Salma Ali
Post 5 of 5
5/8/18
“The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit”
This book discusses the lives of immigrants who came from Cairo, Egypt. It is the story of Lucette Lagnado and her family, specifically her father and the experience from going from Cairo to Alexandria to Paris to the United States. She discusses Cairo in a way where it is a magical place that was very difficult to leave. She reminisces on her street and the great views from her house where she watches all the people on her block interact and the things they carried and walk by with. I loved reading about this because although I was born in the U.S., I visit Egypt every year and I know exactly how to relate to these treasuries of moments. It is amazing how you can never be bored when sitting in the balcony and just watching people go about their day. It is such a beautiful country and everything about it amazes me. Even better, I love to hear the stories my father has to say about his experiences during his childhood and the people he grew up around and the neighborhood itself.
I can imagine why it was so hard to leave a place like that to find a better source of income for yourself. Lucette Lagnado is a reporter at Wall Street Journal and she discusses how the war forced her family to leave and to lose their home and privileges. She discusses the struggles that they went through when they first arrived to the United States and how they poor for so long when they arrived and the amount of work her father had to do to build up for his family.
This story relates to the People of New York City because it discusses another ethnic group of people who had to leave their country for exile reasons and find a new home in New York and start over. I can relate to this in the fact that my father also left home and came to find work in a foreign country and built a life here from scratch. After all, the famous term for Egypt is “Om el Donia”, which means “Mother of the World”.
Question
If Leon can return to Cairo, would he do it immediately or would it take a lot for him to do so?
