The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

by Michael David Lukas

  Meanwhile, those other uncertainties were beginning to dissipate. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they were subsumed by something else. Abdullah wasn’t the type of guy I usually went for, and maybe that was a good thing. We almost never talked about ideas. I don’t even think he knew that I was a graduate student. But there was an ease to our interactions that I can’t remember with any of the brash, hyperintellectual guys I usually dated. As we spent more and more time together, drinking tea and smoking shisha on the front steps of the building, we began to develop little patterns and jokes. Those seemingly accidental brushes—his hand against my arm, his knee settling in next to my ankle—became more and more common. And one day, an unseasonably cool afternoon in the middle of September, the tension finally broke.

  I had spent most of that morning searching for one of the last Gamal al-Din streets on my list, a wisp of an alley near the southern tip of Zamalek, and when I got back to the apartment I was feeling particularly frustrated.

  “Are you okay?” Abdullah asked when he saw me coming up the stairs. I must have looked upset, because he stood to offer me his stool.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just—”

  I had thought it would be easy. I would find Mr. Mosseri and he would answer all my questions. Just being in Cairo, I had thought, would help me understand my father, the package, and all the stories crowded inside. The pyramids and the Cairo Tower, the murky taste of tap water and the prickle of sunburn at the back of my neck, all these things would combine to give me some visceral understanding unavailable to me in California. But, of course, that wasn’t how it turned out.

  “I don’t know,” I said, letting my head fall into my hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  Abdullah didn’t respond, but I could feel the weight of his hand on the back of my neck and his thumb working into my shoulder.

  “You are trying,” he offered after a long silence.

  “But what difference does it make, if I can’t find Mr. Mosseri?” I said, sitting up. “What am I doing? Wouldn’t it be easier if I just went home?”

  While he considered these questions, Abdullah moved his hand to my knee, as if that were its natural resting place.

  “Sometimes it is most important to look,” he said, his thumb kneading slowly into my thigh. “And for me—”

  He paused to find the right words, his lips moving slightly as they tried out the various sounds. Before he could say anything else, I put my hand on the back of his neck and—without thinking, without considering the potential consequences, without even looking back over my shoulder to see if there was anyone coming down the stairs—drew him toward me.

  I felt his pulse quicken under my fingers. But when I leaned in, he moved his hand to my chest and gently, unmistakably, pushed me away.

  “Not here.”

  “Come upstairs, then.”

  “Not now,” he said. “I can’t leave my post.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Soon.”

  Later that night, I woke to the sound of someone jiggling the front door of my apartment. For a moment, I thought it might be an intruder, a drunk neighbor, or a policeman come to arrest me for “obscene behavior.” But then the lock clicked, the door swung open, and with a breath of footsteps, Abdullah was at the edge of my bedroom.

  “I thought you couldn’t leave your post,” I teased.

  “Tonight I can,” he said and he pulled the galabiya up over his head.

  He came on strong out of the gate—gripping, grunting, pulling my hair—then slowed at his peak and crumpled beside me. It wasn’t at all how I expected. There was no hard shell of closeted reticence, no unschooled tenderness transformed to sweaty passion. And afterward, there was none of the awkwardness I had anticipated.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I found him sitting on the salmon-colored velvet couch in the middle of my living room, wearing my Santa Cruz T-shirt and a pair of my blue-and-green-striped boxers. He had his feet tucked under him and was examining the presentation case, which I had left out on the coffee table.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  There was no malice in his voice, no suspicion or accusation, nothing but pure curiosity. And yet, seeing him there on my couch, I felt a pinch of anxiety in my chest.

  “That?” I said as the fear spread into my extremities.

  How was I supposed to know that he was who he said he was? He could be anyone, a fundamentalist, an agent from the Ministry of the Interior. And now here he was, sitting on my couch, asking me questions I didn’t know how to answer. Even if I did know how to answer the questions, even if he was who he said he was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him I was Jewish. I heard my mother’s voice, saying what she always said. You can’t trust them. We have to stick together. I tried my best to think up a lie, an easily believable story that wouldn’t eventually lead back to the synagogue, to my mother’s family, and all of that. But in the end, in spite of the fear, the truth was what came out.

  “That’s the reason I came to Cairo,” I said, sitting down next to him.

  He held the case for a moment in the bowl of his hands, then he opened it carefully, and trailed his fingers along the glass protecting the paper inside.

  “You came here for a piece of paper?”

  “It’s more than a piece of paper,” I said and he looked down at it again, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

  “To me it looks like a piece of paper.”

  As I explained the importance of this particular paper, as far as I understood it—the Arabic phrases Aisha had been able to decipher, my father’s connection to the synagogue where Uncle Hassan thought the paper might have been found—Abdullah removed it from its velvet lining and carefully examined both sides. He stared down at the Hebrew side for a long while, then looked up at me. The implications of it all were beginning to settle across his face.

  “This is Jewish?” he asked.

  “Hebrew,” I corrected. “It’s from a synagogue, in Old Cairo.”

  He nodded, though he still seemed somewhat confused.

  “Your father, he was a Jew?”

  “No,” I said.

  I did my best to explain, how my father was Muslim but worked as the watchman of a synagogue, how he met my mother, who is Jewish, in the courtyard of this same synagogue, before she left Cairo, how—depending on whom you asked, depending on how you thought of it—I was either Jewish or Muslim, or both. Though the truth was, I didn’t feel especially connected to either. Aside from a few weeks of Jewish camp when I was younger and a couple of trips to the mosque that summer I spent in Cairo, I didn’t have much experience with either faith.

  “Maybe…” I said eventually, still struggling to explain. “There are some stories my father used to tell me, about the synagogue where this piece of paper came from.”

  “Yes,” Abdullah said, “tell me a story.”

  When he was comfortable, his head on the armrest of the couch and his feet in my lap, I began, telling him about the great line of al-Raqb watchmen, stretching down through the years from father to son, father to son. When I came to the end, to the package, Mr. Mosseri, and the newspaper clipping I found in my father’s room, Abdullah was silent, watching the soft glow of the sunrise through the curtains. He seemed to be formulating a response, thinking through the sentence in order to get it right.

  “I want to help,” he said finally. “I think I can help you find Mr. Mosseri.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked and he sat up, rearranging himself on the other side of the couch.

  “This scroll,” he said, “in the attic of the synagogue, tell me more about this.”

  6

  WITH MORNING, A dusty red light spilled over the Muqattam Hills and filled the floor of the valley between the Citadel and the pyramids. Warming the stone of
the medieval city, it lingered among the pillars of the Ibn Tulun Mosque, climbed its spiraling minaret, and spun out over a quilt of streets and stone and cotton fields to the hazy rise of the pyramids. While her other half slept, Agnes sat in the blue wingback chair next to their northerly window, contemplating the chessboard and watching the city fill with color. She usually woke a few minutes before her sister and relished the protective quiet she felt during that early sliver of morning. It made her think always of those first few minutes alone in the world, before she became a sister, a twin, before their mother died; before her life became their life, and her thoughts their thoughts.

  As if in response to this sentiment, Margaret opened her eyes and lifted her head, taking in the unfamiliar angle of dawn. A thread of spittle connected the corner of her mouth to the pillow, like a fish hooked to the line of sleep.

  “Up long?”

  Agnes shook her head and they watched the rest of the sunrise in silence. The light was different here. How could it not be? How could this sun, under whose rays Moses and Saladin and Ramses had walked, be the same one they knew from Cambridge? The light was of a stronger weft, and stubborn, refracted as it was through sand and dust and five thousand years of history. Perhaps this persistence of light was what disposed the Egyptians toward its absence, the gloomy shadows of the veil and the cold black humidity at the center of the pyramids. Perhaps the strength of the light was what inspired that peculiar Jewish practice, burying sacred texts or secreting them away in the attic of the synagogue. How had Dr. Schechter put it? The contents of the book go up to heaven like the soul. The past in Egypt was never too far from hand. Always present, always lurking in some attic or at the bottom of a forgotten chest. The entire country was a sort of reptilian palimpsest. Beneath each skin lived another, waiting for the right reactive agent, the right traveler to uncover it.

  Agnes waited until the bottom of the sun lifted itself over the horizon; then she broke the silence.

  “Check.”

  “What?”

  “You’re in check.”

  Margaret craned her neck to see the chessboard. It was a close and tangled bout, as their games always were. Agnes had attacked first, but Margaret hung back, drawing her sister in with the patience of a spider.

  “That was foolish, Nestor.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Move my bishop to Q2.”

  Agnes made the move, and when she did, she saw her foolishness.

  “Blast.”

  They were both silent for a long while, examining the board as they dressed and readied themselves for the day.

  “Let me think on it,” Agnes said as they walked downstairs.

  “You’re far too eager to check, Nestor.”

  “And you, Meggie, are far too eager to gloat.”

  Dr. Schechter and Miss de Witt were seated near the fireplace at the far end of the lobby, talking to a petite and somewhat dandyish Egyptian man. Presumably this was Mr. Bechor, the industrialist from the governing council of the Jewish community, the one who had insisted on taking them on a tour of the city. At first glance, he appeared dignified and well-groomed—a proper effendi, with his fez and light-gray three-piece suit, his delicate hands, and a mustache so thin one could hardly see it at certain angles—but not without a pinch of the brash self-assurance one typically associated with the newly rich. Standing, he had Margaret’s hand at his lips before Dr. Schechter could begin the introductions.

  “Such an honor,” he said, holding Margaret’s gaze for a moment before moving on to her sister. “I have heard so much about you from Dr. Schechter.”

  Although he was the shortest among them—his shiny bald spot about level with the bridge of Agnes’s nose—Mr. Bechor seemed accustomed to upturned glances. Once he was finished with his greetings, he let his gaze sweep from Margaret and Agnes to Miss de Witt.

  “Three beautiful women,” he exclaimed; then he turned to lead them outside to his carriage, an elegant dark-blue-and-silver Landau coach the likes of which Margaret and Agnes hadn’t seen for years.

  After instructing the driver in a dialect that seemed to be a mix of North African Arabic and Hebrew, Mr. Bechor saw to it that Dr. Schechter and the three beautiful women were comfortably seated.

  “I have arranged a rather pleasant itinerary,” he said. “First, a panorama from behind the Citadel. Then lunch at the Gezira Club.”

  He glanced at the twins and they indicated their approval. They had no choice. Mr. Bechor, Dr. Schechter had told them, was a key member of the governing council, and should be appeased at all costs.

  “After lunch, I thought we might visit the site of the new synagogue, on Adly Street, very close to your hotel in fact. Then if we have time, we can stroll through Garden City and take in the new mummies at the museum.”

  At the mention of mummies, Margaret’s face lit up, genuinely.

  “My sister is quite enamored of mummies,” Agnes explained, and Margaret confessed that it was true.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get over the sheer thrill of it, seeing the remains of a person who lived so many thousands of years ago.”

  “They remind me of cats,” Miss de Witt put forth. It was the first time she had spoken all morning, and she seemed anxious to make a good showing. “Don’t you think, with their little noses and tiny wrinkled lips?”

  When no one responded, she straightened her posture and looked around the carriage, first at the sisters and then across to the men.

  “Of course, it could be a fancy.”

  “No, no, you’re right,” Dr. Schechter said, coming in late to her defense. “I think I would like to be mummified myself. That is, if my religion didn’t prohibit such things.”

  While Dr. Schechter held forth on the topic of Jewish burial practices, their carriage emerged from the shadow of the old city and began its climb to the Citadel.

  Mr. Bechor’s panorama was located on a small rise behind the fortress. And, one had to admit, it was quite stunning. The chalky white Muqattam Hills rose up behind them and, less than a hundred yards from where they stood, the minarets of the Muhammad Ali Mosque looked like the smokestacks of a great ship preparing to set out on the ocean of humanity. After pointing to the Ibn Tulun Mosque, Birkat al-Fil Square, and the Abdeen Palace, Mr. Bechor launched into a long string of details about the mosque below them, the enormous cost of its construction, the height of its minarets, and the weight of silver in its domes.

  “The tower,” he said, pointing to a flamboyant brass clock tower in the corner of the courtyard, “was presented to Muhammad Ali by the French king Louis Philippe I, in exchange for the obelisk in Paris’s Place de la Concorde.”

  According to Mr. Bechor’s logic, this exchange of gifts proved that Egypt was on equal terms with the great European powers and that, within a few short years, the birthplace of civilization would surpass those upstart backwaters. He continued on in this nationalistic vein as they climbed back into the carriage and rode across the city to the Gezira Club, making more than a few rather preposterous claims about British rule, Ismail Pasha, and the construction of the Suez Canal. In Mr. Bechor’s opinion, European colonialism had helped spur Egypt along the road of modernization, but the system had long outlived its usefulness.

  “In twenty-five years,” he predicted, “Egypt will be a fully independent nation, with a modern economy and a democratically elected prime minister.”

  “Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” Agnes said as pleasantly as she could manage.

  “Wonderful,” Margaret whispered as their carriage passed through the gates of the Gezira Club, “if not particularly likely.”

  One had to admit that the city had changed a great deal in the past twenty-five years, and much of it for the better. Whatever one thought of Ismail Pasha, one could not deny that he had succeeded in building a modern European city alongside th
e medieval core, a modern Cairo complete with gas lamps, pleasure gardens, and municipal water. Even the Gezira Club seemed different. The palm trees and polo grounds were greener than they remembered, and the clientele was decidedly more Egyptian. Everywhere one looked, there was another well-coiffed businessman with an expensive three-piece suit, a fez, and a sheepish yet somewhat cunning grin.

  Leading them through the front doors of the club and down the entrance hall, past potted fruit trees and red-coated waiters floating about with drinks on stainless-steel trays, Mr. Bechor paused every few steps to greet a friend, a business partner, or a club employee, bestowing upon each a variation of the same handshake, back pat, and double kiss. Winking his way past the maître d’, he directed his party to a semicircular banquette at the back corner of the restaurant. A few moments later, a team of waiters brought drinks along with an assortment of appetizers for the table. This was followed by roast pigeons for the ladies and a mixed grill for the men.