small swatches of fabric that were central to his newest line of work.

  Unable to earn enough as a tie salesman, Dad was now trying to branch out into textiles, a field that he knew well from Egypt. I wasn’t exactly sure what he did with those pretty squares of silk and cotton that he stuffed in the manila envelope, though I always eyed them longingly, imagining how lovely they’d look on my dolls. I was always hopeful he would offer me one or two pieces of fabric.

  Dad would signal to me to join him, and together we’d walk, ever so slowly, to the subway station on Twentieth Avenue, two blocks or so from our house. It was after the morning rush hour, so the station was almost deserted, only a few stragglers here and there making the commute to Manhattan. As we waited for the train, he’d try to spot prospective customers. They were mostly men he would approach, and he reached out to them so politely and deferentially, using only the mildest of sales pitches.

  “Monsieur,” he’d say, lightly tapping them on the shoulder. With a rustle of suspense, he would lift the lid off the brown box to reveal dozens and dozens of ties, in an impressive array of prints and colors. There were bold ties, made of satiny red or blue fabric, and ties with classical Ivy League stripes, ties with whimsical paisley prints and ties that were sober and severe.

  “These cravats are one hundred percent silk,” he assured a potential customer, deliberately using the French word for tie. “They are all imported from Paris and Rome.”

  With a smile, he offered to make them a good price—a discount—if they purchased more than one. Occasionally, a sale was consummated then and there, on a bench at the Twentieth Avenue station in Bensonhurst, as we awaited the N train to Manhattan. More often than not, though, the stranger looked but didn’t buy, and my father graciously put the ties back in the box, closed it shut, and, without revealing a hint of impatience or weariness, tucked it back under his arm. Together we boarded the subway, choosing two seats together, and settled in for the long ride into Manhattan.

  Eager to make myself useful, I eyed the passengers sitting near us, eager to spot potential customers. I’d whisper and point to a well-dressed gentleman looking idly our way, or to a couple who seemed friendly and were smiling. Some welcomed the diversion, and willingly took a look at Dad’s treasure trove. But other riders were cold and wary or self-absorbed, and refused even to acknowledge us.

  The first stop was Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, a nerve center of the textile industry that was filled with fabric stores.

  One morning that my mother had gratefully turned me over to Dad’s care, relieved to have a day to herself, I noticed that my father was looking me up and down. He was clearly displeased. He disapproved of the dress I was wearing that morning, a simple cotton frock fished out of a bargain-store bin. It had cost only a couple of dollars, but I liked it because it was light and jaunty and, to my eyes, a becoming shade of yellow. Discount stores flourished all around our neighborhood, and they were a favorite destination for my mom, who was grateful for places where she could actually afford to shop.

  My father was visibly perturbed. “Loulou, est-ce que c’est ta seule robe?” he asked; Is this your only dress? He knew that I had other clothes. What he meant was: Why had I worn such a cheap, poorly made outfit to accompany him? I knew the drill. From the time I’d started going with him to the Nile Hilton, when I was little more than a toddler, he had taught me to always look my best when it came to work and seeing des clients.

  Still, I felt sheepish and confused, taken aback by his anger. My mother was always complaining about money, how little she had to spend on me, and she encouraged me to hunt for bargains. Yet there was my father, clearly embarrassed by my appearance.

  Though he was an old man in an inexpensive seersucker jacket and straw hat, in his mind he was still the boulevardier he once had been, when money was no object and he could afford to dress himself and his young daughter in the finest Cairo had to offer.

  By the time we stepped off the train, my father was no longer scouting customers to buy ties; he was focusing on his second line of work. The area around Canal Street was lined with textile stores. Although the main garment district was uptown, the stores here did a brisk business in “remnants”—cheaper, discounted fabrics that were often leftovers.

  I was still feeling self-conscious in my yellow dress when we entered our first shop. I managed a smile, determined to be on my best eight-and-a-half-year-old behavior, and listened carefully as my father made his sales pitch. He pulled out a swatch of shiny brocades from the bulging yellow envelope and handed them over to the owner.

  “Monsieur, I can get these for you at two dollars a yard,” he assured him.

  “How much will you want?” the owner asked as he fingered the small squares of fabric glistening with strands of gold and silver thread.

  My father acted nonchalant, as if he were prepared to do the merchant a favor with the sale. He wanted almost nothing for himself, he suggested—at most a minimal fee to oversee the transaction and as compensation for his troubles. “A couple of pennies, monsieur,” my father said with a smile. “Two or two and a half cents a foot.”

  How can you divide a penny in half? I wondered. But I forced myself to stay silent.

  The owner kept studying the brocade samples, holding them up to the light. He nodded hesitantly, unwilling to commit himself. “Let me think about it,” he finally told my father, who took the fabric squares back and placed them back in the envelope.

  We walked out in the July heat, and ambled down Canal Street to a store a couple of doors away. The routine began all over again, with another swatch. Then we journeyed to another, and then another after that. There were stores that specialized in cottons, and others that sold fine lace to be used for curtains or doilies or even wedding dresses, and one establishment that featured bolts of fake fur, only fur. We walked in, and my father reached into his magic yellow envelope and pulled out samples of leopard prints and black-and-white zebra stripes.

  I prayed that this particular deal wouldn’t go through, not out of disloyalty to Dad, but because I longed to use the samples to make fur coats for my dolls.

  At last, we reached a vast store that seemed more upscale than its neighbors, whose sign said it specialized in silk. The owner greeted my father warmly, all the while peering curiously at me. “This is Loulou,” my father said by way of introduction, “my granddaughter.”

  The owner, more amiable than the other men I’d encountered so far, softened and motioned to us to step inside his office. On display were a raft of pictures of his children and grandchildren. “Loulou, your grandfather works so hard lugging his samples from store to store in this heat,” he said to me.

  I nodded, unsure what to say. I was thoroughly bewildered. Had my father made a mistake in English? Didn’t he mean to say that I was his daughter?

  My father proceeded to retrieve some samples from the seemingly bottomless manila envelope. They were incredibly soft to the touch, in the vivid colors that were all the rage in the summer of 1965—hot pink, lemon yellow, lime green, electric orange. As I weighed my options, trying to decide whether or not to speak up, a deal was consummated—the first of our long, hot day. We walked out hand in hand, with the owner enjoining me to take good care of “Grandpa.”

  “Loulou, you should tell your grandfather to retire, a man his age is too old to be walking around on a day like this,” the owner added. I nodded aga
in, not daring to say a word.

  My father, clearly buoyed, announced it was time for us to dine. He loved food, and unlike Mom, who was so self-denying she would eat nothing more than the crust of the slice of pizza she would buy me, Leon had held on to some of his more freewheeling ways. He was fond of café fare, and tried to find it in a city of coffee shops and diners that served mediocre dishes in charmless surroundings.

  How far away he felt from La Parisiana or the other elegant brasseries with their vast terraces overlooking the Nile that had been his favorite haunts. They were illuminated by strings of colorful lanterns, and as the sun set, the lanterns began to emit a soft glow that was reflected in the water, so that the river seemed to be a thousand colors at once. Sipping a mug of ice-cold beer while staring at the Nile, Leon would at last order dinner. It was always poisson grillé, his favorite dish, and he could sit there for hours, staring at the lights and nibbling the delicately grilled whole whitefish.

  We searched for a coffee shop where we could rest. We never took taxis in New York, even on days like this when the sun was beating down on us, and the temperature crossed the 90-degree mark, and the pavements around Canal Street seemed to melt under our feet, and my father’s step became much more labored. We simply walked and walked, until we reached a large cafeteria, delighted to be able to enter an air-conditioned palace with cushy booths.

  My father made it clear that because of my hard work, I could order whatever I wanted from the menu. I settled on a chocolate egg cream, tall and chilled and bubbly from the spritz of soda water. He ordered a treat for himself as well, a strawberry milk shake. He had a passion for strawberry milk shakes, which struck me as a very wonderful dish for an old man to love—all pink and white, ice cream and froth. Because I decided his beverage was tastier than mine, because I always wanted what he had, he kept passing me his tall pink glass and letting me take sip after sip from a straw.