The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (3 page)

BOOK: The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
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For restless souls like my dad, Cairo was a palace of pleasure, a sybaritic Red Cross station. No matter how late he arrived at Covent Garden, which featured dinner and dancing amid acres and acres of manicured gardens, the orchestra would be playing continental melodies as hundreds of couples waltzed or did the tango or, for those under the spell of the British or the Americans, the swing or jitterbug. If he felt hungry, he could sit down as late as one or two in the morning and order a full-course dinner because this was Cairo, and the usual rules about when to dance and when to play and when to dine simply didn't apply.

The war hit home, of course. There was severe rationing in Cairo, and many necessities, like the gasoline that housewives needed to light the Primus and cook for their families, and chefs depended on to feed their hungry clientele, became exceedingly hard to come by. But there was also a flourishing black market, and those who knew the city intimately like my father were able to get their hands on crucial items such as sugar, oil, and soap. At Groppi's, the famed patisserie, it was possible to enjoy delicious pastries made with clarified butter as an orchestra played.

Despite all the shortages, the nightlife flourished and café society preened and the hedonistic streak of the city went almost unchecked. On a typical night, except for the abundance of soldiers out on the streets—British, of course, but also Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Indians, even some American GIs—as well as the refugees who had gathered from every corner of Europe, life could seem as glittering and self-indulgent as it had been in the 1920s and '30s, when Farouk's parents, King Fouad and Queen Nazli, reigned.

L'Auberge des Pyramides, which had opened in 1942, instantly overtook all of its rivals when it became known as Farouk's favorite
club. It featured a ballroom under the stars, and on a good night, the king was almost certain to drop by with both an entourage and a determination to seduce the prettiest woman there, or whoever appealed to him the most.

The prospect of the king's arrival lent it a special cachet, though truth be told, L'Auberge was more gaudy than elegant—completely over-the-top in its decor, which came to include waterfalls, a swimming pool, and an indoor ballroom, in addition to its famed outdoor dance floor. Like every other nightspot, L'Auberge kept a table empty in case the pleasure-seeking monarch showed up unexpectedly. On a good night, Farouk would arrive and head straight to a table by the dance floor because it offered the best view of all the women in the room.

Woe to the man whose wife, girlfriend, or escort the king admired. The monarch was notorious for grabbing any woman he fancied, no matter if she belonged to another.

My father was such a habitué of the different establishments, there wasn't a club owner who didn't know him on a first-name basis. If there was a group of British officers—and there invariably was—he would join them at their table, and it didn't matter that he was both an Arab and a Jew. He was really one of them.

“Captain,” a voice would cry out in the darkness, “Captain Phillips,” and Leon would scan the familiar khaki uniforms and smile, knowing he was among friends. He would join the officers for a drink, and banter in English, affecting an accent that was almost as posh as theirs.

They liked my father because he bridged both worlds—he could play the part of the Captain to the hilt, displaying the poise and polish of someone to the manor born, suggesting an education and breeding he'd never really had.

Sometime in the night, he would treat them to a favorite party trick: he would offer to read their palm, because that was what Egyptians were supposed to know how to do. Taking their hand in his, he would remark how their life line was especially long and that defeat of the enemy was in sight.

He was relentless about meeting women. It was his great diversion, equal to—and at times surpassing—gambling. But he'd rapidly lose interest and move on, in search of new quarry, new opportunities. His
reputation as a
flirteur
only added to his fascination. If he met a woman who interested him in the course of these evenings, he'd pursue her ardently. But he'd also disabuse her of the notion he was available for more than a passing dalliance. The thrill for him was entirely in the hunt, the courtship, the chase.

When the evening was over, he'd wander alone back to Malaka Nazli. Only his bride or his intended could ever be permitted to enter his mother's house. He was never seriously linked with anyone. And, truth be told, some of the alluring, worldly European beauties he courted would have been astonished to see that he resided with an elderly, autocratic Syrian woman who fussed over him as if he were a cross between a god and a child.

As he pushed open the door, he'd see my grandmother at her usual guard post—a small hard chair in the living room, a kerchief on her head. She hadn't been able to fall asleep, she'd explain to him in Arabic, because she was so worried about him, fretful about his wanderings across the city. He'd kiss her tenderly on both cheeks, then retreat to his room.

No matter how much he devoted himself to her care, Leon was entirely immune to her words of reproach. Zarifa could only express her anguish and disapproval by sitting up night after night on that hard-
backed chair, her long white hair loose on her shoulders, her blue eyes welling up with tears, waiting for the key to turn and the door to open and her son to reappear. Only then would she allow herself to go to sleep.

Zarifa of Aleppo.

Still heady from the night, my dad would linger awake in the privacy of his room. He'd carefully remove his jacket and silk shirt and place his jewels and tie clip and cuff links in a special box. He took exceptional care to fold his shirt and hang up his suit so they could both be worn again. It was almost dawn, which meant a new day—and a new night—were on the horizon.

 

MY FATHER PROSPERED AS
a businessman in Cairo, but no one could figure out how he made his fortune or even say what he did, exactly.

He was certainly an avid investor, with a passion for
la bourse,
the rough-and-tumble Egyptian stock market, but there were also his skill as a broker, buying and selling products that ranged from plain brown wrapping paper and cellophane to food additives, sardine cans, and complex pharmaceuticals; the grocery business he once co-owned with his older brother, Oncle Raphael, specializing in the purest olive oil and the finest cane sugar; his expert knowledge of textiles, especially Egyptian cotton, one of the most desirable fabrics in the world; and his frequent trips to Alexandria for his import-export business, though what he imported and exported is unknown. At some point, he began to do business with the exciting American soda conglomerate that was setting up a beach-head in Cairo—Coca-Cola. He provided some of the key ingredients used to produce the famous soda.

Even those who watched him firsthand, like his nephew Salomone, weren't too sure of the nature of his ever-changing business.

All that is clear is that Leon never held a real job. He never collected a steady paycheck save once, as a teenager, when he briefly went to work for a bank. En route to becoming
un banquier,
one of the most prestigious occupations in all of Egypt, he found that he couldn't endure sitting at a desk and hated the hours, the routine, and above all, the need to report to other human beings and be subject to their wishes and whims.

The Captain could never allow anyone to give him orders.

Instead, he struck out on his own. As a young man coming of age in British-ruled Cairo, he made himself indispensable to the colonialist powers. He had to overcome two hurdles—the British dislike of local Egyptians, whom they called “wogs,” and their distaste for Jews. Gifted with languages, he mastered seven—English, Arabic, French, and Hebrew, of course, as well as Italian, Greek, and Spanish. This enabled him to function as an interpreter, guide, and go-between, and he could take his British friends to the most obscure parts of Egypt and help them communicate with the most intransigent local characters. In a way, this was his first stint as a businessman, when he became a broker and middleman between two worlds—cosmopolitan colonial Cairo and mystical, sensuous Islamic Cairo.

There were periods of great prosperity, while at other times he struggled. But he had learned from my Syrian grandmother to keep both his good fortune and his misfortunes to himself, and never, ever showcase his wealth: that was the legacy of Aleppo, the ancient Syrian city where Zarifa and her husband were born and had fled shortly after the turn of the century, along with their ten children, including my infant father. It was a period of turbulence, when many of the Jewish families who had lived in Syria for centuries packed up to go, fearing economic privation as well as religious persecution.

Tragedy had struck after the family had settled in Cairo. Leon's father died after a hernia operation. Shortly thereafter, there had been the death of his sister Ensol, the beauty of the family, and her husband, who were either murdered in a train speeding from Cairo to Palestine, their throats slashed by an unknown assailant, or killed in an accident. The tragedy was never talked about, for that was the Aleppo way, but every once in a while my grandmother would cry out, “Ensol, Ensol,” to no one in particular. She and my father had taken in their children and helped raise them, but the bad luck continued. Ensol's son had gone insane and remained confined year after year in the Yellow Palace, the vast jasmine-scented lunatic asylum located in Abbassiyeh. Another blow came when Salomon, Zarifa's second oldest son (not to be confused with his namesake, Salomone, who came to live with them from Milan), returned home from the Collège des Frères, the prestigious Catholic school to which even devout Jewish families sent their children, and announced he was converting and
entering the priesthood. To a family whose ancestors had been the religious leaders of Aleppo for hundreds of years, the defection was both heartbreaking and incomprehensible, a mystery they would ponder all their lives.

My grandmother mourned him as if he were dead: in old Cairo, that is what you did with someone who left the faith. Zarifa recovered, yet she never ceased to talk about the old days and the old ways, reminding her children and grandchildren of the family legacy. Even in cosmopolitan Cairo, she insisted on following the ways of “Halab,” as she referred to Aleppo in Arabic.

Barely educated—girls rarely were, in Syria—my grandmother only spoke Arabic, and when she went out, she'd don a
chabara,
a long, lustrous black robe favored by Arab women that covered her hair and body and reached down all the way to her ankles. She loved to say how in Syria, the family had dined with kings. She never elaborated, and it wasn't clear if there had actually been monarchs in her social circle in Syria or if she was simply referring to the family's illustrious past, the time when the family name was revered for the generations of rabbis it had produced and the religious texts they had authored.

Though Aleppo was long ago, its culture still exerted a powerful, almost mystical hold on all those who traced their origins there, and always would, whether they lived in nearby Cairo, or settled in far more distant capitals—New York, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Johannesburg. To be a Halabi Jew meant obeying a set of social and religious conventions that dated back centuries and almost never changed with the times—rules that spelled out precisely how to live and how to die, how to worship, marry, raise children, and of course make money, because Aleppo's culture was profoundly materialistic, and wealth mattered second only to God and family.

Leon was so reserved that no one was ever entirely sure when he was faring well or when he was close to bankruptcy, and that too was a residue of Aleppo, where a man was supposed to trust only his immediate family—blood ties mattered above all—and even they were to be kept in the dark about his work.

Mostly he did well, except for the Depression, when the grocery business he ran with Oncle Raphael went under.

Aleppo was also a secretive, almost paranoid culture so that despite
being gregarious and sociable, Leon was fundamentally a solitary man. He was always moving. Though he could have taken horse-drawn carriages and taxis to his business meetings, he preferred to get around on foot, maneuvering briskly through streets that often weren't paved, that were barely more than dirt roads.

He could traverse distances that would exhaust far younger men; even in his forties, he had remarkable energy and exuberance, and though his favorite outlet was the dance floor at night, he enjoyed wandering for miles around Cairo in the early morning, approaching clients when the streets were still and there was a slight breeze, before the air became heavy and the city shut down because it wasn't humanly possible to work in the heat of an Egypt afternoon.

Back in the late 1930s, when he was still trying to rebuild what he lost in the Depression, he took his nephew to work one summer day. Salomone was a strapping young man, almost as tall as Leon, and about twenty years his junior, yet even he couldn't keep up as they walked and walked in the scorching Cairo sun, paying calls on more and more clients. Leon would approach small vendors—simple fellahin selling juice from stalls the size of a large box. He'd converse with them, and he wouldn't be at all patrician. On the contrary, he would transform himself into a man of the people like them.

BOOK: The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
5.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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