No One Sleeps in Alexandria (20 page)

When the foreign teacher was explaining the French verbs, she wrote ‘aimer’ on the board and, addressing one of the girls, she said, “Je t’aime.” Camilla found herself involuntarily repeating to herself, “Je l’aime.”

He said, “Sit on the throne and I will present everything to

you.” I did, and he presented

everything to me.

al-Niffari

12

Magd al-Din came back from work, as he did every day since he had started the new job, his hands stained with fuel oil, his back, arms, and legs exhausted, and aching all over. As usual he sat down on the bed, his feet dangling, as Zahra sat on the floor and pulled off his shoes and placed his feet in a small washbasin filled with hot water and salt.

“Are you going to bathe now?”

“Yes. Give me some kerosene, too, to clean my hands.”

She poured some kerosene from a can into a small jug and gave it to him. She also handed him a bar of soap and put the towel on his shoulder and his slippers outside the door of the room. The bathroom was in the hallway for common use. When the water from the shower hit the floor tiles, it was audible to all, but there was no way around it; he had to bathe, since he came back so dirty he could not stand his own skin. He could neither eat nor sleep until he had washed away all the day’s fatigue and dirt.

That day, like all other days, he had to dig into the hard earth under the old crossties, remove the old tracks and ties and, with his co-workers, install new ones—all for for more than one railroad line that needed maintenance or replace-ment. The many trains coming to the harbor left loaded with equipment and troops. The trains coming from Suez carried the African, Australian, and Indian
soldiers of the empire all the way to the desert. The trains stopped in front of the pipe with the hose attached, next to which sat the silent man that he had seen the first day. There was an underground water reservoir to supply the steam locomotive; the pipe and the hose were connected to the reservoir, separated by a huge round knob that when turned would release water to the pipe and hose and ultimately to the locomotive. This whole apparatus was called ‘the Raven,’ no one knew why. As for the man sitting there, Hamza, Magd al-Din’s co-worker said he was an insane man who had planted the mulberry tree a long time ago and sat waiting for little birds that never came.

Magd al-Din and Dimyan saw their co-workers leave their jobs and approach every train as it stopped to get fuel and come back carrying little cardboard boxes filled with chocolates, tea, and cookies. The Indian soldiers, with big turbans and long rifles, were more generous than the others. Hamza said of them, “Even though the Indian soldier is Indian, he is smart. I tell him ‘English is good,’ and he says ‘Indian is very good’ and gives me more cookies.”

The workers would laugh at the way Hamza pronounced the English language and wondered where he had learned the many words he used with the soldiers. As soon as they moved away on the trains, Hamza would stand in the middle of the tracks and speak in verse:

The punishment meted out

To humans, big and small,

Is deserved. Many a sin and cruelty they commit

And the angels, they write it all down.

Then he would look at the cookies and the chocolate or whatever he had gotten and exclaim,

If it were just one worry I could handle it,

But I am assailed by three kinds of worries:

One inside, one outside, and

One at the door waiting for me.

The long iron rail is dislodged at a leisurely pace; it rises in a deliberately slow manner, tearing up the wooden flesh of the crossties, raising the long, spiral-shaped nails that leave behind deep round, glowing holes filled with splinters of wood. The rail elevates itself for a short distance then extends and expands, and out of it to one side come other, less thick rails that keep extend into space, shiny brown. Then they turn into large coils that quickly shrink but increase in number, as does the original rail. Then it rears its head and sticks out a forked tongue, stinging Magd al-Din’s leg. He leaps up, into space, but does not come down. He settles on the roof of a train hurtling forward at a crazy speed as the wind makes his hair fly and tears away his jacket, undershirt, and pants. He holds on fast to the train’s shiny roof, with nothing on except his underpants, but he slides down the side of the train and clings to the high edge and cries out, but no one can hear him. The train slows down gradually until it comes to a complete stop in the middle of two rows of people with unfamiliar features. They are laughing hysterically, ceaselessly and their bulging eyes never stop rolling. He falls in their midst. Some of them grab him and scrutinize him viciously, still laughing. The train keeps going, spewing its blue smoke. He sees Zahra in a panic behind the train, calling out to him, “Magd al-Din! Magd al-Din! Sheikh Magd!” while he is hoisted behind her on the hands of the people with strange faces and eyes, who are laughing ceaselessly and viciously. He screams, but his voice is lost in the hundreds of laughing faces. Zahra falls on the crossties and the fuel oil and turns back in pain, limping as the departing sun hurries to leave and the darkness hurries forth. The men with strange features leave him crouching in the dark, moaning faintly and long, feeling like an orphan. Then torrents of rain come down, with successive claps of thunder, as he shakes violently.

“Magd al-Din! Magd al-Din! Wake up! There’s a raid!”

Zahra was shaking him hard. He leapt up, frightened and swearing, “I bear witness that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is His prophet! Zahra, you’ve saved me from a horrible nightmare!”

Actually Zahra had not heard his moaning but was awakened when Sitt Maryam knocked on their door and told her about the air raid and that they had to go downstairs at once.

“I take refuge in God from Satan the damned. This is the sound of real cannons!”

During the past few weeks, the city of Alexandria had built a number of open shelters in the poorer neighborhoods, but the inhabitants used them to relieve themselves. That forced the municipality to assign policemen to guard the shelters, and stopped the building process. The military court in Alexandria, under the emergency law, held a session to try a poor girl who was practicing prostitution without a license. She was fined three Egyptian pounds. A house in Karmuz was raided for being an unlicensed brothel. When the police surrounded the house, the owner shouted, “Where’s Goebbels? Where’s the Gestapo? I am Hitler!” But the valiant policemen were not fooled. They arrested him and gave him a sound beating on the back of his neck. The newspapers received a great number of letters asking about the beautiful Hollywood actress Norma Shearer and whether she would remarry after the death of her husband. The answer was in the affirmative, that the prospective husband was the actor George Raft, with whom she had a close relationship while her husband was still alive. People were also wary and cautious, as the Italians were a stone’s throw away from Alexandria. That was why, when the air-raid sirens were heard several times in the daytime, they realized immediately that these were no longer drills, and when they saw anti-aircraft guns blasting away, they were certain that the time of drills was gone.

Strict orders were given to drivers to paint their headlights dark blue, after it was noticed that they had become lax about it in the past few months. People were instructed to paint their windows and to apply adhesive gauze strips vertically and horizontally to the glass from inside so that it would not fly around if shattered. People were also warned not to assemble on the streets during raids, and that all vehicles must come to a stop and passengers get out of the cars. Landlords were instructed to vacate the ground floors of their buildings and to convert them to shelters for people without access to the public shelters. People
whose property was damaged as a result of the air raids were told to apply as soon as possible to the city of Alexandria to get new building materials—wood, steel, and cement—to repair the damage or to reinforce old buildings.

That night when Magd al-Din awoke, people heard the intermittent sound of the sirens and felt it was different from earlier ones. It was accompanied by unusual scurrying about and panic; there was more worry in their hearts. The daytime air raids the previous week had been shorter and had not caused any obvious casualties or damage. Tonight it seemed that real war would come to the sky over Alexandria.

It was midnight and very hot. A few people walking on Ban Street quickly went into the nearby houses and stood in the entrances. Two taxis stopped; one of the drivers did not leave his cab. One of those standing in the entrance of a nearby house looked at him and invited him to come in to be safe, but he said, “If the house falls on top of me, will I live?” It seemed to make sense. Those standing in the entrance looked at each other, but they could not violate the civil defense regulations. Standing in the entrance of a house was safer than being out on the street in the open.

Even though the moon was not full that night, it was bigger than a crescent, and it lit up the streets and betrayed everyone.

Khawaga Dimitri, his wife, and his two daughters had gone downstairs to Bahi’s empty room and turned off the light. Lula had also joined them. In the confusion, she did not think to wear something to cover her shoulders and arms. Her husband did not join her there. He was the solitary type. Besides, he lived on the first floor, so what good would it do him to move to another room? The truth was slightly different. As soon as the air raid sirens sounded and the guns began blasting away, Lula shook with fear and moved closer to her husband, who hugged her tight and reached to take off her panties. She heard the footsteps and voices of Dimitri and his family and tried to break away from her husband, who held on and wanted to have sex right then and there. He thought that was the best way to overcome fear. She resisted him and also resisted her own desire, which lit up as soon as he touched her. She was thinking of what would have happened if the
sounds of their lovemaking were to reach the ears of Dimitri and his daughters. That was why as soon as she was able to break away from her husband, she dashed out and joined them in her long, white nightgown, her shoulders and arms lighting up the eyes of those standing in the dark.

Magd al-Din was guided in the dark by Dimitri’s voice and did not let go of the hand of Zahra, who screamed as soon as she got in the room, “My God! Shawqiya is upstairs!” Magd al-Din had to go up to bring the little girl while Zahra stood with the others in Bahi’s room.

The guns fell silent but the all-clear was not sounded. The silence lasted for a long time, and so did the people’s patience. They all pricked up their ears to hear a slow, calm droning sound like rains coming from far away. The buzz grew in volume, as if swarms of killer bees were coming to the city, like a storm gathering on the horizon to overrun the desert, or armies of locusts homing in on green plants: ZZZZZZZ. That was sound of the German and Italian planes coming in for their targets in large formations, coming in close to the city and close to the ground. The sounds of bombs and explosions and the flashes of lightning passed quickly in front of the closed windows, penetrating the shutters and the glass.

“Open the windows so we’ll know what’s happening,” Dimitri exclaimed. Magd al-Din was close to the window so he opened it. In front of them the night looked like daylight, white and red, and engulfed in a river of blue smoke. The sky was burning to the north and people on the opposite side of the street screamed as they saw the smoke. Magd al-Din, Dimitri, and the women watched the light come in from the north and burn bright into the south, like a sword brandished by a celestial warrior. Magd al-Din began to recite the beginning of Sura 36:

“Yasin. By the Wise Quran, verily you are among those sent on a straight path, a revelation of the Mighty, the Merciful, to warn a people whose forefathers had not been warned, so they are heedless. Already the word has proved true of most of them, for they are not believers. Verily We have placed yokes around their necks to their chins so that their heads are forced up. And we have put a bar before them and a bar behind them and so We have covered them
up so that they cannot see. God Almighty has spoken the truth.” Then he repeated, “And We have put a har before them and a bar behind them and so We have covered them up so that they cannot see.”
He repeated the verse, his voice growing louder, and as he swayed the moonlight revealed him to everyone, though he was completely oblivious.