The Last Watchman of Old Cairo: A Novel

Michael David Lukas

Mar 2018 · Sold by Random House

About this ebook

In this “wonderfully rich” (San Francisco Chronicle) novel from the author of the internationally bestselling The Oracle of Stamboul, a young man journeys from California to Cairo to unravel centuries-old family secrets.
 
“This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman

WINNER OF: THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S SOPHIE BRODY AWARD • THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • THE SAMI ROHR PRIZE FOR JEWISH LITERATURE • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the BBC • Longlisted for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize • A Penguin Random House International One World, One Book Selection • Honorable Mention for the Middle East Book Award
 
Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the centuries-old history that binds the two sides of his family. 
 
From the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, where generations of his family served as watchmen, to the lives of British twin sisters Agnes and Margaret, who in 1897 leave Cambridge on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue, this tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces that attempt to bridge that divide. 
 
Moving and richly textured, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is a poignant portrait of the intricate relationship between fathers and sons, and an unforgettable testament to the stories we inherit and the places we are from.

Praise for The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

“A beautiful, richly textured novel, ambitious and delicately crafted, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is both a coming-of-age story and a family history, a wide-ranging book about fathers and sons, religion, magic, love, and the essence of storytelling. This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman

“Lyrical, compassionate and illuminating.”—BBC

“Michael David Lukas has given us an elegiac novel of Cairo—Old Cairo and modern Cairo. Lukas’s greatest flair is in capturing the essence of that beautiful, haunted, shabby, beleaguered yet still utterly sublime Middle Eastern city.”—Lucette Lagnado, author of The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years

“Brilliant.”—The Jerusalem Post

Ratings and reviews

“Any meaning the Ezra scroll might possess wasn’t in the scroll itself. It wasn’t in the parchment or the letters or even the hand that formed them. The magic of the Ezra Scroll, if there was any, resided in its possibility, in the constellation of stories circling around it. And the beating heart of any story was an unanswerable question.” The minute I read the synopsis of this book, I WAS INTRIGUED, to say the least. I’ve been trying to diversify the kinds of books I read, and not only did The Last Watchman Of Old Cairo sound stunning, it was also from the historical fiction genre I feel like I read too little off. I finished this book earlier today, and I have LOTS OF THOUGHTS: -- THIS BOOK WAS VERY SLOW PACED. It took over 130 pages for me to get into the story, and even then, it didn’t really pick up. I liked the three different viewpoints, but especially that of Yusuf/ Joseph Al-Raqb. He was emotionally vulnerable in a way that neither the sisters, nor Ali Al-Raqb and I really loved the way he was written. -- I also LOVED the setting. I adored Cairo and the magic you could feel through Michael David Lukas’ writing through the centuries. I loved the descriptions of the people, the places and the Synagogue. I loved listening to the stories that were inevitably always being told within this story – I loved it all! -- The PLOT is where it gets hazy for me. Despite this being a multi-generational story, I felt like there was no real plot behind the book. It felt more like a love letter to Cairo the city, rather that the plot driven, magic filled promise the premise delivered. -- This is probably the only reason I am rating this book three stars – there is a lack of something substantial in this book. I loved the Ali Al-Raqb and the Ezra Scroll connected to what the twins were searching for in the 1800’s with the help of another Al-Raqb descendant to Joseph, who came back to Cairo after his father’s death to connect with the city he loved but there was NOTHING PLOT-TWISTING or MIND-BLOWING THAT KEPT ME AT THE EDGE OF MY SEAT, AND THAT MADE ME SAD. In conclusion, this was a book with fantastic writing and brilliant characters that, unfortunately, lacked a solid plot and any kind of twist that I thought was always around the corner, but never surfaced.

Joseph is the son of Egyptian parents, born and raised in the United States. His mother, an Egyptian Jew, left Cairo in the 1950’s with her family, but as a child had befriended Ahmed al-Raqb, eldest son of the watchman at the Ibn Ezra Synagogue, an inherited position handed down from father to eldest son for over a millennium. A graduate student at Berkeley, news of his father’s death is followed by a small package containing a note, a business card and a small piece of parchment, Arabic on one side, Hebrew on the other, cased in glass. Thus starts a search for Joseph to discover the story of this parchment fragment to better understand and know his father, and perhaps himself. Twin sisters Agnes and Margaret have returned to Cairo again, following the trail of some particularly ancient and historically valuable documents thought to be stored in the geniza (attic room for documents) at the Ben Ezra Synagogue, also rumored to hold the Ezra Scroll – an ancient scroll thought to be an original translation of a book in the bible. These ladies are well-travelled, knowledgeable, well-known and generous: their hope to bring the contents of the geniza to Cambridge for study. Lastly (or firstly) is Ali, an orphaned water carrier, living with his uncle’s family and contributing to the hardscrabble existence of the family. Spotted amongst a crowd that had gathered in the wake of a small, smoky fire, Ali was tasked with delivering a message to the synagogue. The leader, Shemarya the Pious then requests his help in a series of messages passed to and fro, until the last one: when he is asked to become the night watchman in return for housing and pay. That last note, stained with Ali’s blood is the piece sent to Joseph at his father’s behest, the note that sets the story, the al Raqb name, and the never-ending questions that surround the existence (or not) of the famed scroll. Through Joseph’s search for information and to answer the unanswered questions about his father, the search for the mysterious man who’s name and telephone number (not in service) appeared on the card enclosed in his package, his relocation to Cairo, acclimating to the climate, sights, smells and changes where the modern looms over the ancient, and streets twist and turn in ways unimagined. Lukas winds the three narratives together to give moments in each time that are uniquely emotional and informative, yet each perspective reaches both forward and back to connect place and people in ways that they never could have imagined. Most intriguing, beyond the atmospheric feel of each narrative, is the growth and self-awareness, often surprising, that comes to Joseph: settling with his own identity, his desires to discover his father and hear one last story, and even the questions still left after a vodka fueled dance with a scroll…. It’s a story that manages to imbue that sense of a search that is older than time, yet still has a tangible presence in the now: where tangible pieces of parchment and paper tell the stories of the people and events of the day, allowing a new generation to find their own story in the mix. I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via Edelweiss for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.

About the author

Michael David Lukas is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Oracle of Stamboul, which was a finalist for the California Book Award, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize and has been published in fifteen languages. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a student at the American University of Cairo, and a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv. A graduate of Brown University, he has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He teaches at San Francisco State University and lives in Oakland, California.