I looked at my beaming hostess, and praised her sparkling and modern forty-year-old appliances.
And the bathroom, I wanted to know: Still no hot running water?
It was the son’s turn to chuckle. For years after we’d left, his family didn’t have hot water either. The two of us shared memories of childhood baths using an oblong metal container filled with boiling water our mothers would lug into the small bathroom. We’d fill a large mug with the water and splash it all over our head and body, simulating a hot shower.
“I’d cry out to my mother to heat more water because I kept running out,” the Engineer recalled, and with those words, I suddenly remembered my ritual Friday-night bath on Malaka Nazli and how safe and protected I felt in that cozy bathroom, with the steam rising from the aluminum container, and my mother scrubbing and scrubbing my hair with Savon Nabolsi, the large green medicinal soap, because shampoo was too luxurious an item to be squandered on a little girl, and how delighted I was when she tossed cup after cup of hot water over my head and back.
Some years ago, the Engineer told me, the landlord had installed hot running water on demand, and it was possible to take real showers now. But he didn’t look nearly as excited as he had moments earlier, when he’d recalled his little tantrums, his demands that his mother deliver continuous amounts of steamy water.
The master bedroom was tucked away in the back. It was the room my mother had briefly shared with my father after they wed, until he’d moved out and returned to his old digs, the airy room in the front facing Malaka Nazli, and his old ways.
Despite its many windows, the bedroom struck me as dark and dreary. It was where my mom had given birth to all of us, including Baby Alexandra. It was the only part of the house, the only part of Cairo, where I didn’t want to linger, which felt impossibly bleak.
At last, we came to my favorite room, the one overlooking the alleyway. It had once been Zarifa’s room, and years later, my father’s office. I’d loved to play there, amid the papers and files, or better yet, to stand on the balcony with Pouspous at my side, waving and chatting with my friend across the alley, the pretty bride.
It was also where the vendors would station themselves each morning, balancing baskets of fresh fish on their heads or pushing carts filled with the fruits and vegetables du jour—zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, potatoes, apricots, or my favorite, the dark purple baby eggplant. The balcony was so close to the ground that we could reach out and touch the baskets on their heads. I could point to what I wanted, help myself to bunches of grape leaves that my mother would stuff with ground meat and rice, and simmer in a lemony broth.
Who needed to go to the supermarket, anyway? Once upon a time, in Cairo, the supermarket had come to us.
I had loved the call of the vendors as they approached Malaka Nazli—shrill, intense, designed to make sure everyone heard them coming. Their high-pitched song had followed me all the way to America, much as the scent of the roses had pursued my father.
My mother had tried to pull me away from the balcony. She’d worry when there were funeral tents, and parades of mourners in the alley below: she didn’t want me to know death or sadness, no doubt trying to stave off the day when I would know both only too well. Yet I had rarely felt sad there, even when the mourners wept out loud. Only when my friend the young bride died, and I didn’t understand.
The Old Bride seemed troubled when I asked her about the apartment across the alleyway. When she’d first arrived, there was a man, a solitary figure who lived there. He was a military officer, often in his uniform, who occasionally made an appearance on the balcony. But he never smiled, or acknowledged her greetings with more than a curt and somber nod. He was a widower, she thought, and lonely, but no matter how she tried, he wouldn’t respond to her attempts at friendship. Perhaps he was only being proper, she decided. She was, after all, a newly married woman.
Then one day he moved out, suddenly and without any notice. The bad-luck apartment remained empty for years. Finally, after no one had moved in, an art-store owner took it over and made it part of his gleaming new gallery.
“Do you remember a cat, a small cat of many colors, very sweet and affectionate, who would have been here when you moved in?” I asked.
The Old Bride turned to her son, thoroughly bewildered. “Otah? Otah?” she said, repeating the Arabic word for cat to make sure she understood. She was such a kindly woman, deeply instinctive, and blessed with a good heart: Who else would have saved some forty-year-old bills for a black phone? It seemed entirely plausible to me that she would have taken Pouspous in, fed her cheese and sardines, exactly as my father had told me when we left.
But the woman kept asking, “Otah, otah?” She was incredulous; in her mind, the conversation had taken a very strange turn.
Here someone had come all the way from America, and she was inquiring about some long-forgotten cat.
The Old Bride shook her head decisively: No. There was no cat in the house when she’d moved in, a few weeks after we’d left Egypt. There had been only the white bed and the black phone.
I wandered over to my father’s old room. I suddenly felt like crying. I thought of all the stories I’d carried in my head these many years, stories he had told me after we had left, when I was feeling so forlorn—about Pouspous doing well, enjoying herself in the house we’d left behind, sunning herself on the balcony and inviting strangers to feed her. None of it had been true.
Both mother and son could tell I was distraught. I sat down as she hurried to serve me a cool drink from her modern refrigerator. Then she excused herself and left.
“You know, of course, what happens when a cat must lose its owner?” the Engineer asked me cryptically, in his labored English.
I shook my head, no.
“When a cat can no longer find its owner, it stops eating—it stops eating completely,” he explained. “It is as if they are in mourning. That is how they die,” he said gently. “They die after refusing to touch a single morsel.”
THERE WAS A NEIGHBOR upstairs that I should meet, the Old Bride told me when I returned the following day to Malaka Nazli.
She had lived in the building almost sixty years and had known everyone who had come and gone, including my parents; now, she was very anxious to meet me, but she was too aged and infirm to walk down even the lone flight of stairs. Would I mind going to the second floor to see her?
Reluctantly I left the apartment.
My apartment.
As I marched up the stairs, I noticed how dusty and broken down and neglected they were, the walls blackened and filthy, the floors looking as if they hadn’t been swept in years—perhaps in all the years since my family had left.
I’d played with Pouspous on this stairwell when it sparkled, chasing after her as she ran to hide in the thousand nooks and corners only she knew. I’d often had no choice but to enlist the aid of Abdo, our Sudanese porter, to find her. Abdo lived downstairs, in a dark, mysterious basement apartment directly below ours. He seemed always there when we needed him to hail a taxi for my father or run an errand for my mother, or help me hunt for Pouspous because he knew the secrets of the stairwell.
“Abdo, Abdo,” we’d call out, and he would materialize out of the darkness, smiling and gracious in his flowing white caftan, strangely dignified.
Abdo was long gone and had never been replaced. Now, like so much of Cairo, the building had been allowed to decay until little by little, it became dirty and unkempt and lost much of the elegance and grace that had prompted my father to move in with Zarifa and Salamone in the spring of 1938, and then bring his new bride, my mother, to live there five years later.
I knocked on the door and was greeted by a young woman in traditional Arab garb. She welcomed me into the apartment, which was a simulacrum of our place downstairs—the same open design, the same four bedrooms built around the central room, and off to the side, the narrow kitchen.
Her mother sat in a velvet armchair, a frail, regal figu
re with her hair swept under a white head covering. I went over to shake the old woman’s hand, but she quickly reached out to embrace me instead, her arms wrapping around me as she kissed both my cheeks, and brought me close to her chest. She looked as if she could barely stand without an effort, yet her gaze was focused and strong and not at all vague in the manner of the old.
I could feel her eyeing me closely, studying my eyes, my face and hair, examining my clothes and my shoes, as if trying to remember, to remember.
I sat on the sofa directly across from her. She kept looking at me, not saying a word, while her daughter kept up a light banter. Would I like a cold drink? A bit of dinner? There was some nice okra stew cooking in the oven: could she offer me a plate? Was I enjoying my visit to Cairo?
Suddenly, the old woman interrupted us and began to speak.
“You look exactly like your mother,” she declared in Arabic, for she knew no other language. “You are the same as her.”
She paused to take a sip from a glass of tea. “She was so little—very little—and your father was big, much too big.”
She recalled my mother as soft-spoken and delicate, and above all as someone who loved children. “She would always give candy and chocolates to my girls. Remember?” she said, turning to her daughter, who smiled and nodded, though it was by no means evident that her memory was as clear as the Old Bride’s.
Suddenly, I could see my mother, Edith, as a young housewife, fishing in her purse for some bonbons, because she was good-hearted and liked spoiling children and missed her days as a teacher at the École Cattaoui where she had been the popular Mademoiselle Edith, object of respect and adulation.
I walked over to the old woman and took her hand to kiss it.
“Do I really look like my mom? Are you absolutely certain?” I asked her.
I was looking in the large mirror in the center of the living room, near her, studying my face and features and praying that her answer would be yes.
I felt her staring at me intently all over again.
“Absolutely—except for the teeth,” she said, frowning. “The mouth.” I could tell that she was sifting through the labyrinth of her mind with its eighty years of stored-up memories and impressions, trying to discern what was different about the woman in front her and the woman she’d met some fifty years earlier.
She was smiling now because it had all come back to her, it had all come back perfectly.
We continued to chat; my driver was translating, though I no longer needed him: I felt that I understood her perfectly by her gestures and smiles. Her daughter gave me the obligatory tour of the house—this bedroom, that sitting room; they were all deserted. Finally, she beckoned me over to the balcony, which was the family’s pride and joy, with its graceful concrete canopy, its panoramic views of Malaka Nazli and beyond it, Cairo itself.
I put my jacket on, smoothed my hair, and rose to leave. The old woman suddenly cried: “Wait.”
I stopped to look at her.
“I am old and I am lonely,” she cried. “There is only me and my daughter here, and I have so many rooms.” With a sweeping gesture, she pointed to the empty rooms, the dining room devoid of any diners, the bedroom without a husband, the sitting rooms and playrooms with no children.
“Why don’t you stay?” she said. “Why don’t you move here?”
I looked at her, after my driver had translated what she’d said, and translated it yet again.
“You can have any room you want,” she added, sensing my confusion, though not really understanding it. To her, it was perfectly natural to ask this stranger, who really wasn’t a stranger at all, who was as familiar to her as her own past and her own family, to come live with her.
I was being offered a chance to move back: to move back to Malaka Nazli.
I ran to embrace the old woman. That moment, when she held my hands in hers, I suddenly understood my father, and his despair after Cairo, and the sense of desolation that he had tried to blame on the flowers that didn’t have a scent and the people who didn’t have a heart.
Malaka Nazli hadn’t simply been a place, I realized, but a state of mind. It was where you could find an extraordinary, breathtaking level of humanity. What it lacked in privacy, what it failed to provide by way of modern comforts—hot running water, showers, electric stoves, refrigerators, telephones—it more than made up for in mercy and compassion and tenderness and grace, those ethereal qualities that make and keep us human.
If Adly Street had been the way to the Gates of Heaven, then Malaka Nazli was paradise itself, and Dad had been fortunate enough to taste it, and I was lucky to glimpse for myself what he’d meant all these years when he kept his small suitcase packed and ready to go.
As I climbed back into our car, I glanced up to see the old woman standing on her balcony. She seemed forlorn and lost in thought, looking out to the farthest reaches of Malaka Nazli. She was searching up and down the boulevard, as if trying to find me, as if trying to find not only me but also my parents, and her husband, and her own youth—that time when she was a girl on a balcony with a family waiting for her to come inside.
As we drove away, I felt that I was leaving all I cared about behind, not simply a stranger who had shown me such unexpected kindness, but another old woman, my grandmother Zarifa, and another, Nonna Alexandra, and a young woman, too, my mother, Edith, crossing the threshold of Malaka Nazli as a twenty-year-old bride, and Baby Alexandra, the sister I had never known, and my two uncles who had seemed forever lost—the child of the souk and the priest, returned from his Jerusalem monastery—and my aunt Bahia, back from Auschwitz, clutching her husband and Violetta, and my father, above all, my father.
I felt as if they were all standing there, on that wrought-iron balcony.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the spring of 2004 I found myself leafing through my family’s files obtained from HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Amid the yellowing papers, I stumbled on a ledger that chronicled my father’s repayment of the debt we incurred coming to America on the Queen Mary—a month-by-month accounting of each of my dad’s ten- and fifteen-dollar checks.
I proposed a piece about my father and the ledger to Erich Eichman, the Wall Street Journal books editor who oversees cultural commentary, and to my great delight he decided to publish the column on Father’s Day 2004.
He was a deeply sensitive editor, and I owe him so much.
The day the piece appeared, I was flooded with calls and e-mails. One of the callers was literary agent Tracy Brown who felt there was a book to be done about Leon and my relationship with him. From the start he was insightful and supportive—helping me to frame the story and offering me the constant feedback that carried me through this undertaking. The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit would not have been possible without Tracy’s luminous comments, grace, and sensibility.
My encounters with Dan Halpern, Ecco’s publisher, showed me why he is such a legendary figure and my book found such a lovely home. I was moved by his passion for the Levant—from the music of Om Kalsoum to the rose water in Oriental pastry.
At Ecco, I am indebted to acquiring editor Julia Serebrinsky for her enthusiasm: As a Russian immigrant, she seemed to relate completely to the story of my Levantine father.
Lee Boudreaux, Ecco’s editorial director, who oversaw every aspect of the book, proved to be an extraordinary editor and friend: Tireless, charming, rigorous, weekend after weekend she would take my manuscript home and figure out precisely what needed to be done. I am profoundly grateful both for Lee’s passionate dedication and sense of excitement.
Ghena Glijansky was an invaluable assistant editor who gave careful, loving guidance and helped fine-tune the book even after she left Ecco.
Editorial assistant Abigail Holstein taught me the meaning of the word “indefatigable.” Art director Allison Saltzman created the most exquisite cover.
A number of relatives generously shared their knowledge of my tangled famil
y history over the book’s hundred-year span.
One of the greatest joys of working on this memoir was being reunited with Salomone Silvera, my cousin in Milan who had lived with my father in Cairo from 1937 to 1944, and was able to provide exquisite details about life inside Malaka Nazli. In meetings at his home near the Duomo, Salomone conjured up lost family members, including my Syrian grandmother, Zarifa, who through his colorful stories became a major character. He taught me much about his own mother, my aunt Bahia, who had perished at Auschwitz together with his father and sister. I will always be indebted to Salomone and his wife, Sally.
My oldest brother, César, emerged as the keeper of the flame, the family archivist who collected my father’s papers for more than forty years—business cards, Leon’s wallet, even old canceled checks from some of his favorite charities. César also volunteered his own memories of Egypt, France, and our earliest days in America, hilarious and sad at the same time. He unearthed most of the photos in this book. I am grateful to him and his wife, Monica.
My sister, Suzette, vividly described Alexandra, our beautiful, gifted, and supremely sad maternal grandmother. She even sang for me the Italian songs Alexandra had loved, and provided useful insights into the world of Egypt’s Jewry after Suez.
David Ades, my cousin in Los Angeles, offered charming recollections of how his mother, Tante Rebekah, prepared rose petal jam. Victor “Pico” Hakim regaled me with stories of my father’s work in Cairo and volunteered details about his mother, Tante Rosée, and other members of my mother’s family. He and his wife, Rachel, were deeply kind and hospitable.
Josette Hakim gave heartbreaking descriptions of Alexandra lost amid the orange groves of Ganeh Tikvah.
I also wish to acknowledge the wondrous Desi Sakkal, founder of HSJE—the Historical Society of the Jews of Egypt, the website that has enabled Egypt’s lost Jewry to begin to reclaim their heritage and to finally reconnect. Desi was a constant resource, deeply caring, always eager to answer my most obscure questions. His organization is nothing short of miraculous. Albert Gamill and Dr. David Marzouk, fellow expatriates, were deeply kind to read over my manuscript and review every one of my Arabic phrases.
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