Taste: A Matter of Life and Debt By Lucette Lagnado

By Lucette Lagnado

Leon Lagnado and traveling documents WEEKEND JOURNAL

18 June 2004

The Wall Street JournalIn December 1963, my family sailed from Cherbourg, France, to New York by way of the Queen Mary. The voyage aboard the graceful old ship took about six days. It would be almost 16 years before my father could pay back the $1,199 in travel expenses, chiefly the purchase of 5 1/2 tickets on the Cunard Line. I was the half.

A while ago I unearthed the ledger detailing my father's repayment of the debt in the archives of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the agency that helped bring my family over to this country. A month-by-month accounting of every one of the $10 and $15 payments, it was part of a thick dossier that chronicled our journey from Nasser's Egypt, one of tens of thousands of Jewish families fleeing the Mideast, caught in a 20th-century Exodus.

For the longest time, I found the crumbly letters and telexes too painful to read, until I realized that the story they told was redemptive -- not about a family's exile and loss but about one man's sense of honor and personal responsibility. They may seem like quaint notions nowadays, but they seem exactly right for Father's Day.

After we left Cairo, my family was stranded for months in Paris. Forced to leave behind any money we had, stripped of any meaningful status -- the file describes us as "stateless" -- we joined the sad sacks who gathered nightly in a local soup kitchen. Home consisted of two cramped rooms in the Violet Hotel, a charmless establishment overlooking an alley.

My father took the family's fall especially badly. He had been a wealthy boulevardier in Cairo, with a passion for playing poker, baccarat and the stock market. Tall and elegant, Leon Lagnado was known for his white shark-skin suits and movie-star ease. He enjoyed bantering with British officers stationed around Cairo who nicknamed him "Captain Phillips," and his demeanor, even to eyes less biased than my own, invited comparisons to Cary Grant. Though a bad accident in the late 1950s had left him with a limp, he routinely ventured out into his beloved Cairo, relying on taxis to get around.

There were no more taxis for him in Paris, or none that he could afford, only the help of the small wooden cane that he used to navigate the stairs of the Violet Hotel. No elegant suits, either: At one point, the files show, he actually asked workers at HIAS if they could provide him with a new raincoat, "since his old one was worn out." Meanwhile, a debate raged among the bureaucrats over our request to resettle in America. The problem was Dad.

There he was, at an age (55) when many men in that era began to ponder retirement, with a broken leg that had never really healed and few prospects. "In this unit of six persons, however, one can assume only the two older children will be able to find employment immediately," an agency letter states. Noting my father's limp, it added: "Though in Egypt he worked until the family's departure, he may not be able to find easily employment in the U.S. because of his age and this handicap." A French doctor helped Dad's cause by certifying that he would indeed be able to hold down a job, though it would have to be "sedentary."

At last, my family was allowed to depart for America and given help to do so. Tickets were purchased for the Queen Mary. In a promissory note that my father signed in Paris, and that was translated in multiple languages, he agreed to reimburse all the costs covered by the agency, including "ocean transportation, inland transportation, documentation, baggage, transit maintenance and other." These were to be paid back "in one lump sum or by installments of not less than $10 per month during the first year and $20 per month thereafter."

Who knew that "thereafter" would mean so much of his life in America? The repayment would span nearly two decades, until shortly before he became ill with Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and sundry other ailments. There was a grace period of a couple of years. Then, in September 1966, my father's first payment -- $5 -- arrived, the ledger shows. By October he had upped his remittance to $10, an amount he continued to send faithfully over the next two to three years. There were occasional gaps. But there were also times, like September 1967, when he made two payments in the space of four weeks, totaling $20.

Not that even such small amounts were easy to come up with. The agency hadn't overcome its initial wariness about letting Dad in. The file shows that it contacted him a couple of times to see if he'd found a job. "Unfortunately, not yet," he wrote in the trembling scrawl that foreshadowed the Parkinson's that would overtake him some years later. On the space that asked for the "name of employer," he scribbled a question: Was there any chance of finding work with their agency?

Good for you Dad, I thought, as I perused the file. Throw the ball back in their court. He continued to pay the debt back in $10 increments, then increased the amount again, to $15, in the winter of 1968. The balance-due column continued to inch downward. The agency seems to have been a diligent but deeply benign creditor that didn't charge interest or threaten debtors as hospitals and other hallowed not-for-profits do these days. (They seem to have forgotten the charitable calling that earned them their tax-exempt status in the first place.)

I know that at home my parents always spoke with affection of HIAS. It was perhaps this fondness, and a recognition that the agency had bailed us out, that made Dad so determined to fulfill the terms of the promissory note. By January 1969 he had whittled down the obligation to less than $1,000. By the mid-1970s, the amount due was down to about $400.

My father never did find an employer in New York, though he did go to work every day. I still remember him setting out each morning, carrying the yellow manila envelope that he used instead of a briefcase, along with a large brown box perched under his arm.

He had become a tie salesman. His "office" was the streets and subways of New York, where he offered prospective customers dazzling ties with labels that said "100% Silk" and "Made in France" or "Made in Italy." They were none of the above, but the customers were taken by his charm and perhaps also moved by the sight of this dignified old man. And he occasionally made a sale.

I know because, as a little girl, I would sometimes watch as he button-holed potential customers on the street, or on the BMT line, and open the box to reveal his treasure trove of ties.

The bits of money that he earned helped to pay the rent, put food on the table and, not least, repay the debt of the Queen Mary. By the summer of 1979 the debt was down to $39. He made two payments, one in July and the final one, for $20, in September. An agency worker stamped a receipt "Paid in Full" and marked the balance due: "$.00."

I think the bureaucrats who wavered about letting Dad come to the U.S. should feel, on balance, pleased with their decision. He turned out to be an awfully good credit risk.

Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will recount it to thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. (Deuteronomy 32:7)
This organization shall be known as HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF JEWS FROM EGYPT, and not of Egypt or of Egyptian Jews, but FROM EGYPT

Taste: A Matter of Life and Debt By Lucette Lagnado

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