The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

by Michael David Lukas

  On his third round that night, Ali convinced himself to do what Hasdi had instructed. When he entered the attic of the synagogue, he extinguished his lantern and, after a moment standing in the warm darkness of the room, he saw it. Just as Hasdi had said, one of the wall panels was glowing as if dipped in a faint hoary light. Without the illumination of his lantern it was difficult to miss. Ali stared at the panel for a long while. Then, wiping his hands dry on the front of his galabiya, he picked his way carefully across the attic, over piles of documents and discarded books. When he was less than an arm’s length from the glowing panel, Ali squatted down and reached out to touch it. As the tips of his fingers brushed the wood, he felt a wave of energy pulse through him like a sudden rush of blood. It was a feeling similar to that tingling awareness he had noticed on his first night in the attic, only a thousand times stronger.

  As Hasdi had said, there was a hidden chamber behind the panel, inside of which was a Sefer Torah scroll. Nestled upright in a bed of pale blue silk, the scroll was luminous and pulsing with slick silver light. Without stopping to think or to question what he was doing, Ali placed the vellum next to the scroll. Then he returned the panel, grabbed his lantern, and left the attic.

  When he got back to his post, Ali’s mouth was dry and his heart was beating so loudly he thought it was something outside himself. He could still feel the power of the scroll coursing through his body. All at once, he understood why the council was so secretive about the rites he had observed that night after the feast, why Hasdi was so insistent about the execution of the spell. The Ezra Scroll contained a magic so powerful it could not be spoken. And Ali knew that, in meddling with its powers, he had done something terribly wrong. He had betrayed the trust of al-Zikri and the entire council. He had wronged all the members of Ibn Ezra, including his beloved—especially his beloved. As the beating of his heart subsided, Ali felt a great shame settle into the pit of his stomach. And yet, at the same time, a small part of him was happy, smiling at the thought that this new charm might really work.

  Two nights later, Ali retrieved the vellum and slipped it into the sleeve of his galabiya. He tried not to think about what he had done, but he could feel it there, pulsing lightly along the inside of his arm. After just two days in the attic, it seemed to have absorbed a small portion of the Ezra Scroll’s magic, just as an article of clothing will assume the smell of its owner.

  That next afternoon, Ali brought the vellum with him to Hasdi’s shop.

  “You were successful,” Hasdi said, barely able to contain his grin.

  Ali nodded and handed it over. Its glow was difficult to make out in the bright light of the afternoon, but he could feel its warmth rushing through his hand.

  “Excellent,” the magician said, seeming quite pleased as he cut off a corner of the paper.

  While Hasdi filled the small triangle of vellum with a snaking line of Hebrew and Arabic letters, Ali let his eyes range over the shop. The cage near the door, he noticed, was occupied now by a litter of black and white kittens. Ali tried not to imagine what would become of these animals. He tried not to think of the frogs and the pigeons that had preceded them.

  “Burn this in your fire tonight,” Hasdi said, placing the piece of vellum inside a small cloth bag. “And make sure you inhale a bit of smoke.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is strong magic,” Hasdi continued. “It will not fail you.”

  “And the rest of the vellum?”

  “That is your payment,” he said with a chuckle, “a small price to pay for true love, I should think.”

  A small price to pay for true love. Ali repeated this phrase to himself over and over again as he went about his rounds that night, doing his best to avoid the question of whether love compelled by magic could ever be true. In the darkest hour of his shift, when the night birds ceased their chatter, Ali sat down on his stool and took this new charm out of his pocket. He could see its glow more clearly in the darkness and he felt a subtle warmth where it touched his palm. What he was about to do was wrong. He knew that it was wrong, just as he knew the Nile would flood its banks the following spring. Still, it was a small price to pay for true love.

  Ali pictured his beloved, asleep on the floor next to her sisters; clenching his teeth, he placed the charm in the fire. At first, it did not burn. Then the vellum crackled and burst into flames. Instead of smoke, it gave off a shower of light like tiny stars. An uprising of sparks danced along the ridge of the flame. Then, as suddenly as it began, the fire died back to its normal shape. Ali was still staring into the flames, watching the last sparks flicker and vanish, when he heard a voice by the front gate.

  “That light,” al-Zikri said, looking around the courtyard. “Did you see that?”

  “It came from the fire,” Ali told him. “I was burning a strange piece of wood.”

  They both looked into the fire, as if a better explanation might be found there. After some time, Ali spoke again.

  “May I ask you a question, al-Zikri?”

  He had so many questions—about the Ezra Scroll and Hasdi il-Sephardi, about magic and betrayal and the price of true love—but these were questions he could not ask. Instead, he asked a simpler one, a question he had been wondering about for some time.

  “Why do the Jews put their papers in the attic?”

  “It is natural you would be curious,” al-Zikri said and, sucking on the bottom of his mustache, he glanced back at the fire.

  There was the injunction against throwing away documents that contain the name of God, he explained, which was based on the belief that such papers hold something of God’s majesty. Ali nodded. He had heard this before.

  “Different synagogues choose different means of disposal,” al-Zikri continued.

  The members of Ibn Ezra chose to discard their papers in the attic of the synagogue—which they called the geniza—in part for reasons of religious practice and in part because the graveyard, Bassatine, was so far away. As he finished his explanation, Ali began to ask another question, but stopped when he saw what he thought was a fleck of suspicion at the corners of al-Zikri’s eyes. They stood for a few moments in silence, then al-Zikri put a hand on Ali’s shoulder and turned to leave.

  “Good night, Ali,” he said. “We will talk more in the morning.”

  * * *

  —

  That following afternoon when Ali stopped by Ephraim ibn Shemarya’s fabric shop, hoping to continue the conversation with al-Zikri, the men were consumed with a discussion about one of the synagogue’s ritual slaughterers, a man named Yakob, who had suddenly taken ill. Doctor Mevorakh said he had never seen such an illness. First came the chills and bloating, then the patient was covered with festering sores that seemed to sap the very life from him. All week, the mood outside the fabric shop was tense. No one talked much, except when Doctor Mevorakh stopped by with an update. Then one morning, less than a week later, Ali was awakened by the sound of wailing. He ran outside and al-Zikri told him the news. Yakob had died.

  “There is no power or strength but in God,” Ali said and al-Zikri agreed.

  “Life is a fickle guest. One never knows when it will depart.”

  Yakob was a simple man, without money for musicians or professional mourners, but he was well loved. And that night, when the funeral procession passed by the front gates of the synagogue, the dead man’s bier was followed by what seemed to be the entire community, all bearing torches and lanterns. Watching the procession stream past, Ali bowed his head, but not so deeply that he would miss his beloved if she walked by. He knew this was a horrible thing to think, but at that point, his longing was beyond his own control.

  After the procession had passed, Ali returned to his post and took up his lantern for a second round. Nothing seemed amiss in the courtyard or the prayer hall, but when he climbed down into the attic, he saw that the piles of paper had
been scattered, as if by a hungry animal. The compartment that housed the Ezra Scroll had been thrown open, but thankfully the scroll was still there, glowing slightly in its nest of pale blue silk. Raising his lantern, Ali picked his way to the back of the attic, looking for some indication of who or what had caused the mess. When the slant of the roof prevented him from going any farther, he turned. And there, hiding in a dim niche at the front of the room, was Hasdi il-Sephardi, a sack slung over his shoulder and white hair glinting in the yellow lantern light. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The only movement in the room was the trembling of Ali’s hands.

  “You do not see me,” Hasdi said.

  Ali closed his eyes, wanting very much to believe that this was nothing more than a hallucination, but when he opened them again, Hasdi was still there.

  Ali took a small step forward and Hasdi raised his hand.

  “You will not tell anyone you saw me.”

  He put a finger to his own temple and Ali felt his head throb in that very spot.

  “If you tell anyone you saw me, I will expose you. I will tell them you forced me to cast a spell on her. I will tell them and you will be ruined. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Ali managed through the throbbing. As soon as he agreed, the pain subsided and Hasdi slipped away.

  After checking to make sure the Ezra Scroll wasn’t damaged, Ali tried to re-form the piles of paper. But no matter how he shaped them, they looked much smaller than they had before. He sat down on the dusty floor of the attic, turned off his lantern, and tried to reassure himself. But he could think of nothing reassuring. If one could make a powerful spell with a piece of vellum left next to the Ezra Scroll for two nights, what might one do with thousands of papers that had lived alongside it for years? He was ruined. He had failed and betrayed the entire community. Shouting into the darkness, Ali kicked a pile of papers, and slapped at the wall until his hands were numb. He had failed in his only task. He had abandoned his post, allowed a thief into the synagogue. And there was nothing he could do to make it better. If he kept the incident to himself, he would be blamed for the missing papers. If he told al-Zikri about the theft, he could only imagine what would happen to him.

  All that night and for many days to follow, Ali was consumed with shame and doubt. He continued with his rounds and every day he made sure to stop by Ephraim ibn Shemarya’s shop, if only to maintain the impression of normalcy. In everything he did, however, he could feel his insides gnawing away at themselves. He blamed Hasdi il-Sephardi. He blamed the council for giving him their trust. He blamed Yakob for dying. He even began to resent his beloved. Most of all, however, Ali blamed himself. And in his worst moments, he wished that he could go back to Uncle Rashid’s house, sleeping on the floor of the pantry, carrying skins of water on his back. It was a hard life, simple and mean, but it was a life he understood, a life he deserved.

  8

  ACROSS THE STREET from the Mar Girgis Metro station, tucked in beneath the sand-colored stone walls of Old Cairo, was an arched wooden doorway studded with iron bolts. On either side, men were selling bottled water and postcards sheathed in plastic. A pair of silver cats slept in a patch of shade under a broken chair, and a group of children kicked a deflated soccer ball back and forth across the street. I told the taxi driver to let me off there, then bought a bottle of water and made my way through the gate into a narrow alley lined with shops.

  “Papyrus,” one of the shopkeepers shouted as I walked by. “Best quality.”

  “No, thank you,” I said and continued on past the procession of eager young men hawking tapestries and papyrus, soft drinks, film, perfume, and the same assortment of little trinkets you could find anywhere in Egypt.

  According to the map at the back of my Lonely Planet, the Ibn Ezra Synagogue was on the other side of Old Cairo, wedged in between the Abu Serga Church and the Greek Orthodox cemetery. It wasn’t particularly difficult to find. A right at the Nunnery of St. George, a left at Abu Serga, and there I was.

  My father had taken me to visit the synagogue a few times when I was younger, but the building I remembered—a boxy, dull yellow structure looming over the churches around it—looked nothing like the one in front of me. It may have been a trick of memory or some combination of perspective and restoration. Either way, I had to squint to convince myself that this squat whitewashed structure was the same place I had visited as a child, that this was the synagogue where my mother’s family had worshipped, the building my father’s family had protected for nearly a thousand years, and somewhere in this courtyard filled with sweat-stained tank-topped tourists, talking about dinner the night before and the camel ride later that afternoon, was the exact place where my parents first met.

  It had been Abdullah’s idea, coming to the synagogue. Even if it was just a tourist attraction, he said, there might be someone there who knew how to get in touch with Mr. Mosseri. He was right—he usually was—it was worth a try. But by that point, I was beginning to lose hope. I had been to all the Gamal al-Din streets in the city. I had left notes, talked to strangers, pressed Uncle Hassan for any memories he might have about Mr. Mosseri or his family. I had called the telephone company; had visited the main synagogue on Adly Street, twice. And that previous week, Abdullah had arranged to take the afternoon off so that he could accompany me downtown to the vast ant farm of Egyptian bureaucracy known as the Mogamma. After nearly a month of searching for Mr. Mosseri, I was beginning to consider the possibility of failure, of packing up and going back to Berkeley. Or maybe I would pick up a few classes at the language school where Aisha taught and drift through the remainder of the year on grammar worksheets and conjugation exercises.

  Standing amidst the sunburns and cargo shorts, listening to a group of Australians argue about the ethics of giving money to street kids, I tried to remember some of the stories my father used to tell me, about the various al-Raqb men who had defended the synagogue from harm. I tried to picture my parents as children playing hide-and-go-seek in the spaces behind the palm trees. But any imaginative abilities I might have possessed were eclipsed by the new paint job, the beep of the metal detector behind me, and the tour groups with their matching T-shirts.

  “Excuse me.”

  In the midst of these thoughts, a security guard approached me from behind.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “You cannot stand here.”

  In retrospect, it probably would have been wiser to respond in English, to play the bewildered tourist card. Instead, I snapped back in Arabic.

  “I can’t stand here?”

  “You can stand there,” he offered, indicating the Australians a few feet away. “But not here. It is a restricted area.”

  I took a half step toward the Australians, then stopped. Why should I have to move? Why shouldn’t I be able to stand wherever I wanted? If anyone had a claim to this space, it was me. My ancestors had prayed in this building; they had risked their lives to protect it.

  I was trying to get this line of reasoning straight in my head, when another more official-looking guard crossed the courtyard toward us. He was wearing a black bulletproof vest and his gun hung loose off his shoulder like a toy that had long ago lost its appeal.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  In spite of the gun and a touch of suspicion at the outer reaches of his voice, he truly did seem to want to help.

  “Yes,” I said, “actually, I’m looking for Mr. Mosseri.”

  “Mr. Mosseri?”

  I reached into my pocket for his card, but there was no need. The very mention of his name was enough. Without another word, this second guard leaped into action, barking orders into his walkie-talkie as he led me to a small stone bench nearby.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said, “we can sit here.”

  He pulled up a chair, took out a pack of cigarettes, and offered me one as he lit his own with a match.
r />   “No, thanks,” I said.

  We were both quiet for a moment, watching the tourists file through the metal detector. Then he turned to examine me more closely.

  “You are Jewish?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and he tilted his head to get another perspective.

  “To me,” he said, ashing carefully into an empty soda can, “you look Egyptian.”

  “My father was Egyptian,” I told him, neglecting my mother for simplicity’s sake.

  “He is Muslim?”

  “He was,” I said and, in explanation of the past tense, “He died a few months ago.”

  The guard mumbled his condolences—There is no strength or power but in God—then returned to the matter at hand.

  “If your father was Muslim,” he explained, “you are Muslim, too.”

  “True,” I allowed, “but Jews pass through the mother. So I’m also Jewish.”

  The guard considered this paradox for a moment, but he wouldn’t concede the point.

  “You can’t be both,” he said. “It is impossible.”

  Before I could respond, before I could try to refute the impossibility of my ancestry, the walkie-talkie squawked again and the guard exchanged a few words with a gruff voice on the other end.

  “You are Yusuf?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  There was another quick exchange—something about Mr. Mosseri and maybe his car—then the guard returned his walkie-talkie to its holster.

  “Come back this afternoon,” he told me. “Five o’clock.”

  “Today?” I asked.

  “This afternoon,” he repeated. “Five o’clock.”

  * * *

  —

  When I returned to the synagogue—after lunch, a visit to the Hanging Church, and three hours in the Coptic Museum—the sun was beginning to dip below the walls of the old city and the shopkeepers were packing up their wares. All the tourists and the security guards were gone. The Abu Serga Church was closed for the evening and the courtyard of the synagogue was empty except for a short bald man in an elegant blue suit.