No One Sleeps in Alexandria (24 page)

The strangest story was the one about the man who went at dawn to the Mahmudiya canal to perform his ablutions there. When he was done and as he stood up, pulled his pants up, and started walking, he felt something moving between his legs and
under his buttocks, something giving him a little squeeze. The man pulled up his gallabiya and undid his waistband to see what was here, and found a number of white baby rabbits, dozens of them that looked like little mice playing in his underpants. The man ran home but could not stand still afterwards because of the strange movements of those rabbits. Then he could not sleep; what would he do about those rabbits that had taken up residence in his pants? He had to go down to the street again, and stopped screaming only when he noticed that everything around him was silent. He was so unable to get a grip on himself that finally he fainted and people saw dozens of rabbits running out from between his legs, white rabbits running every which way. The man died of fright. Hamza wore the most solemn oath that that had happened in his village also. Dimyan bent toward Magd al-Din one day and said to him, ‘This Hamza, for sure, is an inveterate liar.”

“Why should that bother you? Leave creation to the Creator, Dimyan.”

Dimyan could not stay quiet. “Nothing annoys me more than four forbearance and patience, Sheikh Magd!”

“You cannot change him,” Magd al-Din said with a smile. ‘He’s used to it, and the men have gotten used to him.”

Today, as Hamza was laughing at Dimyan’s fear, his face looked very red because he had just finished making tea on the wood-burning stove. He almost choked while laughing; blood gathered in his face as a result of the laughing, the fire, and the choking, and he almost ignited. When he was able to speak again, Hamza said, “Me too, the first time I saw an African, I was afraid of his tail. He was handing me a can of choice Australian corned beef, but I was afraid. I moved away and told him to throw it to me, but he didn’t respond, so I said to him in English, “Throw it!” and he did. The strangest thing was, he understood the English and not the Arabic!”

Dimyan looked at him, barely concealing his annoyance, and asked, “Did you see his tail, Hamza?”

“Yes, I did, but I was afraid to grab it, yes, sir.”

The workers burst out laughing and Dimyan remarked, “Maybe you were afraid, when you grabbed it, it would turn out to be something else!”

At that point the laughter was hysterical, and Hamza joined in, once again choking, which only annoyed Dimyan all the more.

Usta Ghibriyal smiled faintly and continued his magical scribbling.

Hamza asked Magd al-Din, “What do you think, Sheikh Magd—is it true that Africans were originally monkeys?”

Magd al-Din thought a little, and the workers waited for him to answer.

“Only God knows,” he finally said. “What I heard was, the monkey was originally a man who wiped his ass with a loaf of bread, so God changed him into a monkey. That’s what we heard as children. But I don’t believe it, because God has ennobled man, so God would not change him into a monkey. Also, it could not be that man was originally a monkey.”

The workers looked relieved, and so did Usta Ghibriyal, who said, “You speak wisely, Sheikh Magd, What do you think, Hamza? Did you see a man turn into a monkey?”

The workers laughed uproariously because this time the speaker was the usually silent Usta Ghibriyal.

Hamza composed himself and replied, “I am afraid that if say I did, nobody would believe me. I’d better keep quiet, Usta.”

Everyone fell silent in the manner familiar to Egyptians after they laugh; a sudden quiet descended on everyone and everything. One of the workers said, “May God make it good.”

“I have a curious story to tell you,” Magd al-Din spoke up.

They looked at him expectantly. Hamza was particularly attentive—he pricked up his cars and was the first to speak, “Go ahead, Sheikh Magd. Perhaps you’ll tell us something new that I don’t know or haven’t seen.”

Magd al-Din smiled and winked to Dimyan to follow the situation. Dimyan was surprised at his friend, who began, “Once when I was a little boy, a young peasant man grabbed me and had his way with me in the field.”

Everyone fell silent in shock. What was Sheikh Magd al-Din saying and why? What exactly did he mean? At that point Hamza got up holding the empty cup of tea and headed for the door as if he was going to make some more tea.

“Why are you silent, Hamza?” Magd al-Din asked. “Why didn’t you say that that happened to you too?”

They heard Usta Ghibriyal laughing loudly for the first time. Dimyan jumped up and exclaimed, “God is great! God is great!”

As for Hamza, his red face turned a yellowish blue. Magd al-Din stood up and went over to Hamza, embraced him, and kissed his head, saying, “I didn’t know it was such a bad joke, my friend.”

When they stopped laughing, Usta Ghibriyal went back to scribbling in his notebook. They noticed that from time to time he was casting furtive, sly glances at Magd al-Din. As for Hamza, he went out to make tea that no one wanted.

A little while later, Magd al-Din went out and saw him sitting away from the wood-burning stove. He had not even put the teapot on. Magd al-Din sat next to him, and Hamza looked at him with a smile and said, “One does not usually make enemies with decent folk. A free man, no matter how poor, never forgets a good deed.”

Magd al-Din felt a great relief. “I don’t know how I got carried away joking like that. When I saw you were embarrassed, I was quite upset with myself.”

“We say more than that everyday, Sheikh Magd.” Hamza answered. “Look at that train!”

It was a freight train. Its flatbed cars were loaded with military equipment and made such a deep grating noise on the tracks that all the workers came out to see it. On every car was a tank or an armored car covered with netting, with one or two soldiers standing next to it. The train was coming from Suez or Cairo and heading for the desert, where there were great concentrations of Allied troops in al-Alamein, Bir Fuka, and Marsa Matruh. The soldiers were not African this time, but English or Australian and wearing khaki shorts in the middle of winter. They were perhaps coming from the south, maybe South Africa. On top of the shorts, they wore khaki short-sleeved shirts and vests without sleeves. The ruddy complexions of the soldiers and their white arms and legs meant that they had not seen the desert before, and since they looked young, perhaps they were new to soldiering.

The train was too fast. The workers saluted the soldiers and shouted, “Hello! Welcome! English is good. German is no good. Churchill is right. Hitler no right,” and other such things that they
said on this and other occasions, words that most of them did not understand but which guaranteed good results. The soldiers began throwing packets of Lucky Strike cigarettes, cartons of cookies and chocolate, cans of Australian and New Zealand corned beef and cheddar cheese. Usta Ghibriyal cautioned them to wait until the train cleared the post. They had gotten used to that and also, after the train had left the post, to running and gathering up the goodies on the ground, then bringing them into the post and divvying them up equally, according to who wanted what. Usually the catch was more than enough for all ten of them, and now everyone knew what everyone else wanted or liked. Usta Ghibriyal, for instance, liked Cevlon tea. Hamza, on the other hand, liked cookies and chocolate, which he handed over to his three children and to his co-workers’ children, since they all lived in railroad housing together with workers from posts one through six, whose job sites were not far from them. All the workers would get together for big jobs or when there was an accident. When accidents happened there were no disputes about the goodies. The trains went through more than once every day; the soldiers liberally threw candy, food, and tea. It seemed the war would last for a long time.

On the way home, Dimyan asked Magd al-Din, “Why all these weapons today?”

“Don’t you see the trains loaded with Italian prisoners coming from the desert? The war there is quite hot.”

“It seems like the war will go on for a long time, Sheikh Magd.”

“The weapons come from Suez and from the harbor in Alexandria, and the soldiers come from all over the world, Dimyan. It seems to me it’s not war, but Judgment Day.”

They both fell silent for a long time. Magd al-Din started thinking about Hamza, whom he had mocked today, and how Hamza now seemed noble in his eyes. Then he remembered Lula and what had happened a few days earlier and he grew tense. It was not easy for Zahra to be acquainted with a woman who turned out
to be an adulteress. It was not easy also to live in the house of good Dimitri, who since that day had felt ashamed every time he saw Magd al-Din because he had not carefully screened his tenants. What were people saying now about good Dimitri and his children? Could Dimitri have turned down a tenant paying sixty piasters a month? And Bahi, his brother, had he known about Lula? And if he did, how could he have chosen for him to live in the same house? He smiled sarcastically at this last question and heard Dimyan say, “Look, it’s Wahid the plainclothes policeman!”

Wahid was walking toward them in a blue gallabiya with vertical white stripes and a khaki overcoat. He had a white skullcap on his head and a gray scarf around his neck. In his hand he held a long bamboo stick that he waved around from time to time. They knew him well and met him almost every day and shared some of the goodies that the soldiers had given them. He was used to that and did it to all the workers he came across. And even though he was well dressed in clean clothes, and despite his pleasant, placid face, when he spoke he sounded like an uncouth, brutal clod, as Sheikh Magd al-Din described him all the time. Wahid was notorious in the whole neighborhood for shaking down everyone and for having no scruples whatsoever when it came to framing someone. He saw them as he saw them every day, and shouted as if he had just noticed them, “What are you carrying?”

“As you can see, some English canned stuff,” Dimyan answered, smiling, and Wahid said, “You mean from the English warehouses?”

Neither of them knew where the English warehouses were, but they figured that today he wanted to get more than he usually got from them.

“What warehouses! Here, just take a couple of packets of tea, Wahid,” Dimyan said, as his smile grew broader.

But Wahid shouted, “I have to take you in—this is larceny!”

He raised his stick, threatening them. Magd al-Din gave him a long savage look. He had looked around and saw the open space, as the sun was quietly setting, a cool breeze blowing and the dark gently beginning to cover the ground. He could hardly see the rails on top of the crossties, as everything was the color of dust.

“You know, Wahid,” said Magd al-Din, “I could knock you to the ground and slit your throat on the track without anyone seeing you.”

“What did you say, Sheikh Magd? Slit my throat?” Wahid asked in a more subdued voice, and he lowered his stick.

“Yes,” Magd al-Din replied, “and the train will come, and in the morning people will see that it cut off your head.”

Dimyan was genuinely frightened by what his friend was saying.

“We have two cartons, as you can see,” Magd al-Din went on. “In each there is tea, cookies, corned beef, and cheese. We will give you a whole carton, and the two of us will share one, on condition that you never bother us again. Every time you think of doing it, remember that I can slit your throat without anyone seeing. Take the carton and leave in peace.”

Wahid, as if in a daze, took the carton.

Dimyan and Magd al-Din walked in silence, then Dimyan asked, “You were really going to slit his throat, Sheikh Magd?”

“Yes. Today I can slit anyone’s throat.”

They continued on their way home in silence.

I did not hold myself back

I gave in completely and went.

I went to those pleasures

That lie on the edge

Between reality and imagination

I walked in the brilliant night

And drank the strong wine the valiant

seekers of pleasure drink.

Constantine Cavafy

15

Japan attacked Indochina, expanding its war along the western and southern coast of Asia, since it was already at war with China. The Japanese giant was restless, and it began to stretch and spew forth its fire. America saw Japan’s military power and ventures as a threat and began to stand on guard. People everywhere began to realize that the entire globe would soon be engulfed in the flames of war.

In Egypt, British planes attacked the new Italian positions in Sidi Barraní, in raids that lasted four hours and extended into Benghazi to hit the Italians’ lines of communication. The ministry of supply decreased the amount of coal sold to ironers and pressers, since no coal was being imported from England and a large number of trains were being used for military transport. Ironers and pressers complained vociferously. Some brazen young men started going out at night, wearing frightening gas masks to take girls and women by surprise in the dark alleys. Groups of such masked youth appeared at times like herds of bulls going to their bullpens or leaving them for the faraway grazing pastures. The Italians started using a new kind of bomb that looked like a thermos bottle, which did not explode on impact but afterwards, when moved or touched. A campaign began to warn Alexandrians against such bombs, which had shiny surfaces that could not be seen clearly in bright sunlight. People were distressed because for
the second year in a row, the month of Ramadan came and no lights or public celebrations were permitted. The price of many commodities went up, and kerosene was rationed. The price of potatoes rose from fifteen milliemes an English kilo to twenty-seven and from ten milliemes an Egyptian kilo to twenty. A large section of the wall of the corniche at Sidi Bishr collapsed as a result of water seepage. The royal banquets of Ramadan were no longer enough to keep the poor happy. In Alexandria there was only one banquet, held in front of the Mursi Abu al-Abbas mosque, whereas in Cairo, people said, they were held everywhere. In that banquet, taro root, meat, rice, fava beans, vegetables, and pastries were served for free. The deputy-governor himself inaugurated the banquet and ate with the poor, apologizing for the absence of the governor, who had gone to Cairo to congratulate His Majesty the King on the advent of the month of Ramadan. The ministry of social affairs formed a commission to study the increasing immodesty of women, as a result of the increase in the number of foreigners and their need for entertainment and the need for money among many segments of the population.