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Authors: Lucette Lagnado
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but dishonor to a family that prized its good name above all. In the close-knit neighborhood of Ghamra, all the neighbors knew about his apostate brother, and as Leon walked to temple each morning, regal and dignified in his white suit, our neighbors would shake their heads in sorrow thatsomeone as devout as the Captain would be forced to endure such a tragedy.
My grandmother herself was torn. This deeply religious woman still spoke wistfully of the family-owned synagogue in Aleppo, and she had never recovered from the shock of Salomonâs conversion. But she also missed him, and she wasnât well, and time was passing.
Would she really die without seeing her son once more?
A compromise was finally reached, brokered through intermediaries, as no one would admit to any direct contact with the priest. Zarifa would meet with my uncle at a prearranged time and location, not far from the house, if two conditions were met:
He would not wear his black priestly habit, and he wouldnât carry a cross.
The day of the reunion, a taxi was summoned to Malaka Nazli. My grandmother, holding on to Salomone, emerged from the house, wrapped in her shiny black chabara. Together, my tall, gangly cousin and my frail, petite grandmother made their way to a small house on the grounds of a nearby convent where Père Jean-Marie was waiting.
My uncle was in civilian clothes, as promised. Zarifa burst out crying. Once her most promising child, the one who had caught the eye of all his teachers at the Collège des Frères with his dazzling mind and his facility with most subjects, especially math, where he solved the most complex theorems and equations effortlessly, Salomon would be the one who would help the family recapture its lost greatness. He was destined to go far.
But âfarâ wasnât supposed to mean total estrangement from all that the family had held dear for hundreds of years. After he had left Cairo, the letters arrived from exotic destinations: Lanzo, Rome, Louvain, Issy, and, finally, Jerusalem. They went unanswered, of course. Still, how odd, Zarifa thought, that her son had ended up in the Holy Land, the place where Jews dream of settling.
Yet the corner of Jerusalem where my uncle lived had a unique history of wooing Jewish converts. The Benedictine monastery in Ratisbon had been founded in the nineteenth century by a French Jew and banking heir named Alphonse de Ratisbonne, who claimed that amiraculous vision of the Virgin Mary had led him to embrace Christianity.
After establishing a Catholic mission in Jerusalem, he devoted his life to doing good works. Beloved by the Vatican, he created an order of nuns, the Sisters of Zion, as well as building the massive stone monastery where my uncle would settle years later.
Salomone watched silently as our uncle tried to comfort Zarifaâpriests were supposed to be good at that. He failed, of course, because he couldnât make the one pronouncement that would have effectively wiped away her tears, the one that she and the rest of the family had been waiting for him to make since 1914: that it had all been a mistake, that he had never intended to stray so far, and that he was coming back to Malaka Nazli and returning to the faith of his ancestors.
That was the dream, the fantasy none of us could ever relinquishâthat my uncle would abandon the priesthood, beg his family to take him back. And it didnât change from year to year, or decade to decade, or generation to generation. The same hopeless longing of Zarifa was shared by her children, and then her childrenâs children.
Yet there was a softening of attitudes. Marie, the youngest of the ten children, and perhaps the most tenderhearted, was the first to forgive him. My aunt decided to end the schism that had existed for so long. Against the advice of my fatherâand even her own husbandâshe opened her house to Père Jean-Marie and allowed him to come meet her own children and as
My grandmother herself was torn. This deeply religious woman still spoke wistfully of the family-owned synagogue in Aleppo, and she had never recovered from the shock of Salomonâs conversion. But she also missed him, and she wasnât well, and time was passing.
Would she really die without seeing her son once more?
A compromise was finally reached, brokered through intermediaries, as no one would admit to any direct contact with the priest. Zarifa would meet with my uncle at a prearranged time and location, not far from the house, if two conditions were met:
He would not wear his black priestly habit, and he wouldnât carry a cross.
The day of the reunion, a taxi was summoned to Malaka Nazli. My grandmother, holding on to Salomone, emerged from the house, wrapped in her shiny black chabara. Together, my tall, gangly cousin and my frail, petite grandmother made their way to a small house on the grounds of a nearby convent where Père Jean-Marie was waiting.
My uncle was in civilian clothes, as promised. Zarifa burst out crying. Once her most promising child, the one who had caught the eye of all his teachers at the Collège des Frères with his dazzling mind and his facility with most subjects, especially math, where he solved the most complex theorems and equations effortlessly, Salomon would be the one who would help the family recapture its lost greatness. He was destined to go far.
But âfarâ wasnât supposed to mean total estrangement from all that the family had held dear for hundreds of years. After he had left Cairo, the letters arrived from exotic destinations: Lanzo, Rome, Louvain, Issy, and, finally, Jerusalem. They went unanswered, of course. Still, how odd, Zarifa thought, that her son had ended up in the Holy Land, the place where Jews dream of settling.
Yet the corner of Jerusalem where my uncle lived had a unique history of wooing Jewish converts. The Benedictine monastery in Ratisbon had been founded in the nineteenth century by a French Jew and banking heir named Alphonse de Ratisbonne, who claimed that amiraculous vision of the Virgin Mary had led him to embrace Christianity.
After establishing a Catholic mission in Jerusalem, he devoted his life to doing good works. Beloved by the Vatican, he created an order of nuns, the Sisters of Zion, as well as building the massive stone monastery where my uncle would settle years later.
Salomone watched silently as our uncle tried to comfort Zarifaâpriests were supposed to be good at that. He failed, of course, because he couldnât make the one pronouncement that would have effectively wiped away her tears, the one that she and the rest of the family had been waiting for him to make since 1914: that it had all been a mistake, that he had never intended to stray so far, and that he was coming back to Malaka Nazli and returning to the faith of his ancestors.
That was the dream, the fantasy none of us could ever relinquishâthat my uncle would abandon the priesthood, beg his family to take him back. And it didnât change from year to year, or decade to decade, or generation to generation. The same hopeless longing of Zarifa was shared by her children, and then her childrenâs children.
Yet there was a softening of attitudes. Marie, the youngest of the ten children, and perhaps the most tenderhearted, was the first to forgive him. My aunt decided to end the schism that had existed for so long. Against the advice of my fatherâand even her own husbandâshe opened her house to Père Jean-Marie and allowed him to come meet her own children and as
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