Alexandrian Summer

by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren

  “Hamdi-Ali.”

  “Hamdi-Ali?”

  “Yusef Hamdi-Ali.”

  “Listen, ya Yusef. We’re a small people. We’ve always been a small people, because our God demands a lot of his believers, and not everyone is willing or able to meet these demands. Our religion is a difficult one, and not accepted by many. Our neighbors do not like us, and they’ll like you even less. Because we, we were born Jewish, but you, one of their own, are turning your back on the religion of your ancestors …” The rabbi shakes his head doubtfully. “Your neighbors, they won’t like this one bit.”

  “Then we’ll keep it a secret.”

  “A secret? How could you? You won’t go to synagogue? You won’t observe the mitzvot? You won’t follow the customs of Israel?”

  “Not the Judaism, we’ll keep secret the … the other religion.”

  “How is that possible? Does nobody know you here?”

  “I’m new in this country. I got off the boat just yesterday.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “As good as dead to me. And I’m the same to them.” Silence.

  “I want to be Jewish,” Joseph finally says.

  “You want to marry a Jew, that’s really what you want!” the rabbi’s son spits.

  “True, but nonetheless, I want to be Jewish.”

  The old rabbi shrugs and says, “Fine, if not on purpose then by accident. God willing, this will please Him. Where do you live?”

  Joseph says nothing. He has no place to live. He certainly cannot stay with his fiancée’s parents.

  “The conversion process is long,” says the rabbi. “Stay here, we have plenty of space.” And he turns to his son with a smile. “As it says in the Torah, ‘the foreigner sojourns among you.’”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  “Are you working?”

  “No, but I …”

  “When you work, you can pay. The bed doesn’t cost anything, and the food …” the rabbi waved the thought away. “You don’t look like you eat very much, anyway. My wife cooks for three and feeds at least half a dozen. We have two or three guests coming over for every meal. She won’t even notice if she has one more mouth to feed.” Then he laughed mischievously.

  “I’ll pay you. How much?”

  “Have you got anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you proposing?”

  “How much? I’ll get a loan.”

  “Fine. One rial per month, room and board.”

  “And for the conversion.”

  “The conversion is a mitzvah.”

  “How much?”

  “Donate to the community. To the poor. As you see fit.”

  After the conversion Hakham Ferrera senior married Joseph and Emilie according to the faith of Moses and Israel. Most of the guests, all on the bride’s side, never guessed that Emilie was marrying a former Muslim. Only after years did the cloak of secrecy begin to fray. Suddenly, people began gossiping. How it was found out, no one could say. Among the Hamdi-Alis the matter was never to be spoken of, and none of the suspecting parties dared ask expressly if there was any truth to the rumor. And so the gossip remained hanging between uncertainty and the family’s utter silence.

  Perhaps this is why Joseph tried, after the marriage, and after leaving Hakham Ferrera’s house, to minimize contact with the old rabbi and his son who succeeded him. They reminded him of the world he’d left behind and wished to erase. With almost cruel decisiveness he severed all ties with his parents, took no interest in their well-being, did not ask when they died or what became of his brothers. He kept only his name. In community records, a Yosef Ben-Abraham was registered, but he himself did not change his heavy Muslim name, the name which pulled him back to his roots. Why did he not change his name? Nobody knew, maybe not even he himself. Soon after they married, Emilie’s father passed away and the young couple, along with the widow, moved to Cairo. Those days, Joseph began making a living riding horses, an activity favored by him since youth. And though the rabbis Ferrera—the father, may he rest in peace, and the son, may he live long and prosper, sitting with him now on the balcony—hadn’t seen him more than three or four times in the many years that had gone by since, a check for two Egyptian pounds, a donation for the community’s less fortunate, arrived at the community offices in Alexandria once a month, every month, for thirty years.

  “I need your help,” Joseph repeated. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  The rabbi’s face turned serious. He saw the abysses open, the two wells of Yusef’s eyes, their bottoms too deep to be seen. Yusef was not a joker. Nevertheless, when he thought of his words, the rabbi was embarrassed. A matter of life and death?

  “The race is tomorrow,” said Joseph. “Tomorrow—the final race. Then, there’s a break. David will race. He must win. The way that David beat Goliath. Just like in the story, there is more to it than just those two. That’s why David had to win then. And that’s why David has to win now. A matter of life and death.”

  A pleasant breeze blew from the sea. The tumult of bathers sounded from afar: Muslims, Christians and Jews desecrating the Sabbath. On the street, cars honked hysterically. The entire city rumbled and roared; nevertheless a Sabbath serenity was felt all around. But the rabbi felt so distant. His late father might have understood immediately, but he thought of himself as a small, insubstantial man. Nothing but a maître de cérémonies, a sort of master of rituals of the synagogue; or, as he once said jokingly about himself, “the conductor of a choir of non-believers.” Everything according to plan, a routine founded in the Jewish calendar, with no unexpected difficulties. But here was a Jew in trouble, and he didn’t even know how to talk to him. “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why is this a matter of life and death?”

  Joseph held back his impatience. If the rabbi himself did not understand, how could he explain it? This was a matter one either understood immediately or never understood at all. Some people spent their entire life on the surface, in a closed, orderly world, never imagining what might be going on below, in the depths, in those twisting, dark tunnels where lost souls seek their way. A rabbi! A spiritual leader, and he doesn’t know God, the devil, or death. Death! What could be more simple, more quotidian than death? How to explain this to him? Finally, he said with a sigh, “He’s being put to a test, don’t you see?”

  “This isn’t the first time he’s participated in a race.”

  “Not him. Him. God. God Himself.”

  “What test?” Hakham Ferrera said awkwardly. He preferred not to bring God into this affair. The entire conversation seemed out of line, dangerous.

  “I’d like you to say a special prayer, Rabbi,” Joseph finally said.

  “What do you mean, a special prayer?”

  “What—what do I mean?” Joseph railed. “Today, at synagogue, a special prayer for my son to win the race tomorrow.”

  “A special prayer for a game of gambling?” the rabbi was outraged.

  “This isn’t about gambling, it’s about—”

  “Please, show me how this is a matter of life and death. Saving a Jewish soul, there is no bigger mitzvah, but it needs a foundation. You cannot bother God with mundane matters. It’s as if … as if …” The rabbi’s eyes bounced around and landed on the toy train in the darkness of the house, “as if you’re pulling an emergency brake to stop a train midride—an act well-justified in a moment of danger, but entirely inappropriate when there is no peril.” For some reason, Hakham Ferrera was not content with his own analogy. Later, he thought that his heart, at that moment, told him this was not a false alarm. He tortured himself for not having heeded his own intuition. But now, on the balcony, he asked himself what the nature of this distress might be. Yusef Hamdi-Ali had been acquitted, life had returned to its course. Next week the season in Alexandria would end, praised be the Lord, and everyone was already packing up to r
eturn to work, school, to the blessed routine that saves most people from purposeless wandering. What did he want? A matter of life and death? It was ridiculous, ridiculous! And nevertheless, Yusef Hamdi-Ali was not a man with a sense of humor. The rabbi squeezed Joseph’s shoulder and assumed his most soothing voice: “What is it, what is it, mon vieux?”

  Joseph couldn’t explain such a simple and obvious thing: David wasn’t David and Tal’ooni wasn’t Tal’ooni. Neither of them was independent or autonomous. They were pawns in the hands of much mightier powers, fighting at all times and places and ways. Tomorrow they would battle on the track, and the winner would bring honor to his kin. Victory tomorrow would be decisive, final and complete. When he told the rabbi, “God is being put to the test,” he had already gone too far. Such things need not be stated explicitly. Joseph felt a secret fear, one he’d never known before. His limbs shook, he could not subdue the storm raging inside him and he grew more and more tired. How could the rabbi not see that this was urgent? That the God of the Jews had to win? That if He didn’t … what would he himself do when faced with Him? With Allah the terrible, Allah who wreaks vengeance upon His enemies? It took place thirty years ago. It took place because of a woman. A woman he no longer loved. Love had faded, the deed remained. The deed that could not be repented. The day of judgment remained.

  Hakham Ferrera pitied him. What was left of that energetic young man, that quiet, self-accepting man? He wanted to help but didn’t know how. Saying a special prayer at the synagogue for a man to win a race? And what if some of the congregation members had placed bets on other horses? He’d be making a spectacle of himself and the synagogue. He and his institution were not properly respected these days anyhow, as in the days of his father. He himself was nothing but a sort of clown, an entertainer. He tried his best to please them all, and wasn’t brave enough even to reprimand the women playing cards on Saturday in the adjacent room.

  “I’ll pay you,” Joseph said impatiently.

  The very same Hamdi-Ali he was thirty years ago! His solution for anything. “I’ll pay!”

  He wanted to issue a rebuke, but instead found himself speaking sweetly through the dust of flattery, “You’ve been donating generously to the community for thirty years …”

  “Not to the community, I’ll pay you!” Joseph said. “Straight into your pocket.”

  “Me?” Hakham Ferrera stood up. “Do you realize you’re insulting me?”

  Joseph wanted to slap the small, self-righteous man. He recalled another occasion, awhile ago, in that club, when he had rejected temptation. How much time had gone by? How many worlds had crumbled! Back then he could still look proudly in everyone’s eyes, but today? What was he trying to do? Bribe a rabbi? Corrupt the entire world? He wanted to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness. Instead he stood up and disappeared word-lessly into the darkness of the hall. In his move from the glaring brightness of the balcony to the darkness of the house he couldn’t see a thing, and accidentally stepped on the toy train on the rug and trampled several cars.

  The next day, looking back, the rabbi said in a trembling voice, “Perhaps I could have helped him. Perhaps. But I didn’t.”

  42. THE STREET LAMPLIGHTER

  The street lamplighter who rides through Rue Delta at dusk, kindling the gas lamps with his long lance topped by a small torch, returns once more along the same route late at night, while the street is deep in slumber. They say that with each lamp he extinguishes, one star goes out in the sky. When he completes his ride along the sidewalks and moves away down the boardwalk toward the east, his silhouette fades against the half-disc of the rising sun.

  Just like that, every day, every week, every month, in all weather, for many years. One day electric lamps would be installed on Rue Delta, and then the lamplighter would disappear from the landscape, fading along with our forgotten childhood, which grows distant with every passing day.

  The lamplighter saw a man lying on the sidewalk. A man sleeping on the sidewalk – not an uncommon sight in a Mediterranean city in the summer. The lamplighter shook his head and picked up whistling the Neapolitan tune that accompanied him through his route. He was about to continue to the next lamp when he noted the man’s clothing. Fine, elegant European clothing.

  It’s a gentleman, he thought with surprise, not a beggar.

  A European man sleeping on the street was not a sight frequently encountered by the lamplighter. During the war, British and Australian soldiers were everywhere in Alexandria. They got drunk at night and often couldn’t find their way back to the barracks and fell asleep on the sidewalk until the sea breeze blew away the webs of intoxication from their eyes, or military police came to drag them away. “This signore must have gotten drunk too,” the lamplighter thought. He wanted to get off his bike and check. Off his bike? Only at the end of the route! He was too lazy to come down. Instead, he poked the man with his long lance. The man did not budge. Eventually the lamplighter muttered an Italian curse and stepped onto the ground. He turned the man over on his back. There was a smile on his face. “Well sure, he’s drunk.” He leaned down and put his nose to the man’s mouth, to check for the smell of alcohol, but couldn’t detect a thing. It seemed the man wasn’t breathing at all. Only then did he think that the man could be dead.

  “A heart attack?” the Italian asked himself. “A man walks down the street and then … basta! Finito!” He began rummaging through the man’s pockets to find his identification, but stopped. What if somebody walked by and thought he’d killed the old man to rob him? You try to be a good Christian and help another human being, even a dead one, and what do you get? Nothing but trouble!

  He jumped back on his bicycle and rode away. He stopped to extinguish the next lamp and look back. A dark bundle lay beneath the previous lamp. The sidewalk was a little lighter back there.

  When he reached the third lamp, the bundle had faded, swallowed into the blue grayness of the sidewalk. By the time he headed for the fourth lamp he’d forgotten the matter and returned to whistling that Neapolitan tune: “O dolce Napoli, o sole beato…”

  And indeed, the sun’s rays filtered down among the buildings along the street, slowly scattering golden dust on the face of the deceased. For a moment, it mischievously played upon the smile on the bluing lips. Joseph Hamdi-Ali had found peace.

  43. OO HALASNA! AND THAT’S THAT!

  Until the results of the autopsy were known, Emilie told whoever would listen that her husband had a heart of steel, that he never complained of pain, and that she couldn’t understand how he, of all people, ended up having a heart attack on the sidewalk in the middle of the night.

  The autopsy threw everything into upheaval. The doctors concluded that Joseph Hamdi-Ali fell onto the sidewalk from a height.

  “Fell or jumped?”

  It’s difficult to recall who asked this question first. At any rate, in the next day’s papers, the possibility of suicide was stated instead as fact.

  Hakham Ferrera visited the widow and tried to console her as best he could. There were other esteemed visitors there, among them the Arab officer Nawas, friend of Robby’s family. The rabbi sang Joseph’s praises, calling him a better Jew than many who were born into the faith (suddenly everyone spoke freely of Joseph’s conversion!), sighed and said that the community’s poor would surely feel the absence of Hamdi-Ali. At this assertion, David quickly volunteered to continue in his father’s footsteps and donate two pounds a month. Rabbi Ferrera went on and on but never mentioned the burial. How could he explain such a thing to the family? But then he couldn’t ignore the feelings of an entire community either. Jewish law is unequivocal on this matter—not the matter of conversion, God forbid, but the matter of suicide.

  Finally, David raised the subject, asking for the rabbi’s advice about interment. “Papa … will be released today from the …” he swallowed, “morgue.”

  There was no getting around it. He had to say something. A man who sentenced himself to death cannot have a
Jewish burial. Only outside the cemetery walls. But how to explain this?

  The rabbi began speaking at length about burial laws and the needs of the deceased, talking in circles and exhausting his listeners, quoting technicalities from the scriptures, and while he fumbled and avoided any clear statements, it occurred to him to try to persuade the family to bury the man in Cairo. This way, responsibility would be transferred to the local Cairo rabbi, and he would be freed from this difficult decision. But David explained to the rabbi that his father had always wished to be buried in Alexandria. This is where he came when he left Turkey, this is where he converted to Judaism, this is where he married and this is where he wanted to be laid to his final rest.

  The rabbi cleared his throat. The wishes of the deceased! What could one say against the explicit wishes of the deceased? Well, let it be, he thought and gathered his courage, and was about to ask the family members to speak with him privately when Emilie suddenly said, “Did you see him when he was found?”

  The rabbi was slightly confused. No, he hadn’t seen him.

  “He looked like an angel of the Lord,” said Emilie.

  The comparison made the wise man uneasy, but this was no time for chastising.

  “Isn’t it a miracle, mon cher Hakham, that Joseph’s body remained intact after falling seven stories?”

  “Intact?”

  “It was as if he’d only lay down to rest for a moment before going on his way.” She burst into tears once more. “God sent the angel Gabriel to help him get there …” This is what Joseph himself had said once, after Leila, in her first, wild days with him, almost threw him off her back.

  “Like a parachute,” Victor said, not meaning to be funny, but nevertheless receiving a cruel blow from David.

  “Leave the little orphan alone,” Emilie cried, protecting her young son. She clung to him and yelled in Arabic, “Abuk mat, abuk rakh!” Your father’s dead, your father’s gone. Mother and son wept in each other’s arms.