The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit (16 page)

Fueling the pressure was Suzette's insistence that we abandon Egypt immediately. Her own friends had been leaving one by one, and these days, she had almost no one left to join her for a movie or an afternoon of shopping, other than the stray Muslim girls she had befriended. She was anxious for the next chapter of her life to begin. Because she was less emotionally vested, she also saw the dangers of staying put in Egypt more clearly than my father. But she couldn't seem to persuade him, and her words fell on deaf ears.

It was as if my dad believed the turmoil was only a passing phase. The political situation would settle down as it had so many times before. The fever in the streets would subside, and he'd be able to stay exactly where he was, enjoying the street life from his ground-floor window on Malaka Nazli.

There was a truce only when the entire family came together to discuss what to do about me. They gathered in the living room, and talked as if I weren't there, as if I couldn't possibly understand what they were saying. I overheard them analyzing my illness and its dismal prognosis.

Though my contacts with Pouspous had been cut back, the Cat Scratch Fever remained. I was still able to go to school, but I didn't feel well. My symptoms receded and flared, receded and flared. My left leg was still swollen, the lump was still there, as large and hard and menacing as ever. I ran a fever that aspirin couldn't control. I went regularly to see the Professor, or he came to Malaka Nazli. I dreaded the examination, especially his white gloves. Yet he was gentle enough as he searched for a sign that the strange swelling in my leg was going down, or that the fever was abating. After a couple of months, he declared himself at a loss.

In what amounted to an admission of defeat, he suggested that perhaps I would be better off if seen by specialists in France or America.

My father seemed shaken. The doctor who had offered a powerful incentive for us to stay now cited compelling grounds for us to go. We came home and relayed to the rest of the family the disheartening news. Cairo's top specialist was urging us to seek help elsewhere. There were no more answers left in Egypt.

Over the years my father had been ill, he was often told that doctors abroad were likely to have more options for him than in Cairo, which despite its pretensions to being a simulacra of Paris was still in many ways a Third World city. After his fall in 1958, Dad had been in perpetual pain. But as he improved, and learned to control the pain, in large part because of patient ministering by legions of Cairo's leading physicians, the incentive to seek out other opinions waned, and with it, the incentive to leave.

With my vexing malady, my father once again heard the siren song of the West.

Both he and my mother longed to find the mythical
bon docteur
who would be more knowledgeable than his provincial Cairo colleagues. Surely, in Paris or Milan or New York, there would be a physician who could make me well again.

 

AS HE WAVERED, MY
father was reminded of the advice of our porter: it was time to pray.

For that, my father favored the Kuttab, the little shul around the corner. Every morning for years, my dad would walk to the homelike structure, bringing supplies of coffee, tea, and sugar that a servant would prepare for the worshippers. He'd linger till the late morning, returning at the end of the day for evening services. There were times he stayed all night praying and bantering. The Kuttab was as much a social as a religious affair, almost like a private club where a group of prosperous Levantine businessmen who had known each other for decades put aside their worries and concentrated on praying as well as gossiping.

Though cozy and intimate, it was also oddly snobbish and deeply fashion-conscious.

My dad and the other synagogue elders made it a point to wear
white, all white, to services each week. Indeed, they dressed as meticulously as they had in the 1940s, when standards were set by the British colonial officers. Even now, with the officers gone, and Egypt in its shabby and dejected postcolonial phase, the men of the Kuttab made sure that every stitch they had on was a dazzling shade of white, down to their shoes, though some favored white wingtips with a brown trim.

I'd often accompany my dad to Saturday-morning services, and while women were relegated to their own section, I was allowed to sit with him and the other men, which I considered a wonderful honor, and one that I tried to earn. Instead of playing with the other children, I'd take a Hebrew prayer book I didn't know how to read and pretend to follow the liturgy. When I was restless, I'd wander outside, where groves of jasmine were in bloom. Their scent was so alluring, I'd pluck the delicate white flowers and make small garlands to bring back to the sanctuary and walk around, handing out blossoms to all the men to wear in their lapels.

My favorite moment was when everyone stood to receive the priestly blessing. This solemn affair called for any man who was a
cohen,
a descendant of the ancient order of High Priests, to stand in front of the sanctuary and bless the congregation. All the male worshippers were expected to rise, drape the prayer shawl over their heads, and cast their eyes downward to the floor. My father insisted on having me at his side as he lifted the shawl over our heads to construct a makeshift tent. He would place his hand over my head, as if to confer an extra measure of priestly benediction.

I never felt so safe as those moments beneath the white prayer shawl. There was nothing to fear, not even the ravages of Cat Scratch Fever.

Still, because my illness continued to take its toll, my father decided to expand his repertoire of synagogues. His favorite, the Congregation of Love and Friendship, had closed a few years earlier after most of its members left for America. But there were still at least half a dozen functioning synagogues in our neighborhood, ranging from the intimate Kuttab to the more stately Temple Hanan, with its vaulted ceilings and spacious courtyard. Off we went one morning to Temple Hanan, the membership of which had dwindled, where he asked the
rabbi to make a special prayer for me. Placing his hand over my head, the rabbi chanted to God to deliver me from Cat Scratch Fever. He then reached for some fragrant rose water in a silver container, and drizzled it all over my face and arms.

At my father's urging, my mother and I began making the rounds of Cairo holy sites, where miracles were known to occur.

We began by visiting the Gates of Heaven, the most important synagogue in all of Egypt, built in the nineteenth century. Legend had it that its wealthy benefactors had thrown precious gold and silver coins into the foundation for good luck. It was at the Gates of Heaven where my parents were married in the spring of 1943, standing at an altar strewn with white roses.

My mother took me by the hand up the same marble steps she had climbed as a twenty-year-old bride. The precious Torah scrolls were kept behind a velvet curtain, and she lifted me in her arms so I could kiss the curtain, which itself was holy. “It will bring you luck,” she whispered.

We journeyed next to Ben Ezra, the synagogue where several of the biblical prophets were known to have lingered. Jeremiah, the prophet of lamentation, was buried beneath the temple's stone foundation, while Elijah, who was so pure that legend had it that God couldn't bear to let him die, was said to stop here in between his sojourns performing good deeds across the earth. Ben Ezra was located in Old Cairo, the most ancient part of the city. The morning we went it was deserted, its pews devoid of worshippers.

As we walked out, my mother left behind a small gift: a jar of white sugar and a bottle of fragrant orange water. They were treats for Elijah, she explained, so he would look kindly on me and come rid me of my Cat Scratch Fever.

On the other side of the building was the famed Cairo Geniza, an attic where leftover parchments and pieces of prayer books, some dating back hundreds of years, had been “buried,” because it was forbidden to throw away so much as a scrap of paper with God's name on it. The Geniza's treasures had been carted off years earlier to Cambridge for scholars to study. But my mother still motioned in the direction of the attic and told me to pray, because even the abandoned burial site was holy and could effect miracles.

At the end of each of these pilgrimages, my mother conferred with my father. He was engaged in his own efforts to heal me, of course, though they were more discreet. Every morning, he led special prayers either at the Kuttab or Temple Hanan on my behalf. Every night, he lit a glass filled with oil and a floating wick, as he prayed for my recovery.

We saved the most important journey for last. It was to Rav Moshe, the Temple of the Great Miracles, the synagogue of Maimonides, the great healer himself. The ancient little building was located in the heart of the dusty ghetto known as Haret-el Yahood, literally “the street of the Jews.” It was a neighborhood where only the poorest members of the Jewish community, those whom time and fortune had left behind, still lived.

None of us ever ventured there. As Cairo Jews prospered, they moved as far away as possible from the Jewish Quarter, renting fashionable apartments downtown or in my family's area, up and down airy Malaka Nazli Street. They had almost no dealings with those who still lived in the ghetto.

Except when calamity hit.

Then, even the most elegant Cairenes voyaged to Rav Moshe, the Temple of the Great Miracles.

Legend had it that Maimonides, the renowned twelfth-century Talmudist and physician who believed equally in the power of medicine and magic, had performed several of his renowned feats of healing deep inside the temple walls. No one knew exactly what these acts were, but the image of Maimonides practicing both his faith and science within this one small edifice was enough to draw visitors from all over the Levant. The Temple of the Miracles became a kind of Jewish Lourdes. Mothers brought their sick and crippled infants, children accompanied dying relatives, widows and widowers hobbled in by themselves to seek help.

I followed my mother down a short flight of steps to the cool, dark, cavelike structure that lay beneath the main sanctuary. Small alcoves had been carved out from the gray rock and transformed into sleeping areas, with thin mattresses and pillows, sheets, and blankets. The makeshift beds were so low it was almost like sleeping on the ground. The room was almost pitch-black, with only a few faint rays of light coming through the small square windows, which didn't even have panes. I
could see the outlines of people lying within the alcoves. Some were elderly and lay completely still, but there were also mothers huddled with their crying babies.

An old man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and handed us a glass filled with oil. It was the oil of Maimonides, the Great Healer, the Maker of Miracles, he said, as he pointed to a spot in the floor. He whispered that somewhere there, beneath us, Maimonides' finger lay buried. The man instructed my mother to rub drops of the holy oil all over me to make me well. Was there a special problem? he asked, turning to look at me.

My mother pointed to my left leg. “Elle a la Maladie des Griffes du Chat,” she replied sadly.

The man nodded, as if a thousand cases similar to mine had come his way, and Cat Scratch Fever was a common ailment he saw every day. He urged her to pour extra drops onto the afflicted leg. Then he pulled out a collection box. Without saying another word, my mother opened her purse and pulled out coins and bills and stuffed them in the small box. The man bowed and disappeared into the darkness of the catacomb.

I clutched my mother's hand as she searched for an empty alcove. When she located one in a corner, she told me to lie down and go to sleep. But first she did exactly as the man had said, rubbing oil over my leg as she said a prayer to Maimonides.

“Make us a miracle now,” she whispered.

She looked around furtively, as if expecting the Great Healer himself to step out of the darkness.

I must have seemed frightened, because she promised she wouldn't leave me, that she'd sit by my side—all night if need be. What was important, she said, was that I sleep. Maimonides wouldn't come while I lay awake. He couldn't perform his miracles if I watched.

I still couldn't close my eyes, so my mother resorted to what she had done with me at home on a thousand nights; she told me a bedtime story. Sitting on the edge of my hard mattress, she began with the familiar soothing refrain, “Il était une fois…”

Once upon a time, there was a fabulously rich woman—a friend of the family—who had visited every doctor in Cairo because of her finger. It had become red and swollen and seriously infected and was now
in danger of developing gangrene. All the doctors near fashionable rue Kasr-El-Nil insisted the finger needed to be removed at once. On the eve of surgery, the woman made the journey from her home in Maadi, the wealthiest neighborhood in all of Cairo, to the temple in the poorest neighborhood in all of Cairo. She came alone, without her usual retinue of servants, and lay down in an alcove exactly like mine, my mother said, with nothing but a thin blanket and a frayed old pillow.

When she woke up the next morning, her finger was clear of infection. Maimonides had come and cured her so completely that she didn't need an operation. And the same would happen to me, my mother vowed. By the morning light, I would be free of my Cat Scratch Fever.

That night, I could hear people from other alcoves calling for the long-dead rabbi and healer to come save them. At last, I managed to close my eyes. Though my mom never left my side, I was still afraid—afraid of the cave, afraid of the moans all around me, afraid that I would be left here forever in the dark, afraid most of all of coming face-to-face with Maimonides.

I wanted to be home with Pouspous in my arms, on Malaka Nazli Street.

I must have drifted off, because when I woke up, it was already morning. Little bits of sunlight were shining through the small window, and I could see that my mother, true to her word, had stayed the entire night in her awkward position, neither comfortably seated nor lying down.