Q and A with Lucette Lagnado
Lucette Lagnado is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the critically acclaimed author of “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World.” She is completing a second book, “The Arrogant Years: A Young Girl’s Quest for her Lost Youth,” a companion book to her first work. Lagnado will be speaking at the Elmont Jewish Center on April 26.
Michael Orbach: What was your motivation in writing "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit"? Lucette Lagnado: I am haunted by the notion of the American Dream - the idea that immigrants come to this country, they struggle and work hard and assimilate, but then achieve results beyond their wildest imagination. G-d, we love that idea, Americans love that idea. But I have my doubts. It wasn’t the case with my family and certainly not with my father — so I was intrigued by the notion of doing a book on the American Dream in reverse — to try to tell the story of a family that comes to America and experiences a terrible downfall. Which is what I believe happened with my father and mother. They were shattered by the move here, by the departure from Egypt, and their experience turned into a nightmare, and that is the story I wanted to tell desperately, more than any other story.I also wanted to describe this lost world of Cairo — a society that was wonderfully multicultural and embracing of Jews and Moslems and Christians. I was mesmerized by stories of my father’s Cairo, a city that was both European and Levantine, where so much was happening in the day and even late at night, where you could have dinner at 1 or 2 in the morning; I really loved that. Mostly I liked the idea of recreating what this world of Jews in the Middle East had been like, that there were these incredibly vibrant cultures that were utterly destroyed. People had no idea. Even Jews, American Jews, had no idea, honestly. That is the tragedy of the Jews from Arab countries — people have no idea what was lost.
MO: Do you feel that your goals in writing the book were accomplished? LL: I have been overjoyed by how much was accomplished - much more than I ever anticipated. My book has developed a kind of cult following, I think, so that every day, or several times a week, I will get notes and letters from people across the world who have read it or are reading it and feel a need to communicate with me. (The latest was someone from Capetown, South Africa. Imagine that.)Once upon a time there were 80,000 Jews in Egypt and over one million Europeans. What happened to them? Well, they were scattered to the ends of the earth with the forced exodus that happened under the Nasser regime. They went on with their lives. They forged new identities. They built homes and families.
But Sharkskin has helped them to reclaim their old identity — their true authentic identity, as Egyptians, as Jews of Egypt. They read the book wherever they happen to be — Geneva, Adelaide — and they remember and they feel a need to reach out to me and to other Egyptian Jews. And that is important; it is important to be faithful to who you were originally.
MO: It’s ultimately a very sad story, no? LL: I like to tell audiences that there is no happy ending here; it is all terribly sad. My father was destroyed; my mother was destroyed; and my siblings [and I] are still sorting through the pieces and, inside, I believe, we are shattered too. My parents had the misfortune to grow old and sick in America. I believe that this is a very difficult place to be old and sick. Part of the book takes a look at the monstrous institutions that we built here, the hospitals and the nursing homes. I grieve every day for what my parents endured in the hands of these institutions, honestly. MO: The book was exceedingly well received and won the Sami Rohr Prize. Were there any great surprises for you in the reception of the book? LL: I was completely stunned at receiving the Sami Rohr Prize; it was so utterly unexpected and so utterly wonderful. It was so redemptive in the midst of the sadness and the surprise that people understood, that they got it, that they grasped on every level what I was trying to do and what I’d been trying to say; the audience reaction has been overwhelming. I have given over 200 lectures, many to groups of Jews at Reform and Conservative and Orthodox synagogues in difference communities and I have been amazed by how much people relate to my personal story; it is as if it’s become their personal story. MO: At the end of the book, you take a trip back to Egypt. What was that like? Have you been back since then? LL: It was very wonderful and very emotional and very joyful and very sad all at once. Egypt has changed dramatically. [Cairo] is a dusty decaying city; but it is still a beautiful city if you look beneath the dust and the decay. And I found the average people to be wonderfully nice, wonderfully welcoming. And then there was another element I couldn’t have predicted, namely how close I felt to my father on the trip as if he were there besides me. And of course it was extraordinary returning to my childhood house on Malaka Nazli Street, Queen Nazli Street, which plays such an important role in the book. The street was terribly rundown as was the house — my apartment. Yet it still was magical to me. There were the balconies where I had played, there was the alleyway...I was in a trance.
I have now gone back again and again, as recently as last month, and I keep wanting to go back. It is like I didn’t go for 40 years and now I would go every couple of months if I could, honestly.
MO: Do you ever foresee a reemergence of a strong Jewish culture in Egypt? LL: Ah. Now that is a tough question. Out of the 80,000 Jews who were there, there are officially about 100 left but the true number is far smaller — maybe 20 or 40; it is a decimated community. And so — Will it ever flourish again? I wish...but I don’t think so, somehow. I do think some Jews can go back and reclaim it and assert themselves as Jews and Egyptians, both.
