The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas (Spiegel and Grau) March 2018- In 40 words or less: Mixing historical figures with a centuries-long fictional story, Lukas brings to life the centuries-long intertwining of the Muslim and Jewish communities. In the modern thread, a graduate student heads to Cairo to learn more about the father he barely knew.
- Genre: Historical fiction
- Locale: Cairo, Egypt; Berkeley, CA; and England
- Time: 11th/12th century to the end of the 20th century
- The true story of centuries worth of documents discovered at the end of the 19th century is a centerpiece of the novel.
Until the middle of the 20th century, Jews and Muslims lived side by in Cairo as they had for almost a millennium. In the 1950’s, Egypt’s Jews were expelled, emigrating to Israel, France, and the United States. A Jewish girl and Muslim boy, childhood friends, were reunited briefly in Paris in 1973, separating again before they knew of her pregnancy. Their child, Joseph, was raised in the US, only visiting his Egyptian family during an occasional summer, and maintaining his ties with his father through stories his father would tell over the phone.
Joseph’s father was the last in the line of Al-Raqb men who had served as night watchmen at Ben Ezra synagogue for generations. While not of high status, this was a position of great trust. After his father’s death, Joseph received a box with a piece of paper in Arabic and Hebrew, suggesting that Joseph should travel to Cairo. Joseph takes a leave from his graduate studies to connect with his late father and the secret he wanted to share.
In the late 1890s, Scottish twin sister adventurers and amateur scholars, Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, brought fragments of Hebrew texts to Rabbi Solomon Schechter, a researcher in England. An expedition was arranged for Schechter to evaluate and bring back material from the Geniza, the repository for Hebrew sacred writings that may be torn or otherwise discarded, in the Ben Ezra Synagogue. While Schechter was in Cairo, Agnes and Margaret paid a visit while en route to the Holy Land. They, too, were interested in acquiring documents. Michael David Lukas has made this on-site research project and interactions with prominent members of the Cairo Jewish and political communities a major storyline in the novel. Having previously read detailed accounts of this project, referenced by Lukas in notes about his research, this fact-based view into life in Cairo during this period is particularly intriguing.
Joseph’s visit with his family is not without some bumps. Culturally he is American through and through so there is the necessary adaptation to both pace and style. Additionally, Joseph is hesitant to reveal aspects of his life and plans to the family. Joseph is gay, and that plays a part, though doesn’t define the story.
When historical fiction is very successful it may entice the reader to explore periods or places in history that previously were unfamiliar. The Last Watchman of Old Cairo does this and much more. Joseph’s Cairo is not that of the Arab Spring. It speaks to a time shortly before, when the flavor of the city was still captured in families with centuries of history. And just as the last watchman has died off, so has the Old Cairo that was home to people of all the Abrahamic religions, living and working together.
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