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| Lucette Lagnado, Memoirist of Jews in Old Cairo, Dies at 62 | Lucette Lagnado, Memoirist of Jews in Old Cairo, Dies at 62 |
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| Lucette Lagnado, a journalist and author whose memoirs chronicled her Jewish family’s longing for an exodus-in-reverse after an agonizing departure from Egypt to America in the early 1960s, died on July 10 in Manhattan. She was 62. | Lucette Lagnado, a journalist and author whose memoirs chronicled her Jewish family’s longing for an exodus-in-reverse after an agonizing departure from Egypt to America in the early 1960s, died on July 10 in Manhattan. She was 62. |
| Douglas Feiden, her husband and a fellow reporter, said the cause was complications of treatments for childhood cancer. She died in a hospital. | Douglas Feiden, her husband and a fellow reporter, said the cause was complications of treatments for childhood cancer. She died in a hospital. |
| Ms. Lagnado (pronounced lahn-YAH-doh) was at her death a senior special writer for The Wall Street Journal, where her eye-opening accounts of shortcomings in the American health care system had been inspired by her family’s medical challenges. | Ms. Lagnado (pronounced lahn-YAH-doh) was at her death a senior special writer for The Wall Street Journal, where her eye-opening accounts of shortcomings in the American health care system had been inspired by her family’s medical challenges. |
| An author of three nonfiction books, she won the $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2008 for her evocative memoir “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit.” | An author of three nonfiction books, she won the $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature in 2008 for her evocative memoir “The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit.” |
| That book was, in effect, a biography of her father, Leon Lagnado, a pious Jew by day and playboy by night, who had adroitly navigated what she described as “cosmopolitan colonial Cairo and mystical, sensuous Islamic Cairo” until Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the monarchy in Egypt and Jews were expelled, stripped of their rights and assets or forced into self-imposed exile. | That book was, in effect, a biography of her father, Leon Lagnado, a pious Jew by day and playboy by night, who had adroitly navigated what she described as “cosmopolitan colonial Cairo and mystical, sensuous Islamic Cairo” until Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the monarchy in Egypt and Jews were expelled, stripped of their rights and assets or forced into self-imposed exile. |
| The Lagnados were among the last Jews to flee what she called a “cultural holocaust” in Cairo and embark on a European odyssey. For them, that odyssey ended in Brooklyn in the early 1960s. | The Lagnados were among the last Jews to flee what she called a “cultural holocaust” in Cairo and embark on a European odyssey. For them, that odyssey ended in Brooklyn in the early 1960s. |
| The writer and editor Alana Newhouse wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “That the reality of the Lagnados’ fate is so far from the triumphalism that Americans have come to expect from immigrant narratives is one of many reasons to read this crushing, brilliant book.” | The writer and editor Alana Newhouse wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “That the reality of the Lagnados’ fate is so far from the triumphalism that Americans have come to expect from immigrant narratives is one of many reasons to read this crushing, brilliant book.” |
| Ms. Lagnado further refined what she called “the art of reported memory” in what amounted to a sequel, “The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, From Cairo to Brooklyn” (2011). Here she evoked her mother’s repression — she was forced to marry an older man and forfeit her dream job as the librarian of a private school — and how it fired Ms. Lagnado’s defiance as an adolescent. | Ms. Lagnado further refined what she called “the art of reported memory” in what amounted to a sequel, “The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, From Cairo to Brooklyn” (2011). Here she evoked her mother’s repression — she was forced to marry an older man and forfeit her dream job as the librarian of a private school — and how it fired Ms. Lagnado’s defiance as an adolescent. |
| For her mother, giving up that job signaled the end of those “great arrogant years in the life of a pretty girl,” Ms. Lagnado wrote, quoting the line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender Is the Night” that inspired the title of her book. | For her mother, giving up that job signaled the end of those “great arrogant years in the life of a pretty girl,” Ms. Lagnado wrote, quoting the line from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender Is the Night” that inspired the title of her book. |
| “At the tender age of 6, I had become a refugee,” she wrote, “and undertaken a journey most adults would find daunting, from Egypt to France to America.” | “At the tender age of 6, I had become a refugee,” she wrote, “and undertaken a journey most adults would find daunting, from Egypt to France to America.” |
| Lucette Matalon Lagnado was born on Sept. 19, 1956, in Cairo to Leon Lagnado, a Syrian native who ran a loosely defined import-export business, and Edith (Matalon) Lagnado, a bookworm who had read all of Proust by the time she was 15 and instilled in Loulou, as Lucette was known, a thirst for literature. | Lucette Matalon Lagnado was born on Sept. 19, 1956, in Cairo to Leon Lagnado, a Syrian native who ran a loosely defined import-export business, and Edith (Matalon) Lagnado, a bookworm who had read all of Proust by the time she was 15 and instilled in Loulou, as Lucette was known, a thirst for literature. |
| Loulou also imagined herself someday becoming a secret agent, a fantasy fed by her father’s mysterious nocturnal jaunts, his boulevardier’s insouciance and his bonhomie with foreign diplomats. | Loulou also imagined herself someday becoming a secret agent, a fantasy fed by her father’s mysterious nocturnal jaunts, his boulevardier’s insouciance and his bonhomie with foreign diplomats. |
| After escaping Egypt in 1962, the family lived briefly in Paris before emigrating to New York. They arrived with 26 suitcases stuffed with ballroom gowns and other fripperies; but, having been allowed to leave Egypt legally with only $212, they started life in America as penniless refugees in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. | After escaping Egypt in 1962, the family lived briefly in Paris before emigrating to New York. They arrived with 26 suitcases stuffed with ballroom gowns and other fripperies; but, having been allowed to leave Egypt legally with only $212, they started life in America as penniless refugees in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. |
| Relegated to eating in kosher soup kitchens, Ms. Lagnado wrote, they felt alienated as outsiders and homesick, especially during Passover Seders. | Relegated to eating in kosher soup kitchens, Ms. Lagnado wrote, they felt alienated as outsiders and homesick, especially during Passover Seders. |
| “No matter how loudly we sang,” she said, “our holiday had become not a celebration of the exodus from Egypt but the inverse — a longing to return to the place we were supposedly glad to have left.” | “No matter how loudly we sang,” she said, “our holiday had become not a celebration of the exodus from Egypt but the inverse — a longing to return to the place we were supposedly glad to have left.” |
| Her mother later went to work as a cataloger for the Brooklyn Public Library, her father as a textile broker. | Her mother later went to work as a cataloger for the Brooklyn Public Library, her father as a textile broker. |
| Ms. Lagnado was told that she had Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the immune system, when she was 17. She was treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York by Dr. Burton J. Lee III, who went on to become President George Bush’s private physician. | |
| Her later reporting about health care was motivated, she said, by the disparity between the quality care she had received and the shabby care her parents endured before they died in the 1990s. | Her later reporting about health care was motivated, she said, by the disparity between the quality care she had received and the shabby care her parents endured before they died in the 1990s. |
| After graduating from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, Ms. Lagnado earned a bachelor’s degree in English and French literature from Vassar College in 1977. She began her journalism career with The Brooklyn Spectator, a weekly, and from 1979 to 1987 worked for the muckraking columnist Jack Anderson. | After graduating from New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, Ms. Lagnado earned a bachelor’s degree in English and French literature from Vassar College in 1977. She began her journalism career with The Brooklyn Spectator, a weekly, and from 1979 to 1987 worked for the muckraking columnist Jack Anderson. |
| Her reporting for Mr. Anderson inspired another book, “Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz” (1991), an account of the Nazi death camp experiments, which she wrote with Sheila Cohn Dekel. | Her reporting for Mr. Anderson inspired another book, “Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz” (1991), an account of the Nazi death camp experiments, which she wrote with Sheila Cohn Dekel. |
| Ms. Lagnado was later a reporter for The New York Post, where she met Mr. Feiden, whom she married in 1995 and with whom she lived in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, N.Y. She is also survived by a sister, Suzette Lagnado, and two brothers, Ezra and Isaac. | Ms. Lagnado was later a reporter for The New York Post, where she met Mr. Feiden, whom she married in 1995 and with whom she lived in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, N.Y. She is also survived by a sister, Suzette Lagnado, and two brothers, Ezra and Isaac. |
| Ms. Lagnado was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1990 to 1993, then executive editor of the English edition of the Jewish-American newspaper The Forward from 1993 to 1995. She joined The Wall Street Journal in 1996. | Ms. Lagnado was a columnist for The Village Voice from 1990 to 1993, then executive editor of the English edition of the Jewish-American newspaper The Forward from 1993 to 1995. She joined The Wall Street Journal in 1996. |
| In 2002 she won the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Mike Berger Award for an article about how aging residents coped with living independently in an Upper Manhattan apartment building. | In 2002 she won the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Mike Berger Award for an article about how aging residents coped with living independently in an Upper Manhattan apartment building. |
| Carolyn Starman Hessel, the executive director emeritus of the Jewish Book Council, which administers the Rohr Prize, said that at her death Ms. Lagnado was completing a book about Sephardic Jews living in Arab lands. | Carolyn Starman Hessel, the executive director emeritus of the Jewish Book Council, which administers the Rohr Prize, said that at her death Ms. Lagnado was completing a book about Sephardic Jews living in Arab lands. |
| Ms. Lagnado said her most valued possession was a letter she received from a retired Egyptian diplomat, who said he had been moved to tears by her recollections of her past. He wrote, she said, what amounted to an unofficial apology for Egypt’s role in ruining “this vanished world that had haunted me so — a time when and a place where Jews lived peaceably with Muslims and Christians in a magical Arab city called Cairo.” | Ms. Lagnado said her most valued possession was a letter she received from a retired Egyptian diplomat, who said he had been moved to tears by her recollections of her past. He wrote, she said, what amounted to an unofficial apology for Egypt’s role in ruining “this vanished world that had haunted me so — a time when and a place where Jews lived peaceably with Muslims and Christians in a magical Arab city called Cairo.” |