Diary of a Jewish Muslim

This is a book about a Jewish boy in Cairo who, due to strange circumstances, happens to grow up as a Muslim. Considering Moses and Muhammad as brothers, he simply added Muhammad to the list of Jewish prophets. However, his family emigrates to Paris - for the boy a city like an ogre. He did not want to be swallowed up by it and therefore wishes, but in the end fails, to return to his home country. Based on realistic dialogues, the book is quite gripping. Supposedly written by a boy, although with highly sophisticated vocabulary, it portrays Jewish family life in Cairo, sporting verbs like to bawl, huff, mooch and shoo as well as nouns like banister, beeline, conch, cudgel, cur, dunce, doorjamb, gaggle, goon, hullabaloo, lout, nook, oaf and slugabed. As extraordinary as its vocabulary is the book’s content, overflowing as it is with stunningly precise descriptions given by a wide-awake observer. To wit: “His eyes never stopped sending coded messages” (p. 20) him being “so healthy it gladdens your heart to look at him” (p. 22). Remarkable as well: “I divined that the wind was not blowing my way” on “a muggy day where the very air was a thing to choke on” (pp. 13, 46) as well as: “In four bounds we were downstairs” (p. 112). Or: “Both stared at us with eyes that bore a thousand meanings” (p. 54). Or: She flicked “away a grain of rice that had gotten stuck between her fingers” (p. 166) and “My heart was in my feet” (p. 166). Indeed, the author is not rationing such close-up descriptions.