No One Sleeps in Alexandria (14 page)

“You’ll get used to it, Dimyan. Hang in there until we find better work.”

“I also bought the shoes in the hope that I’ll find a better job, but I don’t know what kind of work is better than what we’re doing.”

Magd al-Din laughed quietly, then went out with his friend to take the streetcar. They walked through the hubbub of the children on Ban Street, with their bright new clothes and colorful bicycles, which they dragged with difficulty on the unpaved street, and through groups of children gathered around vendors of balloons, candy, and, despite the cold weather, ice cream.

At the streetcar roundabout at Sidi Karim, where the road was paved, there were more children and even greater noise. Magd al-Din and Dimyan got on the streetcar.

The parade of children was uninterrupted even by the streetcar, which was moving slowly. They looked like joyous, colorful little birds. Magd al-Din and Dimyan got off at Khedive Street, where most of the stores were closed. They turned into Station Square.

A military band in the middle of the park was playing the songs of Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab and Umm Kulthum, surrounded by crowds of children, young people, visitors from the countryside, and inhabitants of the city.

“Watch out for the thieves in the crowds,” Dimyan said to Magd al-Din, as they approached the audience. They stood there for a whole hour without feeling the passage of time. Magd al-Din had not thought that music could transport a man to such heights. They walked away in silence, as if they had just finished saying their prayers. The circle around a juggler enticed them to stop.

“Here thievery is very real. Half the people standing here are thieves the juggler knows,” said Dimyan.

“I have fifty piasters in my pocket. They can steal it if they like,” said Magd al-Din.

“You’re smart, Sheikh Magd. But I am smarter,” Dimyan replied with a smile. “I have nothing in my pocket.”

They burst out laughing and pressed into the circle.

In the middle was a man in his fifties wearing tight old trousers and a tight jacket under which he wore a white turtleneck. He had on a pair of cheap black shoes that were too big for him and had no laces. It looked as though he had never polished them. The shoes looked even bigger because his trouser legs were tight and slightly too short, and his legs were thin. The socks rested on top of the shoes.

“Look—it’s Charlie Chaplin’s shoes, and his mustache too,” Dimyan said excitedly. The man had Chaplin’s mustache, which was still black. Magd al-Din did not know who Charlie Chaplin was.

“Been to the movies yet?” asked Dimyan.

“No.”

“One of these days, I’ll take you to see one of Charlie Chaplin’s films.”

The juggler was explaining what he was about to do, the miracle that no magician in the world had done, not even the infidel Houdini. No one knew who this Houdini was. The juggler said that he would use a person as a water pump, and would make water come out of his mouth and nose. He motioned to a barefoot peasant with disheveled hair and a dirty gallabiya to approach, which he did. He told him to bend over and he did. When the peasant raised his head a little from his bent-over position, the juggler rebuked him, telling him not to do it again or he would obstruct the flow of the water: “The water doesn’t go up, jackass!” The audience laughed. The juggler stood right behind the peasant’s rear end and began to operate an imaginary pump with his hand, as everyone watched in silence. Suddenly the bent-over man spread open his hands under his mouth and water poured out on his palms. He got up, choking and coughing, as the juggler hit him hard on the back to help him breathe. The juggler then went cheerfully around the circle among the spectators, who were laughing in surprise. “Did you see this great act?” he proclaimed. “I challenge any magician, I challenge Hitler himself, that same Hitler who’ll teach the English to behave and who’ll do bad things to them, I mean—”

The audience laughed louder after he said the obscene word. He had a small tambourine in his hand that he used to collect the
piasters and pennies that the spectators were giving him. The peasant who had taken part in the show had gone back to the audience. Then the juggler began to speak of another trick that he would perform. But Dimyan shouted to him to do the pump trick again. It seemed that the juggler did not hear him or that he ignored him, so Dimyan continued to shout, requesting that he do the trick again, and several others joined him.

The juggler stood with a confused look on his face. He had taken out some ribbons with different colors from a cloth bag on the ground, so he returned them to the bag and looked at Dimyan defiantly. “You want the pump? Okay, come on over.”

Dimyan had followed with his eyes the man who had taken part in the show and saw that he had moved away and disappeared. He let himself be led by the juggler, who said to the audience, “If no water comes out, it’s because he’s stuck up.”

The audience burst out laughing and Dimyan was annoyed. Some members of the audience kept shouting, reassuring him that water would come out. The juggler told him to bend over, using an obscene word, and Dimyan complied, realizing for a moment how wrong the whole thing was. He had wanted to embarrass the poor juggler in front of the people. But he was not as smart as the juggler, and perhaps the latter would make him the laughingstock. But he did not back down. He bent over, and the juggler moved back a little, pretending to examine the middle of Dimyan’s buttocks closely as the audience laughed. Then the juggler began turning his index finger in the air in front of Dimyan’s buttocks, and the audience laughed more. The juggler kept saying, “We’ve got to clean it out,” and each time, the audience laughed. Blood was now rising in Dimyan’s face, and Magd al-Din felt sorry for his friend for putting himself in such a situation.

“Here goes!” shouted the juggler and turned the imaginary-arm of the pump but no water came out of Dimyan’s mouth.

“Wait for the surprise,” the juggler went on. “No despair with life, in the immortal words of the great Saad Zaghloul!”

Then he backed down a little and kicked Dimyan in the buttocks as hard as he could, making him fall to the ground on his stomach, his face almost hitting the ground, had he not leaned on his arms.

The juggler stood back, saying to the audience, “His pump’s empty—it gave the jinn a hard time for nothing. That’s why I hit him in it.”

As the audience laughed boisterously, Magd al-Din stepped forward to help Dimyan up, but Dimyan suddenly leapt on the juggler’s back, sitting on it in such a way that the man was forced to stoop. Dimyan rained blows on the back of the man’s neck, then jumped off and stood waiting for a fight. But the juggler looked at him, then ran and gathered his pile of things in his cloth bag and ran away.

The money that he had collected was scattered every-where, and everyone in the audience, young and old alike, rushed to pick it up. Magd al-Din and Dimyan left in silence, turning into Nabi Danyal Street toward Raml Station. After they had moved far enough away, Magd al-Din could not help asking Dimyan, “What did you do that for? We all know that the juggler’s a trickster, but it’s a show and a livelihood for him.”

“I don’t really know why I did it, Sheikh Magd. I only meant to have some fun with him.”

Magd al-Din had never seen the world as colorful as it was that day. In the village, the feast also had children playing games, watching puppet shows, and engaged in other distractions. In the village, children’s clothes were also new, but something there always made them appear old, perhaps because of bad fabrics and poor designs. Certainly the dull colors of the houses there and the dust kicked up by the donkeys that the children rode had something to do with making things appear older than they were. He did not want to remember the village now, anyway—let Alexandria take him to her heart. The open space here was whiter than Ghayt al-Aynab; the expansive blue sea inspired a feeling of serenity and rest. The clouds had left the city today, the wind calmed, and people were told to go out and have a good time.

“Battleships all the way to Bahari and Maks—English, French, Australian, and otherwise,” said Dimyan to Magd al-Din when he
saw him staring at the eastern harbor in the distance, and the military ships that filled it, with their foreign flags and big and small cannonry on board, and a few soldiers moving on the decks. Next to the ships, their shadows moved, up and down with the movement of the waves. Could Hitler actually make it all the way to Alexandria? Everything around Magd al-Din seemed to suggest that, ever since he had arrived. It was noon, and the statue of Saad Zaghloul loomed tall and awe-inspiring as he looked at the sea, pointing downwards. In the park below him, the children were having fun, and young men and women were sitting in peace. It was a splendid autumn day on which the rain-keeper kept the rain away from the happy people.

“Those are Australian soldiers.”

Magd al-Din was looking at a number of tall soldiers with blue berets.

“They speak English like the English soldiers, but they’re taller,” Dimyan continued. “If you see two soldiers together, the taller one is usually the Australian. Their country is big.”

Magd al-Din wanted to tease his friend. “What good would it do me to tell the Australian from the English?”

Dimyan looked at him for a moment, then smiled and replied, “True. What good would it do you or me? Perhaps just speaking about things has uses that we don’t know.”

They laughed and kept walking. As they passed some African and Indian soldiers, Dimyan said, “Soldiers from all over the world . . . The Africans have little tails—everybody says that. The Indians are so full of themselves, they walk like they’re lords of their own manor. You know something? I wish I could go up behind one of them, slap him on the back of the neck, and run.”

“These are poor men, Dimyan. They left their countries against their will, and none of them know whether they’ll go home or not.”

Dimyan fell silent, truly touched. A number of English soldiers appeared on the corniche, and a few of them were women. Some of the men had put their arms around the women, and some kissed quickly as they walked. Out of nowhere, many horse-drawn carriages appeared from behind, engaged in a mad race, carrying local lovers, foreign lovers, and drunken soldiers, both
men and women. The pedestrians tipped their hats and berets to the riders, and the air filled with boisterous revelry.

“We are now in Manshiya. This is the statue of Ismail Pasha,” said Dimyan, pointing to its semicircular pedestal. “Ismail Pasha is King Farouk’s grandfather, or his relative, anyway. He was the one who built the Ismail Maternity Hospital. They say he’s the one who built the city of Ismailiya, that he was the one who first moved to educate girls.”

Magd al-Din did not need to hear anyone talking, but he let Dimyan continue. He really wanted to drink in the light, the refreshing breeze, and the water of the sea. He felt his chest expanding, and his spirit revived. He would postpone the noon prayers until mid-afternoon, or even wait until he went home at sunset. Dimyan had told him that they would walk to Anfushi, and he was happy for that. Dimyan must have sensed his friend’s secret desire and stopped talking. They walked in silence.

When it had rained during Ramadan, some streets, as well as the untiled sidewalks, became muddy. In the early morning, people going to work and students going to school walked as close as possible to the walls. At the Sidi Karim roundabout, Magd al-Din saw the water collecting near the sidewalks; it was so high people had to wade through to cross the roundabout or to reach the streetcar. The road there was paved, but it lay at the bottom of the slope that began at Raghib Bridge. The narrow sewers could not handle all the water.

Magd al-Din saw three barefoot young men standing on the sidewalk, their pant legs rolled up to their knees, wearing old, tight pullovers torn at the elbows and shoulders. For two pennies per person, they were offering to carry pedestrians from one sidewalk to the other or to the streetcar stop. Some pedestrians had placed a row of stones, a sort of bridge to cross the street, but the three young men removed the stones so that they were the only bridge. The women and girls had to walk all the way to Raghib Bridge and cross at the other side, where there was barely any water, then go back to the streetcar stop.