No One Sleeps in Alexandria

by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

  At about this time, he would have come back from the field, washed up and had his supper, fed the animals and rubbed them down, changed their water and put out fodder for them. He would have helped Zahra milk the water buffaloes, then performed his late-night prayers and sat alone near the kerosene lamps in their room, reading the Quran.

  “Anyway, that’s what happened. Ha, ha, ha!” a coarse voice was heard.

  Magd al-Din looked around to see where it came from. Zahra did not look but just sat still, silently annoyed. Magd al-Din saw the man who had spoken, a short, fat man with a faded fez. He was sitting on the edge of the seat, his feet barely touching the floor. He was speaking in utter surprise to a man who sat opposite him, farther to the side of the seat. Magd al-Din could only see his fez and the back of his neck and his white, slightly soiled shirt collar. They kept talking, and because they were close to Magd al-Din, he could hear them clearly.

  “Neither France nor England would let him get away with it. It’s the beginning of a new world war.”

  “That’s why I’m laughing so hard.”

  “What do you mean, laughing like that? I tell you, it’s a world war, and people are going to die.”

  “I mean, we’ve been transferred to work in Alexandria the very day Germany invades Poland. This can’t be just a coincidence—it’s been arranged with Hitler.”

  Magd al-Din listened, surprised. He knew, from scattered talk in the village and from the big radio he rarely listened to, that there were preparations for war, that Germany was creating problems with other countries, and that people were afraid that a new war, more devastating than the previous one, might break out. He had forgotten all that in the last few days. And here it was coming back. He listened to what the two men were saying.

  “I couldn’t get the evening paper in Tanta—people just snatched them away from the vendors. The radio said Warsaw has been bombarded heavily since early this morning and that German troops were invading Poland from more than one direction.”

  “This is because of the greed of the European countries. It’s the war of the greedy.”

  “The problem is, this war will come to us.”

  “Because we’ve been transferred to Alexandria on the same day? No, of course not. There’s no reason to be so pessimistic. What does Alexandria have to do with a war in Europe?”

  The conversation took what seemed a strange turn to Magd al-Din, so he took out the little Quran from his vest pocket. But before he could open it, the two were talking again.

  “Alexandria itself will be the reason the war comes to it. Yes, sir—don’t forget, Italy is in Libya.”

  “You think Mussolini would do it?”

  “He is Hitler’s mentor—if he doesn’t join him this year, it’ll be next year.”

  “Well, we’re only staying in Alexandria for a year. Besides, I doubt if the war will spread. Hitler swallowed up Czecho-slovakia and Austria before that, and nobody did anything about it. He will swallow Poland and no one will stand up to him. All of Europe is terrified, and the Soviet Union has signed a treaty with him. Besides, why should we go so far? I wish Germany or Italy, or both of them together would occupy Egypt and rid us of the English.”

  The sound of the wheels died down as the train stopped in the Kafr al-Zayyat station. The two men stopped talking, the white ceiling lights came on, and the clean, yellow wooden seats now shone more brightly. A man and three little boys came into the train car. The man was well dressed, in a summer white sharkskin suit, a clean fez, and black-and-white shoes with thin, pointed tips. The boys wore blue shorts, short-sleeved white shirts, and blue suspenders with white pinstripes. They had calf-length white socks and black patent leather shoes with wide tips. They looked as if they had just stopped crying.

  The man, who sat facing Magd al-Din, now placed his index finger to his lips, warning the children, who sat across from him, not to make a sound. Then Magd al-Din watched him take from his jacket pocket a golden cigarette case, which he pressed and a thin cigarette came out. He lit it and exhaled its blue smoke, closing his eyes in contentment.

  The train started moving again. Magd al-Din was familiar with the following stops. In two and a half hours, the train would be in Alexandria. That’s what he had learned from his previous visits to Bahi. Would he find him doing well this time?

  On that long-ago day, the father and his sons came back from battle carrying al-Qasim wrapped in a gallabiya. The mother screamed. Magd al-Din, eleven at the time, sat alone in a corner and cried. Al-Qasim was the kindest of his brothers. He was also the bravest, and his courage was well known in their village and in the neighboring villages.

  The Talibs buried their son, the one betrayed by his wife, in the late afternoon, and that night the Khalils buried their son who had been killed. The village slept in silence and terror. The following day no one left home. On the third day people went out after a rumor had spread that the Khalils had accepted God’s judgment, that their dandy son had caused the eldest Talib son to die of grief, and for this the Talibs had killed the eldest son of the Khalils. Everyone was even and no one owed anyone anything. By week’s end, though, one of the Talib sons was found killed outside the village. All attempts by the mayor, the county, and the governorate to reconcile the two families failed. No one accused anyone of murder. Everyone knew how it would happen: an eye for an eye, until the two families were extinct. It was no longer surprising for people to know which family harbored the next victim; the game was precise, no matter how much time passed between one victim and the next. Whenever another was killed, the people of the village shunned Bahi even more. It was he who had caused the conflagration of this quiet village that knew of vendettas only from old tales about old times, which no one alive had witnessed. Bahi wished one of the Talibs would kill him, but they paid no attention to him. They humiliated him. They did not kill him because they did not deem him worth it, and he knew it. That was why he frequently left the village and stayed for days on end in Tanta or Kafr al-Zayyat. Abd al-Ghani’s widow took to singing at the edges of the fields and walking along the irrigation canal outside the village. If she entered the village by mistake, the children chased her away with stones and chanted, “Bahiya loves Bahi.” That was what they called her now; her real name was Wagida. Bahi often heard the children and wished that one morning they would find Wagida—or Bahiya, as they called her— dead. But that did not happen, just as the Talibs did not kill him. They had killed five of his brothers, just as his brothers had killed five of them. The children eventually grew tired of chanting whenever they saw Wagida, so she started coming into the village, and the women opened their doors to her and offered her food and drink and followed her in pity as she walked through the village singing sweetly. Britain had declared Egypt a protectorate, and people began to see troop trains pass by the village and told strange stories about them. The county and governorate police forces went into the villages to pick out the best men and send them to fight in faraway lands. People forgot Bahi’s story, and the vendetta between the two families abated. People were now more interested in the stories about the “Authority” and what it was doing to the peasants and in stories about the finest young men, the flower of youth, who had disappeared ¡n mysterious circumstances, as well as the heroes who had come back from the war and those who had not. They wondered how Britain could have defeated Germany, and resigned themselves to God’s will, which had not granted Wilhelm II victory, so that the pestilence of British occupation was not lifted from Egypt. Gradually the stories of the war also began to fade from memory, as did Saad Zaghlou’s revolution after the war. The village, however, remembered its martyrs in the revolution and the war before it, and her lost children. Among them was Bahi, who had disappeared during the war years and had not returned.

  The train was leaving another station as the conductor scrutinized the tickets of the well-dressed man and his children. Magd al-Din opened the Quran at random, and his gaze fell on the seventh sura, “The Heights.”


  Out of the blue, Zahra asked him, “Why did they do that to us, Sheikh Magd?”

  There were many verses preceding the point at which he had opened the book, and he did not think to read the chapter from the beginning. His voice rose a little, heedless of those around him, “Moses said to his people: ‘Seek God’s help and be patient, for the earth belongs to God to give as a heritage to such of His servants as He pleases, and the end will be in favor of those who fear him.’”

  “Almighty God has spoken the truth,” he murmured to himself and closed his eyes and the Quran.

  He began to recite from memory in no particular order, “And as the unbelievers plotted against you to keep you in bonds or kill you or get you out. They plot and plan but the best of planners is God. Say: ‘Nothing will befall us except what God has decreed for us. He is our Protector... ’ And in God let the believers put their trust... The likeness of this present life is as the rain, which We send down from the sky. By its mingling arises the produce of the earth, which provides food for humans and animals until the earth is clad in its golden ornaments and decked out, and the people to whom it belongs think they have all power over it, our command reaches it by night or by day and we make it like a harvest, clean-mown as if it had not flourished only the day before! Thus do We explain the signs in detail to those who reflect... For to anything which We have willed, We but say ‘Be’ and it is. To those who have left their homes in the cause of God, after suffering oppression, We will assuredly give a goodly home in this world. But truly the reward of the Hereafter will be greater if they only realized it. They are the ones who have persevered in patience and put their trust in their Lord... Do not say of anything: 7 am going to do that tomorrow, ‘without adding, ‘God willing.’“

  His voice was rising gradually, until it almost filled the whole car. “And call your Lord to mind if you forget,” he continued. “I hope my Lord will guide me closer to the right road...And if you punish, then punish with the like of that which was done to you. But if you endure patiently, that is indeed best for those who are patient. So give glory to God night and day and give praise to Him in heaven and earth all day long. “

  The short man turned to his friend and whispered, “That man is reading, but the Quran in his hand is closed. He is reciting loudly and seems not to be paying attention to what he is reciting. He must be truly troubled.”

  “You will see a lot more than that if the war goes on for a long time.”

  The short man, surprised at his friend’s comment, said nothing and thought instead of the reception Alexandria was going to give them at night.

  King Farouk performed the Friday prayers at the Mosque of Mustafa Odeh Pasha in Fattuh Street in Gumruk—as the morning papers announced. The king was welcomed by the prime minister, Ali Mahir Pasha, Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, His Eminence Sheikh Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi and, of course, the mayor of the city. After prayers the king returned to the Muntaza Palace, as happened after every prayer. The morning newspapers also announced that the number of newborn babies this week was 520 for natives and 25 for foreigners. As for deaths, there were 100 for natives and one for foreigners. Causes of death for Alexandrians were old age, scarlet fever, meningitis, malaria, and pulmonary tuberculosis for adults; and for children and infants they were dysentery, whooping cough, and tetanus. The only foreigner who had died was a Greek, killed by a drunken Cypriot.

  This little murderous world is against the innocents:

  it takes the bread out of their mouths and

  gives their houses to the fire.

  Paul Éluard

  4

  “It’s hard arriving in a city at night,” said the short man to his companion as they passed Magd al-Din on their way to the door of the car. Magd al-Din did not listen to the response of the companion; in fact, he did not respond. “Wake up, Zahra. We’re in Alexandria,” said Magd al-Din as he shook his wife’s shoulder. She awoke, slightly disoriented. “God protect us,” she said to herself. She felt her head and found her black head cover in place. She felt her chest and found the money under her clothes. She stared at Magd al-Din, and indeed it was Magd al-Din!

  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 Stre
et, 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.”