Sheikh Mahmoud

A few weeks ago, I had just gotten our summer tickets to Egypt and was super excited to share the news with my family on our Whatsapp group when I saw that Salah had shared other news the brought my excitement to an abrupt halt. Sheikh Mahmoud had died.

Sheikh Mahmoud was our religion and sometimes Arabic tutor when we were kids. My brothers’ and I and (as far as I know) all of our close-knitted group of friends (el sheila) all took private lessons with him. He would help us memorize Qur’an and tell us fun stories like Noah and the Arc, Jonas and the whale, and the Abraha elephant attack on Mecca the year the prophet was born (عام الفيل). I don’t necessarily remember being particularly attached to those lessons nor do I remember being particularly rebellious against them. My brothers were the more mischievous ones on that front doing things like walking out on him mid-lesson and disappearing in one of the rooms only to be discovered later to be napping. They may have done this more with other tutors and I might be conflating memories, but the point is, that was their profile. Fun troublemakers. I was generally a boringly studious child. Sheikh Mahmoud would recite, I would recite after him and then he would quiz my memorization. That’s it. I don’t remember when exactly I started with him, but I know it was all the way through high school.

Sheikh Mahmoud was a fixture of my childhood, but I didn’t start reflecting on him more fondly until later in my early adulthood. When Cole and I got married, because he was a foreigner, we went through a civil marriage process through the Ministry of Justice which was more transactional than how most Muslims get married in Egypt. Traditionally, there’s the Katb el-Kitab where both parties sign the marriage contract in front of friends and family under the guidance and supervision of a ma’zoon (مأذون), or a licensed Sheikh, who utters standard phrases that are repeated by the two parties. Then when he’s done, the people are officially married and zaghrootas erupt in the hall where it happens. If it’s not the same day as the wedding, everyone is still dressed up for a katb kitab. Cole and I, however, signed our contract in our jeans at a dusty government building. I still wanted to have that katb kitab feel on our wedding day though and someone suggested we ask Sheikh Mahmoud if he would be willing to perform the honorary ma’zoon duties. And he graciously did.

That was my first interaction with him as an adult and it will be years later that our paths will cross again. I can’t quite remember when, but it must’ve been over one of our visits back home during our China phase in 2018-2020 which would put Amina at maybe 4 or 5. Mohamed and I hatched the plan. Mohamed is a childhood friend. He too took lessons with Sheikh Mahmoud as a kid. Now he had his own son, Omar. Just a few months younger than Amina, Omar was her first good friend. As parents, we both wanted our kids to get more exposure to Qur’an and religion in general. Even though at that point, I wasn’t consistently praying and my relationship with religion had evolved to something more complicated than what it had been (a thorny topic for another time maybe), I still wanted my (at the time only) child to access that same pool of knowledge. For all sorts of reasons, but a big part of it so we can have a common reference point.

So together, Mohamed and I arranged for Sheikh Mahmoud to come sit with Amina and Omar. It was very cozy and kind of hilariously heartwarming seeing our kids sitting with him and hearing him coax them to repeat after him and asking them questions like how many prayers are there in a day. I remember that the lessons were at Heba’s house – Mohamed’s mom – and the kids were set up with Sheikh Mahmoud at the dining table while Mohamed, Heba, and I chatted in the kitchen while nibbling on Zazza’s famous cookies. We always had to keep an ear out though in case the kids (in this case, specifically Omar because Amina was/is more of the law-abiding nature at this point of her life) were up to shenanigans a la Ahmed and Salah style. They met a few times, but we traveled and COVID hit so we didn’t keep it up.

This past summer (2024) was the last time our paths crossed. With another one of my good childhood friends, Ouzzy, we decided to try again. Ouzzy has the sweetest twin girls who are about 6 months younger than Sina. We decided to contact Sheikh Mahmoud again and arrange for short sessions where all four of them were together. And so it was that inbetween high energy sessions of hide-and-seek around Ouzzy’s Maadi apartment (where Sina managed to stuff himself in the most unlikely spots in characteristic commitment to the game), the kids settled around the dinning table with Sheikh Mahmoud while the parents – Me, Cole, Ouzzy, and Aya – sat in the playroom chatting. I remember one of the times at the end Sheikh Mahmoud telling me that Sina did great but in reciting Surat al-Masd (سورة المسد) he would say “تبت يدا بابا لهبا وتب” which I thought was hilarious. This became a funny Sina-Sheikh Mahmoud story that I would repeat to friends and family. A story to add to the dossier of Sheikh Mahmoud stories that was, until recently, exclusively populated with stories of our own childhood interactions with him.

I found it oddly comforting. Like warping through time and looking at an endearingly distorted version of our childhood. Except it was our kids so it was even sweeter. I was excited to create more opportunities for these sorts of memories to be created hoping that together they would weave a thread connecting our kids’ present to our past. But because summer means lots of traveling and chaos, we were only able to squeeze a couple of these sessions in. Which is why I was thrilled – if a little bit surprised – when Sheikh Mahmoud mentioned that he could do Zoom!

Zoom meant we can keep a rhythm even when we’re back in the US. I had explored that option before and had friends recommend this tutor or that that offered zoom tutoring, but I never followed through. I think it felt too risky entrusting my kids’ imagination to someone I didn’t know. Especially if it had to do with religion. But Sheikh Mahmoud was different. He knew us and we knew him. He was gentle and kind. Patient and funny. We grew up with him so he was family.

And so it was that we set up weekly Saturday morning sessions with Sheikh Mahmoud. Amina and Sina would sit at our dining table with my laptop propped in front of them. And Sheikh Mahmoud was right there on the screen prompting him with his “ha yalla..”. He would always start with the first sound in a word ( ق) to help prompt their memory for the word (قل) and ideally the rest of the verse (قل هو الله احد) . Amina worked well with that technique though Sina would often just repeat the first letter after him and freeze there. The first time they did it, Sina tried to get away with being in his boxers, slightly ducking under the table, and partially wrapping himself in his favorite maroon blanket. But Sheikh Mahmoud shortly after they started jokingly chastised him “why are you naked during our session” to which both kids burst out laughing. Another memory to file in that dossier.

We were pretty consistent in September and October. For one reason or another (sleepover, dance performance, outing), we started to cancel more often in November and December. But finally around mid-December we were there and ready to Zoom. I sent the customary whatsapp a few hours before to confirm that we were still on. But I got nothing. We still logged in just in case, but he never came. Usually, even if he doesn’t immediately respond, he eventually does. But not this time. I remember noticing that and thinking I wonder if something happened. I did not at all, however, imagine that he could’ve passed away.

A few days later, Salah sent on our family group saying that Sheikh Mahmoud had passed away. He also forwarded a voice note that he had recently sent him when Salah was checking in on him. Salah was the best of all three of us I think at staying in touch with Sheikh Mahmoud and just asking about him. Maybe Ahmed was too. I know Ahmed and Mariam had a couple of sessions with him last Ramadan where they would just read Qur’an and ask him questions. I never really had enough personal rapport to just check in and say “hi how are you”. It felt too awkward. So all our recent interactions were always within the framework of some formal ask.

Though he wasn’t personally close to me the way a friend or a family member would be, I was still very struck by his death. The voice note that Salah sent made me cry. Hard. It almost sounded like he knew and was saying his farewells. He was just saying normal things, but they were steeped in this quiet earnestness of his that made them seem more solemn somehow. He was young and he mentioned something about being ill. Salah says he's been ill for a while, but his health only rapidly deteriorated in his last few weeks or so.

I kept thinking about all the times he was accommodating our odd scheduling (can it be half an hour later this time? 10 mins earlier? Can we reschedule to Sunday instead?). I thought of all the cancelations. I thought of him at my wedding and at Heba’s house and Ouzzy’s. I thought of his voice through Zoom. I thought of how my kids complained when I said they had Sheikh Mahmoud – the way we did when we were kids. I thought of all the would’ve been memories that never came to be. My kids were just starting to create their own rapport with him. They were just starting to get his sense of humor and he theirs. They were sad when I told them. I saw it in their eyes. It’s odd, given how peripheral and inconstant his presence was to my life, how viscerally I felt his loss. I’ll miss him. He was a good man and I’m grateful my kids got to know him, if only a little.

.الله يرحمك يا شيخ محمود. انا لله وانا اليه راجعون