I was briskly walking down Second Avenue, about to cross East 79th Street, one morning years ago on my way to the office. As I waited for the light to change at the corner, I noticed a friendly looking, disheveled, poorly dressed fellow with one leg bandaged up to his knee. The bandaging was extensive and dirty looking.
He asked if I could help him with some money for medications. He looked vaguely like he could have been Hispanic, which I asked him. No, he said, I’m from Egypt.
That was a surprise. I was planning to travel to Egypt the next week, my first official trip there since taking over the leadership of Catholic Near East Welfare Association. I told him that, to his surprise.
He certainly was a pleasant and engaging panhandler. I gave him what he asked and told him that I looked forward to seeing him when I returned. Little did I know then that I was speaking about the next twenty-five years of both our lives.
I did encounter him on the street a few weeks later. He hardly looked much better, but he was engaging and talkative. Some of his conversation was recognizable as typical cons, but some of it was really honest about his life and life story. I told him about my Egyptian visit and helped him again.
I asked him more about his life and obvious medical issues, and persuaded him to go back to the hospital, with my help, to get his badly infected leg treated.
After a few days in the hospital, he was discharged with instructions to keep his leg clean, wash it carefully with diluted peroxide, and rebandage it with clean dressings twice a day. Advice to a homeless man, sleeping on the street, partially covered with a broken cardboard box!
In for a penny, in for a pound! I made deal with him. Meet me at the rectory where I lived, every day, after work, and I would wash and rebandage his leg for him.
So, we did. Some days, it was absurd to do this and then send him out into a cold rain with no umbrella or warm clothing, so I occasionally let him sleep over in my room.
This led to an issue with the pastor who made it clear that the rectory was for priests and only priests and this was inappropriate. I knew it was inappropriate in one way but appropriate in another: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”
Soon after this, I was involved in the repair and repurposing of a former convent to be used as a staff residence and guest facility for the organization I headed.
Kill two birds with one stone, I thought, and I told my Egyptian friend he could begin to stay over there and would work as the caretaker when the building was ready. And, so he did.
In future trips to Egypt, I got to know his family—who were delighted to know that he lived. I got to know him better too, living with me and others in the new residence.
He was a very devout person, although not one who regularly prayed in a mosque. He had a Christian mother and a Muslim father, a blend I could well understand. He had what seemed to me to be some very idiosyncratic religious rituals.
He was an astounding, uncanny reader of persons. Often, he warned me that a friend, colleague, or visiting dignitary could not be trusted. It would sometimes take me a long time to realize that he was right.
He became a fiercely devoted friend, but remained a complex, to some extent damaged person, of deep, but hardly orthodox, spirituality, and amazing insight.
I cared for him until God called him home.
13 November 2021