The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

by Michael David Lukas

  “I remember when he was a boy,” Mrs. Shemarya said after the tea was served, “he and your mother, they were like bread and butter.”

  As she began the story—describing how my parents first met in the courtyard of the synagogue—the air in the room shifted slightly and side conversations fell silent.

  “It was a great scandal,” Madame el-Tantawi put in, “a Jewish girl and a Muslim boy, even if he was an al-Raqb.”

  There were some nods of agreement. Even so, the general consensus seemed to be that the past was past. What mattered was the end result, that their relationship had produced such a fine young man as myself.

  “I remember when your father came back from Paris,” Mrs. Shemarya continued. “He was so smitten.”

  “And your mother,” Mrs. Mevorakh put in. “They were both so young—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, Mr. Mosseri stood up suddenly from the table.

  “I nearly forgot,” he said as he disappeared down the hall. “Excuse me.”

  A few moments later, by which time the conversation had digressed into an argument about my grandmother’s maiden name, Mr. Mosseri returned with a battered old shoebox and set it on the table in front of me.

  “This is what I was telling you about,” he said, “what I thought you might be interested in seeing.”

  The box contained hundreds of letters—pale blue aerograms, mostly—with index cards marking the years from 1958 to 1976. I pulled out a stack and shuffled through them. They were all written in my mother’s tiny slanting handwriting and all of them were addressed to my father, Ahmed al-Raqb, Ibn Ezra Synagogue, Old Cairo, Cairo, Egypt. I had never known my father to be particularly fastidious. But apart for the inevitable crusting of adhesive flaps, the letters were in pristine condition, all lined up in chronological order like tiny soldiers of the past.

  “After your father left the synagogue,” Mr. Mosseri explained, “I found this at the back of his closet in the watchman’s house. I tried to give them back to him, more than once, but he said to throw them out. Being a sentimentalist at heart, I couldn’t bring myself to follow his wishes. So I put the box at the bottom of a trunk and forgot about it. Until last week, that is, in the attic, when you asked if there might be anything else.”

  Mr. Mosseri removed his glasses and wiped a fleck of dust from the lens.

  “I imagine he would have wanted you to have them.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I read a few lines of the first letter, sent from Paris to Cairo in 1958. Then I folded it back up, wanting to save the box for later that evening when, sitting cross-legged on the couch in my living room, I could read through the entire story at once.

  * * *

  —

  My mother, Claudia Shemarya, was born in Cairo in 1948. The youngest child in the family, she was, from an early age, particularly attached to her father. Despite the admonitions of those who said that he would spoil her, he allowed her to follow him around the neighborhood, trailing behind him from the café to the bakery to the produce market.

  The only place she wasn’t allowed was the slaughterhouse, where the men of the Shemarya family had worked for years. There was no question about that. And so, when her father was finished with his morning rounds, when he was ready to go to work, he would deposit her at the courtyard of the Ibn Ezra Synagogue, where the children of the cantor and beadle played together with the al-Raqb boys.

  Over time, my mother became inseparable from this little troupe. She was especially fond of the watchman’s eldest son, Ahmed al-Raqb, and he looked after her as closely as he would his own sister. The other children said they were in love. And perhaps, in some childish way, they were. But as unusual as their friendship was, no one paid it much attention, in part because they were so young and in part because there were so many more important matters that needed attending.

  In October 1956, the president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, announced the expulsion of all foreigners from the country. This included British, French, and Italian nationals as well as thousands of Jewish families who had known no other home. It happened slowly at first, then all at once. Businesses were seized, civil liberties were stripped away. Jewish teachers, doctors, and engineers were fired. Some families converted, some went into hiding, some used their connections to stay another year and another. But most simply left. After more than a thousand years living on the shores of the Nile, the Jews of Cairo dispersed to London, Paris, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, and San Francisco.

  The Shemarya family left Cairo for Paris in February 1958. Being only ten at the time, my mother didn’t understand the world-historical implications of her exile. She only knew that bad things were happening in Egypt, and that France—the cradle of the language she learned in school, the birthplace of those horrible nuns who taught her math and literature—France would be safer. The day before her family was set to leave, she visited her friend Ahmed one last time. She promised to write, and he promised that one day he would visit.

  Because the postal service between Cairo and Paris was so unreliable, because one could not expect to receive mail in a timely manner, if at all, my mother’s letters read like a kind of epistolary diary, like notes to an imaginary friend from a distant and very different world. Dear Ahmed, the first letter began, I am writing like I told you I would. Paris is exactly like Cairo but much bigger. I have a new school, a new house, and new friends. We eat baguettes with jam every day for lunch and onion soup for dinner.

  In those first few years, my mother’s letters were mostly dry and perfunctory. She gave detailed descriptions of her family’s new home, lists of books she had read, and long chronicles of disputes between school friends. But as the years passed and childhood turned to adolescence, she began sending longer, more intimate letters, pages and pages of her most personal thoughts squeezed onto a single aerogram. Although they were mostly platonic, these letters verged at times on more romantic territory. I’m lonely here and it’s raining, she wrote in the winter of 1962. I think of Cairo almost every day and when I do, I think of you. She told my father more than once that he was her closest friend. You are the only person in the world who truly understands me, she wrote at the end of a two-part letter from March 1963. If only our circumstances were different. If only.

  By the time my father took over as watchman of the Ibn Ezra Synagogue, in 1965, there were fewer than a thousand Jews in Cairo. Those who remained were subject to an increasingly hostile atmosphere. Jewish businesses were targeted by vandals and the new synagogue, Sha’ar Hashamayim, was defaced a number of times in riots inspired by Nasser’s fiery radio speeches. The Ibn Ezra Synagogue avoided defacement if only because it was already in such disrepair. But as difficult as his job was, my father continued to perform his duties with care and devotion, like his father and his grandfather before him.

  After the Six Day War, when anti-Jewish sentiment was at a peak, his brother tried to convince him to resign and join him in the produce distribution business. My father must have known that the Jewish community would not be able to support a watchman much longer. Still he rejected Uncle Hassan’s offer, in part because of his commitment to the Jews of Cairo and in part, I would like to imagine, because he didn’t want to betray his memory of that innocent little girl, Claudia Shemarya, or his image of the young woman she had become. For in spite of her childlike handwriting, there was no doubt that my mother was no longer that same little girl.

  Her letters from this period were full of passion, curiosity, and self-doubt, enamored of the world’s beauty and overflowing with strongly held, sometimes contradictory ideas about politics, culture, and art. Yesterday I saw a linden tree, she wrote, dripping wet with rain, and I thought of all the workers in the world, so burdened by the weight of history. At times she seemed to be writing to herself, using the letters as a journal in which she tried to make sense of the world and her plac
e in it. At other times, they read like an intimate conversation between old friends, my mother providing the dialogue for both sides.

  You said you want me to send you a picture, she wrote in the fall of 1966, just after her eighteenth birthday, so you can imagine the person who is writing to you. I understand. I’ve thought many times about asking the same of you. But I am reluctant to take that step. Why? Because I already have a picture of you, my dear Ahmed—in my mind. It might seem strange, but the truth is that I can see you perfectly, in your words, in the curve of your letters, in the crease of the page on which you write, I can see you better than I could in any picture. Though you must wonder as you read this: Maybe there’s some reason she doesn’t want to send a picture? Is she hiding something? Fear not, my curious friend. I can assure you that I am very pretty.

  In June of 1968, following an uncharacteristic silence of two months, my mother posted a long letter detailing her participation in the student revolt that spring. A fervent idealistic barrage covering twelve pages of thick, cream-colored paper, the letter recounted impromptu lectures, late-night debates with fellow classmates, ideological skirmishes, and a particularly powerful experience helping to staff a makeshift first-aid clinic behind the barricades. I agree that those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking, she wrote. I hate de Gaulle with the very fibers of my soul. But after seeing what I saw that day, I’m not entirely sure violence is the solution. In addition to her account of the revolt, the letter also alluded to a profound personal transformation. I see the world now with fresh eyes, she wrote. We are all connected. I see that so clearly. Love is more powerful than anything. Try as they might to take it from us, the possibilities in the bond between two humans cannot be broken. What she meant by this, I have no idea. Maybe it was just cosmic vagueness. Perhaps she was trying to hint at an affair with one of her fellow revolutionaries. Or maybe she was trying to express her own tangled feelings about my father. Regardless, the letter seemed to be a turning point, a last gasp of adolescent passion before she settled into adulthood.

  In the years that followed, the flighty romance of her teenage years was replaced by a mature self-awareness. She wrote once a month, updating my father on her studies, the success of her brothers’ kosher meatpacking business, her job as a secretary at a small law firm, and her thoughts on pursuing a doctorate in French literature. As she began to think of the future, her fantasies took on a more practical quality. She wrote long, detailed descriptions of the life she imagined for herself, where she wanted to live, how many children she wanted to have, and so on. Although she was always careful to allow for the possibility that my father would be included in this future, she also seemed increasingly aware of the potential difficulties in such a union. If all this dreaming is too much, she wrote in March 1971, if you ever want me to just be quiet and get on with my life, to stop sharing all these crazy fantasies, please tell me. Because we both know how hard it would be—with my parents, with your parents, with everyone—and the last thing I want is for you to get hurt.

  In the fall of 1973, three weeks into my mother’s first semester as a doctoral student, the Yom Kippur War broke out. A week after the end of the war, she sent a short and somewhat cryptic letter to my father at Uncle Hassan’s address in Maadi. My dear Ahmed, she wrote, I hope you know how much I care about you and how much I admire your dedication to your work. That goes without saying, I suppose, but it’s worth saying after the week you’ve no doubt had. You should know also that I’m not the only one who feels this way. You are a good man, Ahmed. No matter what anyone might say, you have no reason to be ashamed. You did the only thing you could have done. And I, for one, think you behaved heroically. The letter continued on like this for a few more lines. Then, in closing, she suggested that he might come visit her in Paris.

  When I first read this letter, I felt a tingle of anticipation at the base of my spine. Here was the turning point, the crux of it all. I knew what happened next. Still, in the moment, it felt unsettled. Flattening the aerogram on the coffee table in front of me, I tried to picture my mother sitting down at a café or a carrel in the university library, tried to imagine what she might have been thinking as she unfolded the thin blue paper and began writing to her childhood friend, that invisible yet ever-present confidant who was her only remaining link to the city of her birth. She would have been twenty-five at the time, in her first semester of graduate school, still living with her parents, and entirely unaware of how drastically this letter would change the course of her life. Had she thought about my father that morning on the Métro, had she already begun to work through the words she would use to console him, had she decided to invite him to visit, or had she simply poured her heart onto the page and sealed it up before she could reconsider? Who knows what she meant by the offer? In a way, it doesn’t matter. Because, two weeks later, my father was on a boat to Marseilles.

  There is no record of the visit except in retrospect, but it seems to have gone well. When my father returned home from Paris, there was a letter waiting for him at Uncle Hassan’s apartment. My dear Ahmed, my mother wrote, I would like nothing more than to be there with you now, to greet you upon your arrival, to spend the night in your arms. But for now this letter must stand in my stead, this letter, the fast-fading memories of our time together, and the hope that we will see each other soon. Two days later, she sent a longer note, recounting certain details of their trip—a movie in the middle of the day, a crêpe shared in the park, an impromptu weekend in the Loire Valley—and reflecting on her reaction to something my father said on their last day together. I don’t know why it upset me so much, she wrote. I’m not religious. I don’t even know if I believe in God. Still, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to convert, if only because I know how much it would upset my parents. Four days later she sent another letter, enumerating how much she missed him, then another a week after that.

  The letters continued on like this for four months. Then, something shifted. In March 1974, she wrote a long ruminative note, filling three aerograms with her thoughts on history and culture, the past and the future, Ibn Khaldun’s theory of civilization and Levinas on confronting the Other. I want to escape the shackles of the Old World, she told him. I want a better life, for myself and for my family. More than anything, I want for us to be together. I want to live that life with you. But, my dear Ahmed, my sweet friend, the truth is I don’t know how it can happen. I wish it were possible, I wish it were that easy, but with my family, with your family, I just don’t know how it would work. At the end of the letter, she mentioned some difficulties with her parents and asked him to send all future correspondence to her office at the university. She neglected, however, to mention that most important piece of news—and the source, most likely, of the difficulties with her parents: she was four months pregnant with his child.

  It’s a striking omission, but one can imagine how difficult a time it must have been for her. Her parents can’t have been happy, especially not when they found out who the father was, not only a Muslim but a common watchman. One would imagine that all available options were discussed. At the time, abortion was illegal in France, but it wouldn’t have been too difficult to go abroad or find a back-alley clinic in Paris. There were also ways to arrange for a discreet adoption, go to Switzerland for a few months and come back good as new. Whatever discussions they might have had—the shattered dishes, the frank conversations, the hushed phone calls to well-connected friends of the family—my mother kept them to herself. And the decision she eventually made, she made alone.

  Her next letter was posted eight months later, from Culver City, California. I am living in Los Angeles, she wrote. I dropped out of my doctoral program and I’m teaching French at the university here. The reason I am writing is to tell you that you have a son. His name is Yusuf and he is three months old. I apologize for not telling you earlier and I understand if you are upset that I kept this information from you. Things
have been very difficult. So many times I wanted to write, to tell you everything. So many times I imagined getting on a plane to Cairo, taking a taxi to your apartment, and falling into your arms. But I knew that this was a decision I had to make on my own.

  Over the next eight months, her letters were tender and intimate, filled with detailed accounts of my development and descriptions of our life in Los Angeles. He has your smile, she wrote a few weeks before I turned six months old, and when he giggles he scrunches up his nose just like you. Over time she became more and more open to the idea that they might be able to make a family together. You would like it here, she wrote. It’s always warm and you’re never too far from the water. In July of 1975, my mother sent a postcard of the Santa Monica Pier. I wish you were here, she wrote, and less than a month later he was.

  Her next letter, postmarked at the end of September 1975, was an extended reflection on what seemed to be a less than successful visit. I’m glad you came, she wrote, I really am, because I wanted you to see Yusuf and because it helped me to see what I have known for a long time now but haven’t been able to admit to myself, that it could never work between us. This has nothing to do with our fight at the beach or your disagreements with my landlord. It’s not because I don’t love you. I do. It’s not because I don’t think you will be a good father. I do. We’re just too different, Ahmed. As much as I care about you, the truth is that our lives have taken us in different directions and it’s best, I think, to acknowledge that now instead of later.