No One Sleeps in Alexandria (5 page)

She stood on the platform carrying the baby. He watched the woman and her five children and the well-dressed man and his three sons. What made him do that? The woman and her children disappeared before his eyes, even though the station was not crowded, perhaps because the lights were dim. But that happened every time he visited Bahi; he would see the woman and her children on the train, but they would disappear on the platform. The well-dressed man and his sons did not disappear. He watched them as they left through the nearest door. He stood for a long time on the platform until almost all the passengers had disappeared.

“Porter?”

“Yes?”

The strong, tall, barefoot man carried one small basket on his left shoulder, placed the other one under his right arm, and told Magd al-Din to follow with the big basket. The porter’s strides were long and fast, and Zahra almost stumbled more than once. Magd al-Din was at a loss; he could not ask the man to slow down. His eyes were fixed on the two bare feet of the porter, he did not know why. He remembered that he himself could have been barefoot after leaving his shoes on the tracks when he was hurrying to the station, had not Zahra brought another pair in the big basket.

“It’s hard arriving in a city at night.” The words echoed in his head. When he went out the station door and into its big courtyard, he was met by a vast, profound darkness. The lights in the square facing the station were all out, and the trees were very black. There was no light except for the red glow of the lanterns on the horse-drawn carriages, lit in violation of security regulations.

There were a few carriages in the courtyard, as well as mule carts and taxicabs. The porter put the two baskets on the ground with Magd al-Din’s help. Magd al-Din gave him a piaster.

“The war has started, my man. This won’t get me supper.”

Magd al-Din did not understand what that meant. Had it started just this morning, as he had heard the passengers say, and arrived here by nightfall? Had it come that close? He thought for a while and the porter, despairing of getting anything more, left.

“Where to?” asked the old carriage driver who approached Magd al-Din.

“Ghayt al-Aynab.”

“Five piasters.”

“Fine.”

The driver brought his carriage closer and helped Magd al-Din load his luggage. Magd al-Din and Zahra climbed into the carriage and sat down, Zahra still carrying the baby, praying that she would not wake up in the dark.

The driver cracked his whip in the air, the horse lunged forward, and the whole carriage was jolted. Zahra fell back, then suddenly forward, and the baby almost fell under her feet. She got hold of herself and breathed, feeling the refreshing breeze caress her face and cool her body. “It’s a merciful climate,” she said to
herself as the cool breeze soothed her. Zahra slept again as the carriage moved on. Magd al-Dm marveled at that, since she had slept most of the way on the train as well.

“Where in Ghayt al-Aynab?” asked the driver.

“Twelve Street, house number eighty-eight,” Magd al-Din told him.

“I know the street, but you’ll have to handle the number. You know how to read, of course?”

The driver took out of his vest pocket a small dark bottle the size of his palm. He opened it and raised it to his mouth and took a quick gulp. “Care for a sip of quinine tonic?”

Magd al-Din did not answer, and the driver did not press him. They focused on the road.

There were only a very few passers-by and very few carriages. One or two taxicabs passed them. A while earlier, the driver had turned onto Umar ibn al-Khattab street. Candles in small, yellow lanterns cast a dim light in the small stores along the way. Rarely did they see a store with electric lights. At al-Hadari urinal the carriage entered Isis Street. The stores there were few and far between and most of them were closed. When the driver turned onto Raghib Street, the stores were slightly better lit and there were more pedestrians, taxicabs, and carriages. There was a streetcar ahead in the distance, and the lamps on the lampposts were painted dark blue so the light barely reached the ground. The few electric lights in the stores showed many broken tiles on empty floors. It was not vet 11 p.m. Magd al-Din had noticed only one coffeehouse, at the end of Isis Street. There the few customers sat around the light of a single electric lamp pushed into the farthest corner of the café. He saw another café at the end of Raghib Street, directly in front of the bridge to the left, a small café in which only three people sat by candlelight. In front of the bridge, the driver stopped.

“Seems the electricity’s been cut off,” he remarked.

Only a few moments before, Magd al-Din had watched as a black tent covered everything. The streetlights and the few store lights went out, and a black mass enveloped everything.

“Electricity’s off, and the bridge’s been raised for the boats to cross. We’ve got to wait. I could’ve turned on Karmuz Bridge, but
going along the Mahmudiya canal at night and in the dark is dangerous, for me, you, and the horse.”

Zahra had awakened at the very time that Magd al-Din wished she would sleep.

“Where are we?” she said

“In Raghib.”

“Raghib? Who is Raghib?”

“Hush, Zahra. Go back to sleep. The electricity is out and the bridge is raised for the boats. We have an hour to wait.”

But Zahra did not sleep. She took out her breast and gave it to the baby, who had also awakened in the dark. Magd al-Din was thinking about the times that he had visited Bahi and how the electricity would be cut off in the night for reasons unknown to the people, and they would talk about it in the morning. There were stories about the police pursuing robbers who had attacked boats going through the Mahmudiya canal, or the arrest of some young men who belonged to political societies. People also knew that sexual harassment took place in the dark; in the dark, a woman would be groped by passers-by who suddenly were behind or next to her, even though she was walking by herself. Therefore, as soon as power was cut off, every woman or girl would try to find another so that they could encourage each other. True, the groping hands would not stop, but the two women would be bolder and shout insults at the man.

A number of men had gathered in front of the bridge, and three women sought safety together in the doorway of the candlelit café. Magd al-Din reached for Zahra to make sure she was there, even though he knew she was. Carriages gathered and drew nearer to each other. The taxicabs, their blue lights barely shining ahead of them, headed for the Karmuz bridge. The driver took out the quinine bottle again and said under his breath, “The boats coming in are chock full of weapons, cannons, and cars. There’re soldiers with flashlights all around them. Seems like the war is coming here.” To Magd al-Din, he said, “Why did you come to Alexandria today? Aren’t you afraid of the war?”

Just then, the streetlights came on, so Magd al-Din did not answer. The bridge began to lower to its normal position on the canal.

As the carriage crossed the bridge, it nearly fell apart going over the potholes. To the right, immediately after the bridge, a strong smell of flour came from a high-walled mill. Its wire-screened windows were covered with fine white flour, making them stand out in the dark. Before the end of the streetcar’s winding tracks at the end of the street, and in front of the police station that occupied a commanding position in the square, the driver turned right onto Ban Street, which people called Twelve Street, because it was twelve meters wide. It was the widest and longest street in the area. Zahra saw several dimly lit streetcars sitting in the square and cried out, “What’s that? A train?”

“It’s a streetcar, Zahra. A streetcar,” Magd al-Din calmly replied.

The driver laughed and asked if it was their first visit to Alexandria. Magd al-Din said yes and fell silent. Once again there was the smell of flour, this time from another mill to the left of the carriage on Ban Street, where the carriage was proceeding with great difficulty, greater even than on the bridge. The street was not paved, only covered with little white stones. A few moments later, Magd al-Din asked the driver to stop. The house was to the right, there was no mistaking it, a small two-story house stuck between two three-story buildings.

“You’re lucky you found me. I just got back from the cafe,” Bahi said, as he made tea for them on a small spirit stove in a corner of the small room.

Magd al-Din, who was stretched out on a mat on the floor, leaning his head to the wall, asked, “What were you doing at the café so late?”

“Nothing, Sheikh Magd—just chatting and drinking tea.”

He laughed as he poured tea in the little glasses. Zahra was squatting with her back to them in another corner of the room, nursing her baby, who had not had her fill in the carriage. How were they all going to sleep in one room? she thought, holding
back her tears as she remembered their big house in the village. The baby opened her amber eyes and looked at her mother without letting go of the nipple, then she burst out crying. Did the pain the mother felt flow into her? Probably. Zahra’s feelings, however, soon changed to surprise at how clean and neat Bahi’s room was and at the fragrance of musk that permeated it. She was also surprised at Bahi himself, who wore pants and a shirt like city folk, and white shoes. This is a different man from the one she had seen ten years earlier, she thought. Did Alexandria do this to everyone?

“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you left the village?” Bahi asked. “I didn’t know you hated the village, or loved Alexandria.”

“I told you I’ve been wanting to leave for a long time.”

“And your land?”

“My sisters and their husbands will take care of it.”

“Then you might as well kiss it good-bye.”

Hearing faint moans coming from Zahra’s direction, Bahi asked her, “What’s the matter, Zahra? Why are you crying?”

Magd al-Din had no choice but to tell him the whole story. They all fell silent. Bahi’s silence was the most profound. Had he been such a curse on his family? To this day? What did fate want from him? He had suffered more than enough all these years. Should he have killed himself early on? And all because he was born attractive to women? He had let himself walk anywhere, at any time, but none of the Talibs had killed him. He went through all the horrors of the last war, but fate had not given him a chance to die. He had left his village and wandered through the markets of neighboring villages. A woman selling ghee and butter from Shubra al-Namla picked him up. His reputation had preceded him to all the villages, and he still had those killer eyes that radiated allure. The ghee vendor picked him up while Bahiva was still stalking him, following him to the other villages. In these villages, too, the children no longer chased her—they had gotten tired of it. Bahiya followed him like his shadow. At night she disappeared in the fields, and he hid from her, thinking that she would never find him. In the morning, he would discover she was following him again.

“Don’t follow me in the streets, Bahiya.”

She would smile and run her hands over his chest with a distant look in her eyes. He would see her tears and turn his back on her, almost in tears himself. More than once he thought of grabbing her and standing with her in front of the train. But he could never bring himself to do that; he was too weak to commit suicide, He could see the lines of old age beginning to appear prematurely on her face, and a few thin hairs on her chin. When the ghee vendor picked him up, he let himself go, unafraid of anything. The fiendish thought that he might become the cause of another woman’s madness even occurred to him; he wished he would become the cause of all women’s madness, in all the villages. If only all the women all over the countryside would follow him, thoroughly besotted! It was as if Bahiya knew. She disappeared suddenly. The ghee vendor brazenly invited him to her house, and he went with her without fear, hoping to become the cause of her madness. He watched her introduce him to her father as a big merchant from Tanta who wanted to buy all their butter and ghee, all year long. He saw in her mother’s eyes slyness and greed and doubts about his story. He thought of turning her into a madwoman too. They prepared a room for him to sleep in, and he asked them to collect all the ghee, butter, and eggs from the village. He learned from the beautiful, rather buxom woman that she was a widow, whose husband had been run over by a car in Tanta. She came to his room every evening. He had no doubt that her parents knew. He realized what was being planned for him. But he was not made for marriage and family life. On the dawn of the seventh day he sneaked out. The whole village, with its black houses, was enveloped in fog. It was a sight he would not forget: black houses made gray by the white vapor that stretched to the edge of the universe. Could hell be any different from what he was seeing? The houses appeared to him like mythical beasts writhing in torment, in utter blindness. When his feet hit the railroad tracks, he headed for Tanta, not to his village. When he came to an underpass, he sat down to drink tea from a shack that served it. He wanted to wait until the fog lifted so he could see things more clearly.