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Free women

Living in peace and prosperity inCairo, Leon and Edith Lagnadoremained wary of “the evil eye,”the malevolent force that comes

out of nowhere to smite people whoseem to have too much. Although thefamily had already suffered more thanthree strokes of bad luck – rabies, typhoidfever and the death of an infant – Edithsensed that the worst was yet to come.

She was right. In 1956, the year Lucette,the Lagnados’ youngest child, was born,the Egyptian army took over Cairo’s onlyJewish hospital, ordering the doctors toleave the premises immediately. UnderGamal Abdel Nasser, it became clear,Egypt no longer welcomed Jews. TheLagnados hung on until 1963, when theydeparted for Paris. In a dingy refugeehotel, they debated whether to emigrateto Israel or to America – and resolved,without much enthusiasm, to purchasefive and a half third-class tickets on theQueen Mary bound for New York City.

In her first book, The Man in the WhiteSharkskin Suit, Lucette Lagnado, a seniorwriter at The Wall Street Journal, featuredher father, a gambler and playboy forcedto eke out a living as a necktie salesman.The Arrogant Years puts Edith at centerstage. In loving detail, Lucette traces thestruggle of her mother to raise four kids ina working class Jewish enclave in Brook-lyn and reclaim her own identity. (Edithhad been a beloved teacher at École Cat-taui, a prestigious Jewish school in Cairo,until Leon forced her to quit her job.)

Along with “girlish bursts of enthusi-asm” at a Shirley MacLaine film, a table-cloth from John’s Bargain Store, a novelby Proust or Stendhal and (eventually)satisfying work at the Brooklyn PublicLibrary, Lucette reveals, Edith oftenexhibited a “profound melancholy andperhaps a touch of the martyr.” VisitingLeon at a nursing home, she took note ofher husband’s horrible life, adding “etbientôt ce sera la mienne” – and one dayit will be mine.

An elegy to Edith, The Arrogant Years isalso a coming-of-age memoir, set in theturbulent 1960s and ’70s. A stranger in astrange land, lamenting the loss of a timeand a place in which she could feel ontop of the world, Lucette anoints Mrs.Emma Peel, the strong, sleek and stylish

secret agent on the British televisionseries The Avengers, as her model. At age10, eager to lead prayers and carry Torahscrolls around the Shield of Young DavidSynagogue, she chafes at the separate sec-tion segregating women from men.Although she wants to demolish themehitza (partition), smashing it to pieceswith karate chops à la Mrs. Peel, she con-ceives of a more stealthy scheme to “infil-trate” the main sanctuary. Crushed andmortified when the men, “waving theirprayer books like weapons,” yell “haram,haram” (the Arabic word for sin) andshoo Lucette and her co-conspiratorsback where they belong, she leaves theShield of Young David. The Arrogant Yearsis the story of her return, literally and fig-uratively, to the faith of her fathers.

Lagnado is especially adept at capturingthe drama and melodrama of her child-hood experiences. Cast as Haman in aschool play, Lucette reveals, she reveledin the line “Who is that dog of a dog whodares not bow down to me?”

Diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease at16, she lay in a hospital bed, feeling sorryfor herself as Edith stroked her hair andwhispered “Loulou, my pretty one.” Lust-ing after Pappagallo shoes but forced tolive in a B. Altman sweater at Vassar Col-lege, she dreaded her kosher TV dinner,interactions with wealthy, well-dressedclassmates and her dorm room, whichlacked curtains and a rug, “feeling morelike an outsider with every passingmonth.”

Lagnado is less adept, it seems to me,when she steps back to understand herodyssey. She is a bit too nostalgic aboutCairo. Her account of her family’s dire

financial straits seems at odds with the 26suitcases the Lagnados brought fromFrance and the “vast” apartment theyinhabited in Brooklyn. And she doesn’telaborate on her observation that inAmerica, “ostensibly the land of upwardmobility, life seemed more rigid andcastelike.”

Most importantly, Lagnado does notadequately explain her retreat from“women’s lib.” Still a teenager, she real-izes, “suddenly,” that the more freedomsfeminists embraced, the more she “want-ed to retreat.” A few years later she con-cludes that the mehitza at the Shield ofYoung David, once a visible, jarringreminder of a way of life filled with struc-tures and strictures, had actually kept hersafe, secure and serene, fostering “feel-ings of kinship and intimacy.” And shestops wondering why the Messiah can’tbe a woman.

It’s not surprising, of course, thatLagnado shed the sense of invincibilityshe had, albeit briefly, as a kid. And whocan blame her for yearning for “absoluteprotection” from an evil eye that haddeprived her, among many other things,of the ability to have children? Nonethe-less, virtually nothing in The ArrogantYears lays the foundation for her procla-mation that the world beyond the parti-tion is “deeply wanting” in comparisonto the world she left behind and that aslong as she does not wander outside thewomen’s section, she will remain “mirac-ulously safe.”

The writer is the Thomas and DorothyLitwin Professor of American Studies at Cor-nell University.

THE ARROGANT YEARSBy Lucette Lagnado

HarperCollins402 pages; $25.99

Where her first bookchronicled the life ofher playboy father,Egyptian-born LucetteLagnado’s engagingaccount of her family’sexperiences in Americafocuses on her mother

LUCETTE LAGNADO. ‘The Arrogant Years’ is a coming-of-age memoir. (Kathryn Szoka)

• GLENN C. ALTSCHULER