Magd al-Din was surprised at the idea, and Dimyan asked him if the cinema was proscribed in Islam, and Magd al-Din said he didn’t mean it like that, but that he thought if he ever got into a movie theater he wouldn’t be able to get out of it. Dimyan, who had become like a meek little child since going to church and confessing and praying to Mari Girgis, laughed.
The raids of Paris had begun to intensify and the world waited with bated breath. Was Hitler going to enter Paris? Was the most beautiful city in the world about to fall? The newspapers published the poem written by the Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi after the end of the Great War:
You are the beauty and majesty of this epoch
The very cornerstone of its solid edifice
The people of the epoch have taken up the banner of right from you
Its civilization marched on in the light of your sons.
The situation in France appeared quite bleak. A German armored division captured eight thousand British and four thousand French soldiers. That armored division was under the command of an intelligent German soldier whose name, Erwin Rommel, would become very familiar to Egyptians later on. His panzer division was nicknamed “the phantom division” and was the spearhead that penetrated the Somme, advancing toward the Seine, capturing all the French and English troops in its way until Rommel occupied Cherbourg which, together with its troops numbering thirty thousand, surrendered to him. The roads in France were filled with refugees chased by the machine guns of German planes. The French army collapsed and De Gaulle was appointed undersecretary for national defense. The Soviet Union seized the Baltic republics. But who had the time to think about that? Paris fell, and the people’s hearts were wrenched by the horrors of war. Camilla wept, and when Zahra saw her she figured that Paris must be something so big as to cause Camilla to cry. Camilla said her life’s dream was to travel to Paris one day and that she could not believe that the capital of beauty could fall.
General Pétain formed a new government, which laid down its arms and signed an armistice agreement with Germany. De Gaulle suddenly fled from Bordeaux to Britain, carrying the honor of the French nation with him. In the evening Khawaga Dimitri came into Magd al-Din’s room. He told him that he had learned from a relative of his who worked as a supervisor at the Railroad Authority that the Authority needed some new permanent employees. They were needed to face the pressure of work these days, when dozens of cars loaded with provisions, weapons, and soldiers were arriving every day. Magd al-Din could go the following day to the administrative building of the Railroad Authority in Qabbari to submit an application.
The first person Magd al-Din thought of was Dimyan. He did not ask Khawaga Dimitri about that. He figured that they probably needed more than one worker. Quickly he made his way to Dimyan’s house. In the morning, both of them applied for jobs and were accepted right away. They only had to have the usual medical check-up. This was the government job that would guarantee them a decent life.
Around them a state of the highest emergency had been announced. A few days earlier, on the tenth of June at 4:45 p.m. to be exact, Italy had declared war on England and France.
The world was shaken, and Italian mothers sobbed as they saw their sons called up for active military duty. The American secretary of state announced that Italy’s entry into the war was a major catastrophe for humanity. Egypt immediately severed its relations with Italy. Real evacuation of many Alexandrian families to the countryside began. Thousands of gas masks were distributed and were used by falafel makers to protect against the vapors of frying oil and by the bakers in front of the big ovens. Ghaffara refused to change the mask he made himself out of the fez, as he did not trust anything that the government distributed. Dimyan said to Magd al-Din as he received the letter of appointment, “Georgius the Martyr has sent us this job as a gift, Sheikh Magd. I implored him for it.”
“I also spent long nights reciting the names of God, until the Prophet came to me in a dream and my heart was reassured,” Magd al-Din said in agreement.
At night, as Magd al-Din lay awake next to Zahra as she slept, he thought of his new job. He thought that no one in the world knew anything about him. What if he were to die? Would anyone care? Italy entered the war, and people began to flee Alexandria, but he had to stay. It had been an involuntary trip decreed by God, and now he had to sleep in the city whose eyes were now looking upwards, to the sky.
The cruel and ravishing bears
Born on the very day of war
Utter innocent wishes.
Paul Éluard
11
This day has a different flavor, and it is whiter than any other day before it. This is what Magd al-Din felt, the light pouring down on his face as he left the house in the morning.
He paused for a little while on the threshold and looked right and left. The street was deserted except for three persons, one at the end of the street to the right and the other two heading for Sidi Karim. People were still asleep or were awake but had not left their houses yet. Every day the summer sun brought the morning in surprisingly early. Yesterday at the headquarters of the engineering section of the railroad, they were given directions to their job location. They were to leave Ghayt al-Aynab and walk along the bank of Mahmudiya Canal to a point midway between Karmuz Bridge and Kafr Ashri bridge. There they would find a big housing compound for railroad workers, next to which they would find a smaller housing compound for traffic workers who also worked for the railroad. Between the two compounds they would find a small road ending at a gate to the railroad tracks, the vast, complex network of the “Zaytun” area, as they were told. After passing through the gate they were to go back left for a distance of two kilometers to reach their job location, Post Number Three. They did not understand why it was called a “post,” since the postal authority was not hiring them. Neither of them bothered to ask about that. On their way back Dimyan said, “These are crazy people. They want us to walk all the way from Ghayt al-Aynab to the railroad housing compound along the Mahmudiya canal, then go back the same distance through the railroad?”
“What can we do?” Magd al-Din asked him.
“The job location is just in front of Ghayt al-Aynab and Ban Street. Two alleys away we’ll find the fence separating Ghayt al-Aynab from the railroad. We’ll find an opening in the fence, or we can make one ourselves, or jump over the fence.”
Today they would do that and they would do it every morning, for this was a permanent job, a government job. Magd al-Din stood in front of Dimyan’s house and called out his name. The whole house, even the walls, seemed asleep. The door was low and dark and out of it came a draught of warm air laden with the breath of the crowded dwellers. The morning air was truly refreshing, and the dew that had gathered on the streets and the houses at dawn was still sending forth a cool breeze, if one kept away from the doors of the houses. The smell of soap rose from the streetcorners, bath water poured out on the street by fulfilled, satisfied women at dawn before anyone could see them. Only the houses looked tired and drab, their main entryways without wooden or metal doors, the narrow staircases emitting the smell of fatigue. But Magd al-Din was happy, feeling the cool of a winter morning even though it was summer. Dimyan emerged out of the dark door into the light of the new day.
“Look at you in that khaki suit!”
Magd al-Din smiled without comment, looking at Dimyan’s head now covered with a blue beret that looked like a train engineer’s hat. The two proceeded like two merry children toward the fence in the south.
They stopped in front of the stone wall, which was about two and a half meters high. Magd al-Din thought that jumping over the wall might be forbidden. He was confused for a moment, then heard Dimyan say, “It’s not that high, as you can see. I’ll clasp my hands together, and you can climb on them, then you get to the top and sit down, then give me a hand up to join you—then we’ll get down on the other side.”
Dimyan clasped his hands together, but Magd al-Din hesitated. He lifted his foo
t from the ground then put it down again.
“It’s hard for me to step with my shoes on the hands of one of God’s noble creatures.”
“What?”
“How could I step with my shoes on a creature that God has exalted?”
Dimyan looked at him incredulously then saw Magd al-Din actually take off his shoes and throw them over the wall. Dimyan smiled and shook his head at his friend’s meekness. He clasped his hands, and Magd al-Din stepped on them with his right foot then jumped up and grasped the top of the wall, feeling the hard stones of the wall, which could not have been more than twenty centimeters thick. Dimyan pushed him up, and finally Magd al-Din was able to sit on top of the wall. He suddenly said, “The wall is shaking!”
“Don’t be afraid. It’s very solid.”
Dimyan stood wondering how he was going to climb. It would be hard to grasp Magd al-Din’s hand and jump; that might pull Magd al-Din down. Magd al-Din himself must have thought the same thing. He said, “You can step on my foot. Think of it as a stair and then give me your hand.”
Dimyan took off his shoes and threw them over the wall and jumped up until he held on to the top of the wall, pushing down a little which helped him to get a little higher. That made it possible for him to place his foot on that of Magd al-Din, who held him by the jacket to help him up. Dimyan’s torso was now higher than the top of the wall. God in heaven! What happened? Crash! A big chunk of the wall collapsed with them on top of it; it fell down in one piece, and quietly.
Magd al-Din fell down on his backside, and Dimyan’s chest hit the wall, and both felt great pain where they fell. But a few moments later after they overcame the shock of the fall, they were now facing each other, and they both laughed happily: two solitary men in a huge open space laughing without an echo. They both got up, leaning on their hands, and started looking for their shoes. Neither of them had looked around nor seen anything until now. The first thing they saw was the vast, open space and the sun rising strong to their left and the faraway blue sky. But the land appeared dreary, lime and sand and little rocks, two old and rusty rails, beyond which stretched land covered with thorny plants and short cactus, then a few rails, between which were pebbles and evaporated fuel oil that appeared to have separated from the soil, its black color turned gray by the eddies of dust. At intermittent distances they could see a few small thickets of unkempt thorny plants.
They walked to the right. Dimyan was quite surprised at how vast the land was as it opened up before him. How could he have missed all of this even though he had lived for many years in Ghayt al-Aynab? Why had he never thought of going beyond the wall so close to Ban Street, separated only by two alleys? This vast open space to the south was matched only by the vast sea to the north.
Some of the railroad tracks seemed to end at new bumpers attached to short concrete columns. There were many cars lined up on more than one line. They appeared to have been lined up carefully, for on every line there were for the most part cars of one kind only: the flatbed cars on one line, the boxcars on another, and the semi-closed ones on a third. All the cars were dull brown, with the exception of the boxcars, which were dark gray. The floors of the flatbed cars were covered with thick wooden boards, planks attached together by wide, thick iron tics nailed to the boards. But despite all the obvious care taken in storing the cars, the place appeared deserted. Magd al-Din thought that perhaps they had been duped, that Adam, peace be upon him, when he descended from heaven must have descended to a place like this one, that God who sent Adam to earth in the care of providence, would forsake them here. There was not one single bird in the sky, but they saw in the distance a pipe rising from the ground, with an oilcloth hose that almost reached the ground, attached to it. Next to the pipe a man sat next to a big green mulberry tree under a canopy made of bare tree branches.
“So there are people here,” exclaimed Dimyan, who must have been thinking along the same lines as Magd al-Din.
“Come on. Let’s go ask him.”
The man was about their age, but his clothes were tattered and he was barefoot. He was so dejected that he seemed not to have heard their footsteps. When they got close to him both of them thought they probably should just keep going and leave him alone, for he seemed totally oblivious. But in the way that one sometimes thinks of doing something, changes his mind, yet still does it, Magd al-Din asked him, “Where do we find Post Number Three?”
He pointed with his index finger, indicating that they were headed in the right direction. But Dimyan, who did not like the man’s silence, exclaimed,
“What’s with you, man? Speak, the day’s just begun!”
The man looked at him for a long time, and Dimyan was at a loss and began to shrink back in fear. Magd al-Din almost burst out laughing, not believing what was happening to his friend.
“Get out of here,” the man said in a faint voice.
“Yes, sir,” said Dimyan meekly and walked despondently in silence as Magd al-Din tried to muffle his laughter.
After they were far enough away Dimyan said, “That was a jinn, Sheikh Magd.”
A big wooden kiosk appeared, its walls made of wooden planks planted close together in the ground. On top of them was another row of planks, attached to the lower row by broad metal strips, and on top of it all was a pitched roof of corrugated iron.
Next to the kiosk a man was crouching over a little fire holding a big tankard with a long handle made of braided wire. “Greetings,” they both said. The crouching man raised his head. He was making tea, which had begun to boil in the tankard. They could smell its pleasant aroma.
“You must be the new workers, Magd al-Din and Dimyan. I’m Hamza. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Today should be considered a feast day. Zahra went to the market at Sidi Karim, behind the police station, and bought a pair of pigeons for five piasters and a chicken for ten piasters. Sannusi, the butcher on Fawakih Street, slaughtered them for her. She cleaned them and boiled the chicken and the pigeons, then she stuffed them with southern Egyptian hulled wheat, which she had bought from Bishri, the grain and spice dealer on Raghib Street.
The pleasant aroma filled the second-floor hallway and also the first floor. So Lula too went out quickly and bought pigeons and chicken and came back and started cooking them. She did not forget to go up to the second floor and tell Zahra that she could not resist the delicious aroma of her cooking and so had to do like her. She asked Zahra, who was quite surprised, to forgive her. Zahra insisted that Lula taste the chicken gizzards. All the while Sitt Maryam followed the exchange smiling, for she understood the intricate meanings of women’s little games!
Zahra’s little girl, Shawqiya, was playing in the hallway between the two rooms, and Camilla was teasing her from behind the open door and their laughter could be heard. A kitten came up from the first floor and stood in front of the hallway meowing and looking around. This frightened Shawqiya and made her run to her mother, and as she did she stumbled on the door’s low threshold. Her mother held her up to her bosom, patting her on the back and calming her down.
Shawqiya had screamed, which made Camilla hurry into the hallway. She figured out what was happening and shooed the cat away. The sun bathed Camilla, who stood there in a tight, short, light dress. Her strong, svelte body was bursting with femininity. She had a small frame that was filled with yearning to rebel and break free like a mare, and a body that imposed itself on your eyes so that when it approached from a distance you could not see anyone else. The fragrance of that body, like the aroma of aged wine, filled the nostrils and stirred the soul. Anyone who spoke with Camilla had to fight a real desire to take her in his arms without any preliminaries. Her slender waist and unbound, inviting chest appeared like a natural harbor for every hungry ship. Little, gentle Camilla had a body sanctified by an aura of warm allure. Zahra saw Camilla under the sun and exclaimed to herself, “Praise the Creator, she’s a gazelle!” Camilla heard her and did not say anything because the sound of drums and bras
s and wind instruments playing a military march drowned out everything else.
No One Sleeps in Alexandria Page 13
