MASTER OF LETTERS

A madrassa-going Muslim boy walks into a synagogue.... The story of how Thoufeek Zakriya became an acclaimed calligrapher and memorykeeper of Cochin Jews.

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

It was a Saturday evening in 1999. Thoufeek Zakriya, a 10-year-old madrassa-going Muslim -boy, held his father's hand as he entered the storied Jew Street at Mattancherry in Kochi. Zakriya had been to many alleys in the city, but never one as distinctly pretty as the Jew Street, with its yellowish lights, old buildings and antique shops.

At the end of the street was the Paradesi Synagogue, first built in 1568 and reconstructed and built up over the centuries. In Malayalam, paradesi means foreigner; the synagogue had served many generations of Sephardic Jews who had migrated to Kochi from Spain, Portugal and West Asia.

But it was not the stories of exiled Jews that had Zakriya's curiosity piqued, but rather the troops of tourists that streamed into the synagogue. When Zakriya and his father reached the synagogue, though, the gatekeeper said it had closed for the day. His father told the gatekeeper that his son had a burning desire to see the synagogue. Hearing him, a light-skinned man wearing a kippah (Jewish skullcap), who was lighting a lamp inside, came out and let them in with a smile.

As Zakriya took in the wall writings in Hebrew and an exquisitely carved Torah chest inside the synagogue, the man resumed what he was doing.

Zakriya approached him, and the man said he was lighting the lamp to commemorate the death anniversary of a relative.

"If I close my eyes, I can still live that memory," says Zakriya, now 35.

Zakriya's life changed in ways he could not have imagined in the decades after his visit to the synagogue. He is now an internationally acclaimed calligrapher in, among other languages, Hebrew, Arabic and Samaritan, and a researcher on the history of the Cochin Jews. He learned Hebrew, a difficult language to learn, all by himself. In 2020, Zakriya, who is now based in Dubai, had the opportunity to present one of his calligraphic works to Israel president Reuven Rivlin.