The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (8 page)

BOOK: The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
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But the edict banishing the tarboosh was perhaps the most telling sign of the ruthlessness of the new order. My father was no longer allowed to wear the red fez he favored above all other hats. To the revo
lutionary colonels, the cone-shaped hat was a small but potent symbol of the ancien régime. The king had often been photographed wearing the tarboosh, and it was the hat that his pashas had favored. While the tarboosh was popular far beyond the noble court, and even ordinary schoolboys wore the hats as a sign of respect toward their teachers and headmasters, they were linked inextricably to the royal court and a way of life that had to be stamped out.

They disappeared, almost overnight, those dreamy red hats. Suddenly, men began to don caps and felt hats and straw hats and jaunty borsalinos. Ironically, many in the affluent classes took to wearing classic, imported European headgear, though the point of the revolution had been to rid Egypt of its foreign influence. By ruling against the tarboosh, the generals were taking action against an icon whose origin was Turkish but which was now as Egyptian as the Pyramids or the Sphinx. And sure enough, years after the fez was declared illegal, it became increasingly popular for doormen and attendants working the posh hotels around Cairo to wear them as they greeted tourists who wanted a taste of the “real” Egypt.

Leon took his collection of tarbooshes with black tassels and stashed them away in his closet, next to his treasured British regulation pith helmet. He never wore a tarboosh out on the street again, though he was determined to hold on to them, and enjoyed simply fingering their soft velvety contours and playing with the tassels.

 

EDITH WAS EXPECTING AROUND
the time of the abdication. It was a difficult pregnancy, and she wasn't feeling at all well. She was weak and feverish and in pain, yet the family doctor who came to examine her didn't have a clue what was wrong. She grew worse in the final weeks of her pregnancy, complaining of headaches and stomachaches, but everyone assumed it was the child she was carrying, her fourth, that was taking a toll—
Pauvre Edith était si delicate
(“Poor Edith, so fragile”)—so no alarm bells were sounded and no special measures were taken.

For years, she'd been helped by Simcha Allegra, the midwife who had delivered all my siblings without any complications. The midwife
was so seasoned, so capable, it was almost as if a physician was beside the point.

Except it was different, this time. There were only complications.

My mother was so ill when she went into labor, it was a miracle she survived and the baby was born healthy. Seeing the little girl who was so perfect, so pretty, made everyone feel almost hopeful at first, as if the worst was over. The infant cried on cue and her limbs were well formed and her breathing regular, but most striking were her eyes—a doll's eyes, vivid, dazzling, baby blue.

My brother and sister who had waited anxiously in the dining room throughout the labor were allowed to see the infant, if briefly. Suzette took one peek at the child and declared her beautiful. That was the verdict of everyone who had a glimpse of the newborn—
qu'elle était simplement ravissante
—a gorgeous, magical child. She had a fair complexion and a soft fuzz of light brown, almost golden hair.

They named the baby Alexandra, after my maternal grandmother who was always in our house, fussing over the little girl, who filled her with a joy she hadn't felt in years.

But Edith was getting worse. She seemed confused and delirious at times: she'd wake up to feed the baby and then fall back asleep, exhausted. But it was never a restful sleep. She was always moaning, or crying out for people from the past—her brother, the lost baby of the souk, or else Isaac, the father who had abandoned her.

Alexandra would chain-smoke her cigarettes, wander outside, and return to find her daughter so sick she couldn't open her eyes. It didn't help to appeal to Leon. Alexandra knew from the start that the marriage was an unhappy one, and she blamed my father for Edith's misery and herself for having approved the union that afternoon at La Parisiana. Yet she'd always been afraid to stand up to him or protect her daughter.

Even now, at this critical juncture, with two lives hanging in the balance, my father and my grandmother could barely communicate. Aware of the danger his wife and daughter were in, Leon had summoned all the doctors he knew to Malaka Nazli; yet none seemed to know what was wrong.

Alexandra suddenly discovered a well of strength within her that
spurred her to take action. She left Malaka Nazli and walked, cigarette in hand, to the home of her stepdaughter, Rosée. Over a steaming cup of Turkish coffee, she confided the drama that was unfolding in our house.

“Edith est en danger. Je suis folle d'inquiétude,” she told Rosée—Edith is in danger, I am worried sick.

In times of crisis, the two women agreed, there was only one person to turn to, Rosée's brother. Oncle Edouard, my grandfather Isaac's son from his first marriage, was a charismatic figure, the head of my mother's side of the family. He had managed to climb out of poverty, and as he prospered, he kept the extended family afloat. Because of his work as a pharmaceutical salesman, he knew all the leading specialists of Cairo as well as the most up-to-date drugs. My mother adored him, this half brother who was more like a father to her.

Oncle Edouard.

Informed that Edith was in danger of dying, Oncle Edouard rushed to summon one of the leading infectious disease specialists in Egypt. Together, the two men made their way to Malaka Nazli. My father greeted them with relief: he may have been the unchallenged ruler of Malaka Nazli, but he always knew when to cede power.

The white-coated physician instantly made a diagnosis. “C'est la fièvre typhoïde,” he declared, confident and grim, and everyone felt shaken at his words. Typhoid fever was the scourge of Egypt.

It seemed so obvious now. But while widespread, it was often misdiagnosed. Still, so much could have been done differently, if only they had known. There were medicines that could have been administered, doctors who could have assisted in the delivery, not merely a midwife. Most important, mother and child would have been separated.

The doctor insisted on immediately removing Baby Alexandra from Edith, who had continued to nurse her despite her own debilitated state. But it was undoubtedly too late, he warned somberly. Because my mother had held her and fed her, it was likely the bacteria had spread to the infant.

Malaka Nazli, which should have been a house of joy, was again a house of tears.

Oncle Edouard directed his anger against my father, demanding to know how he allowed his wife to remain in such a state, when he could certainly have afforded to bring in the finest specialists much earlier. Leon didn't even try to defend himself. He was mute, in shock at all the conflicting events—a newborn daughter, a desperately ill wife, news that both were in peril, and all from as common a disease as typhoid fever, which any competent physician should have been able to diagnose.

He had to act swiftly to safeguard the other children. As panic swept the house, both César and Suzette were bundled up and taken by taxi to Tante Marie, while arrangements could be made to protect Isaac, who was only a toddler.

The days turned into weeks. It was such a strange period, when Suzette and César heard nothing about how their mother and their new sister were doing. Because it was the summer, there was no school that would have given their days a structure. My father would stop by to
look in on them almost every day, but he was vague and evasive about goings-on on Malaka Nazli.

Alexandra, undaunted by the prospect of being exposed to the fever, would sing to Baby Alexandra, hoping to get her to flutter her eyes open. After washing her hands in the basin filled with disinfectant, she would gently stroke her and hold her close, this child of her heart, the most extraordinary of all the babies Edith had produced, a blue-eyed princess in a kingdom of brown eyes.

But the fever took over and Baby Alexandra's luminous eyes dimmed and her body grew impossibly flushed and warm, and she couldn't breathe.

There was nothing anyone could do.

My mother wasn't allowed to hold her or comfort her, and she was too sick—mercifully, perhaps—to realize that her baby was dying in the next room.

There was a chance that Edith would also not pull through, that she wouldn't be able to overcome the fever. My father opened the house to her side of the family, as they launched an unprecedented offensive to save both mother and child.

After Oncle Edouard had brought the doctor, Tante Rosée all but moved in. She tended to Mom night and day—never going to sleep, watchful for the slightest change, attentive to my mother's every need.

Under the determined care of the indomitable Tante Rosée, my grandmother hovering close by, Edith survived. Baby Alexandra did not.

Whenever my mother asked, “Où est la petite?” she was told that she was too sick to see her daughter, that it would only put the child at risk. Edith would nod and go back to sleep, retreating to near oblivion. She was still delusional, still confused.

At last, my siblings returned from their exile. They went from room to room but found no trace of the child. Malaka Nazli was seemingly the same as before, except that it was scrubbed clean and still bore the scent of strong disinfectant. Everyone was silent, especially our mother, who remained in bed all day.

No one would explain exactly what had happened, no one would say where the baby had gone, and they knew instinctively not to ask questions. It was the way of Old Aleppo never to expose children even to the
hint of death. The young were barred from going to a house of mourning. They couldn't pay their respects, or go to the cemetery, or even wear black because that would bring bad luck.

 

SHE LASTED EXACTLY EIGHT
days, Baby Alexandra, though years and decades later, she was still there, deep in our consciousness. No pictures of her exist. The tradition was to take a new baby to a professional for a formal studio shot within weeks of her arrival, and that, of course, had not been possible.

César would speak to me of this lovely child with clear eyes, and Suzette remembered the delicate mound of light brown hair that she had briefly seen. We all obsessed about her in our own way, imbuing her with all the qualities we valued. She haunted me, this child who never grew up.

“Loulou, you, of course, are Alexandra,” my mother would say to me again and again. For a long time I thought she was comparing me to my grandmother. Only later, much later, did I begin to comprehend that she was invoking the child she missed. I was, to her, the little girl blue, returned to this earth.

 

MY MOTHER LOST HER
beauty. It was a gradual process, which had begun even before Baby Alexandra, but accelerated with the child's passing. Her lovely white teeth had inexplicably started to crumble after César was born. With the years, she was left almost toothless, and it became almost painful to look at her, this young woman in her twenties with exceedingly fine features, and the puckered-in mouth of an old lady.

She became a recluse.

Edith rarely left 281-Malaka Nazli. The ostensible explanation for her decline, or at least the one my family embraced, was that Mom, who was anemic and ate very poorly, had suffered a loss of calcium after her second pregnancy, a process that intensified with subsequent births.

She never drank so much as a glass of the fresh, delicious milk that
continued to come by way of the goats and cows who still showed up every morning at the back window of Malaka Nazli, with their caretaker offering to fill up a pitcher for only a few piasters. Edith's beverage of choice was coffee—
café Turque
—strong, black, with extra sugar to camouflage the bitterness. When she was done, she would turn the cup upside down and read her fortune in the coffee grounds.

But the absence of joy played as much of a role in Mom's decline as the absence of calcium. With the death of Baby Alexandra, my mother sank into a profound melancholy. The sadder she became, the more she neglected herself. It didn't help, of course, that she had never been to a proper dentist, though there were several European-trained specialists practicing in Cairo in the 1940s and '50s. When she was growing up, she was too poor to see a dentist. After she married my father, she was simply too frightened.

If Edith's prettiness had drawn my father to her, it was almost as if she were thwarting him now. In her anger, she seemed to be saying: “If you will not live up to your end of the bargain, I will not live up to mine.”

My father's reaction to the death of his daughter was entirely different. After a formal mourning period, he resumed his nocturnal routine. He went alone and never took his wife along, if only to console her, to pull her out of the thick shell into which she had withdrawn.

For Edith, this was yet more proof of her husband's selfishness, the fact that he couldn't relinquish his pleasure-seeking even after a tragedy. Despite years of marriage, my mother had never understood Leon. My father's habit of leaving home wasn't much different than Edith's retreat into the bedroom they no longer shared. Much as she coped by escaping from the world, he found comfort venturing into the world, finding forgetfulness in the endless nights of poker and dancing and solace in the company of other men and other women.

BOOK: The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
6.6Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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