Magd al-Din and Dimyan’s last night was Easter eve, on which Dimyan went with his family to church, as did Khawaga Dimitri, Sitt Maryam, and Yvonne. Magd al-Din stayed in his room. Had all that really happened since he left the village more than a year and a half ago? Had the world changed to that extent? Had all those catastrophes and events really taken place? Had he really met all these people? It seemed to him that the time that had passed between his leaving the village and this night was no more than one day and one night, or maybe just one day, or one night, one hour, or the blink of an eye. But that day, the day he had left, had sailed far away into memory. So it must be much longer than it really was, not shorter than a day. The short man who had come with him on the train had said the raids might reach Alexandria if Italy declared war, and that he and his friend were coming to Alexandria on the very day the war had broken out. Where could he find the short man and his friend now? they must have gone back. He had heard them saying that they would not spend more than a year in Alexandria, but the raids began before a year was over. Were they alive, or had they been killed in the heavy raids on the city? There Magd al-Din was, having seen all the raids, now going to al-Alamein, to the desert where fighting was going on. Al-Alamein, ‘the two flags,’ is a strange name, but it sticks in the memory, imposes itself indelibly on the cars. When he arrives at al-Alamein, will the war continue? When he arrived in Alexandria, the scope of the war grew larger and engulfed the whole world. They say the German army that landed in Libya was different from the Italian one.
Several events had taken place in the world the last few weeks. Bulgaria joined the Axis, and German troops entered the country to attack Yugoslavia and Greece. Italy lost seven battleships in one maritime battle with British warships in the Eastern Mediterranean, and nine hundred Italian sailors were taken prisoner. Miss Denise Musiri donated bonds at a face value of thirty thousand Egyptian pounds as an endowment to be administered by the Royal Endowment Department for the funding of educational projects. That prompted King Farouk, who had recovered from a long spell of indisposition, to issue a royal decree accepting the endowment and Miss Musiri’s conditions, and conferring upon her the Order of Perfection in order to encourage her and others like her to keep making such donations for scientific and humanitarian projects. Miss Musiri said that she could not forget the kindness of the late King Fuad I toward her father, Elie Musiri, which enabled him to achieve what he had achieved in industry and agriculture in Egypt. At the same time, a branch of the Egyptian ministry of justice announced the vacancy of three positions; four hundred persons applied for the jobs. King Farouk donated one thousand pounds for the Day of the Poor, which was chosen to commemorate the death of his father at the end of April. The film The Mark of Zorro was screened for the first time in Egypt. The birthday of the Prophet Muhammad was celebrated with Quranic recitation at the Young Muslim Men’s Association. Once again streetlights were not permitted on the occasion. The British and Indian armies advanced on Asmara, where the Indian soldiers staged great victories. The United States seized sixty Axis ships in its own and in South American harbors on the pretext of protecting them from sabotage by their sailors, then arrested the sailors. General de Gaulle arrived in Cairo for the first time from Khartoum, after visiting the Free French troops, which had contributed to the liberation of the town of Keren in Eritrea. Together with the Indian forces, the Free French were largely instrumental in liberating that town in particular, after seizing Asmara, the capital. The general was received at Cairo airport by General Wavcll, commander in chief in the Middle East and a representative of Sir Miles Lampson and Baron de Benoit, chairman of the National French Committee in Egypt, together with key committee members. Afterwards, De Gaulle visited Abdin Palace, where he signed his name in the guest book, then held meetings with the prime minister, the British high commissioner, and the military commanders of Free France in Egypt. He traveled to Alexandria, where he spoke before the Free French Club on Nabi Danyal Street and visited the camp of the Polish forces, praising the support that the Free French were receiving from the Poles. The band played the French, British, and Egyptian national anthems, then de Gaulle left Alexandria for Cairo and London. There was a shortage of sugar in Alexandria, and the local population complained bitterly, whereupon the governorate of Alexandria intervened by bringing in large quantities of sugar from the south. The shortage was over in a few days. A coup d’état was foiled in Italy. The coup was engineered by Marshal Badoglio, who sought asylum in the king’s palace, where the king kept him under his own royal guard, so it was more like a prison, but at least he was safe from Mussolini’s wrath. Mussolini arrested Badoglio’s men and sent them to the Albanian front. The comedian Ali al-Kassar screened his film One Thousand and One Nights in Cairo. Another crisis erupted in Alexandria, where the shipments of grain from the countryside to flour mills were delayed. Once again, as it had done in the case of the sugar shortage, the government acted quickly, setting aside special freight trains for grain shipments. Four young men robbed a poor cart driver who was out late at night and took his cart and donkey. A young man stabbed his friend, a barber, and almost killed him. He admitted to the prosecutors that he had been unemployed for a long time and that the barber, an old friend, knew his situation so he gave him free shaves and haircuts. The perpetrator got used to that. One day he brought a friend of his that the barber did not know and asked the barber to give him a free haircut too, for the sake of their friendship. But the barber let him down in front of his friend, and so the man became enraged and stabbed the barber with a knife. When the prosecutor asked him why he had brought someone to the barber for a free haircut, he said he was also unemployed and could not find a job. Then he added that in reality, he planned to take a half-piaster secretly from his friend, instead of the full piaster the barber would have charged him. The Hungarian prime minister, who could not acquiesce to German wishes and could not resist them, committed suicide. Germany deployed twenty-two divisions on the borders with Yugoslavia, then the planes bombed Belgrade, and Germany declared war on Yugoslavia and Greece simultaneously. German planes first flew over Belgrade on the morning of the sixth of April, and for three days methodically dumped their bombs on the capital in such a tactically meticulous manner that they flew fearlessly close to the roofs of high buildings. The city was so devastated that on the third day, when the raids ended, the bodies of twenty thousand of its citizens filled the streets or were under the rubble. The wild animals, set free when the zoo was hit, went on a rampage, deyouring bodies of the dead and the living in a city that experienced horror at its worst. At the same time, the German troops were overrunning Yugoslavia from all sides, and the country surrendered after seven days. Hitler had called it “Operation Punishment,” after which he moved immediately to attack Greece, successfully implementing his policy of “one enemy at a time.” The British forces could not protect Greece. The British troops, which had gone in from the east to aid the Greeks, numbered fifty thousand soldiers, of whom eleven thousand were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, in addition to the casualties on the Greek side. The English, however, managed under the pressure of the German offensive to safely evacuate the rest of their force, in addition to ten thousand other Greek, Yugoslav, and Cypriot nationals. At the same time, the British army retreated before the new German forces in Libya, and the battles reached the vicinity of Sallum after the British lost their former strongholds. The Axis forces began attacking the base in Tobruk. The vice bureau recorded the following arrests throughout Egypt: 850 beggars and cigarette-butt collectors, forty-six thugs and pimps, fifty women, including twenty minors, for incitement to vice on the street. There were thirteen cases of gambling and wagering, eight suspected brothels, fifty-three employ-ment offices suspected of being fronts for prostitution, and fifty boarding houses accused of the same. The British forces in Tobruk stood their ground and took thirty German officers and one thousand soldiers and petty officers as prisoners of war. They were shipped by train to Alexa
ndria, where the workers saw them for the first time. They had seen many Italian prisoners of war before, but that was the first time they saw the Germans, who had remained an enigma since the outbreak of the war. They saw that they were very white, with blond hair and blue eyes, and tall and healthy. From the cars of the freight train, they looked at everything in indifference and disbelief. The king of Greece and his crown prince moved the capital to Crete, and the king sent his people a message asking them to remain united, undivided, and free. The German forces entered Athens, and a young man in Alexandria committed suicide by throwing himself from the top of the Icarus Hotel, and two young women threw themselves in front of the Rami streetcar on Alexander Street. Sadness gripped Alexandrians, who sympathized with their Greek and Cypriot neighbors. Gold relics were discovered in Greek tombs in Kom al-Shuqafa. The film Forever, starring Fatma Rushdi and Sulavman al-Gindi, was screened at Cinema Concordia and Si Umar, starring Nagib al-Rihani, at Cinema Majestic. The United States decided to build four hundred battleships, nine hundred ships, and a huge number of airplanes for the Allies that year. Dimyan bought the weekly al-Akhbar and went to Magd al-Din at home the day following Zahra’s departure and asked him to hear him read the news written in small print, not just the easy headlines. He read, “Death of a Well-off Maharaja in London,” then paused for a moment and resumed, “Our correspondent in London informs us that a well-off maharaja has died in London.” Then he paused, looking at Magd al-Din, who asked him to finish, but Dimyan said, “That’s it—there’s just a headline and a news item.”
“Congratulations! You can read, Dimyan,” Magd al-Din told him.
“What do you think of that, Sheikh Magd?” asked Dimyan after a second.
“What do you mean?” “I mean, how useful is it?”
“To tell you the truth, Dimyan,” said Magd al-Din with a smile, “I was puzzled too when you read it to me.”
“Is this why I learned to read—for these newspapers?”
Magd al-Din laughed silently and Dimyan said, as if to himself, “What stupid newspapers! Why should I care about a maharaja, well-off or broke?”
Dimyan threw the newspaper out of Magd al-Din’s window and left without bending to pick it up. Churchill gave a speech in which he announced Britain’s options: victory or death. Nothing new was learned about Hamza. Shahin no longer spoke about his son to Magd al-Din. The verdict was announced in the case of the defective helmets, which was declared to be a case of commercial fraud rather than high treason, so the defendants got off with light sentences and everyone was happy. As of April 20, the sale of liquor in Alexandria was restricted to those with permits issued by the military. This was due to the many accidents resulting from drunkenness, and also because alcoholic beverages were used to make explosives. In their new raids on Alexandria, the German planes started dropping small incendiary bombs, and the people were instructed on how to handle them if they had not exploded. The military courts in Alexandria also heard seventy cases against Italians living in the city who had not heeded a previous military order to surrender their radios to the police. The radios were confiscated, but no spies were uncovered. It was announced that on the last Monday of the month, Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator would be screened in several cinemas in the capital and in Cinema Royal in Alexandria. When it was shown, record crowds in wartime were observed in front of the cinemas. It now seemed that Dimyan had never expressed a strong desire to watch a Charlie Chaplin film; he found out about the film but did nothing about it—he did not even allow himself to think of it. Ghaffara met Magd al-Din on the street and reproached him for taking his wife to the station without asking him to give them a ride on his cart. Magd al-Din smiled and thanked him, telling him that that they left in the late morning, when Ghaffara was nowhere to be found on the street. Then he told him about his trip to al-Alamein the following day and asked him if it would be possible to pick him up at five in the morning to take him with his friend Dimyan and their luggage to the station. Ghaffara said he would then asked him where al-Alamein was, and Magd al-Din told him.
The night was long. His life passed in front of his mind’s eye. He felt as if a whole lifetime had passed since Zahra left. Had Dimitri not come to visit him and sat with him a long time, the night would not have passed. Dimitri asked him if he would come to Alexandria during vacations, and Magd al-Din said that he would not, that if he got a vacation he would go to the village. He said that with great emphasis, which baffled Dimitri. Then Magd al-Din told him that he would give him three months rent, and would send him the rent every month after that with Dimyan, who would surely come to Alexandria to see his family. Dimitri asked him who Dimyan was. Magd al-Din was surprised, and after a pause started to remind Dimitri of him but the man, who could not remember, said, “Oh yes, I remember him,” but he was not telling the truth. This perplexed Magd al-Din, who began to wonder what might have happened to his landlord’s mind. They spoke a lot about people, the country, and the war. Dimitri suddenly asked him if he had found out anything new about Rushdi, and Magd al-Din told him the truth, namely that his father no longer spoke about his son in front of him. Dimitri said with regret that he hoped the young man realized the gravity of the situation and would let it pass peacefully, that he personally would not have liked to stand in the way of his daughter’s wish but that it was a difficult wish. He was sure time would heal all wounds. Magd al-Din thanked Dimitri for the time he had spent in his house and told him that both he and Dimyan had applied to the railroad authority for housing if a vacancy should occur, and that he was hopeful. Dimitri reassured him about his furniture in the room-—”exactly as if you are here, Sheikh Magd”—and shook his hand warmly, then went upstairs and left Magd al-Din, who wished to get some sleep that night. He began to recite silently some of the short chapters of the Quran to calm his nerves.
The previous day’s newspapers had announced that the country was ready for Hollywood’s new masterpiece, produced by David Selznick, starring the famous actors Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Leslie Howard, as well as more than thirty-five hundred new actors and actresses. That masterpiece was based on the famous novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind. The papers also published the name of the German officer commanding the Axis forces in Libya. It was Erwin Rommel, who came from the French front and who had shown great skill in desert warfare. The public health office in the governorate also announced that births in Alexandria that week numbered four hundred locals and twenty foreigners. As for deaths, they numbered 120 locals. The causes of death given were old age, a variety of fevers, malaria, tuberculosis, dysentery, whooping cough, tetanus, and air raids. Deaths among foreigners numbered ten. Causes given were drunkenness, insanity, and suicide.
The time that my journey takes is long and
the way of it long.
I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light and
pursued my voyage through the wilderness of worlds . . .
Rabindranath Tagore
21
The Maryut coast—or the Libyan coast, as the ancient Carthaginians called it—extending from Alexandria to Sallum, before it enters Libya, is the forgotten coast in Egypt. It is where Magd al-Din and Dimyan were going this morning. Off the coast lies the Mediterranean, bluer than in Alexandria, with clear water that reveals rocks and sand, enticing you to hold out your hands and scoop up water to drink, and forget that the water is salty. The coast, for whoever hears of or sees it, is the desert itself. It is a barren coast, beyond which the desert extends endlessly, with a horizon in every direction and a mirage on every horizon. On this deserted coast many large armies have marched. The Libyan Shishak I was the first to use it to invade Egypt in 945 B.C. At that time, pharaonic glories had reached the high heavens: the pharaohs sat on the gods’ throne, and one dynasty followed another, twenty-one of them, until the inevitable decline set in. Eventually, though, it was the Egyptians’ turn to march on the coast, this time to Libya. That was in the r
eign of Aprieus, the fourth king of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. He set out to Cyrene to rid it of Greek rule, but failed to do so. Ptolemy I, however, was able to reach Cyrene and annex Libya, from which the worship of Isis spread west. The Libyans built a temple for her. It is still standing today in Cyrenaica, as is the bath of Cleopatra VIII (Selene)—daughter of Cleopatra VII, who ruled Egypt—just like her mother’s bath in Marsa Matruh. Both baths are carved out of the rocks in the sea. Were the two of them daughters of Poseidon, god of the sea, or were they both goddesses of the sea?
The road was not completely deserted then. Alexander took it to Marsa Matruh before turning into the desert to head for the temple of Amun in Siwa. The Arab tribes of Bani Salim and Bani Hílal took the same road a thousand years later, migrating from Najd to Morocco, then came back bearing the name “the Fatimids.” The Fatimids were the last to take that road before troops from England and the Commonwealth, from India, Australia, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, and Cape Town marched on it, as did troops from southern Italy and Germany, in the opposite direction. The northern coast has been a road of war and death. In times of peace, the Christians took it to escape Roman persecution, and they built small monasteries in the farthest depressions in the desert. They reached all the way to al-Wadi al-Jadid and built churches and monasteries in Bagawat and near Alexandria in Bahig, Ikingi Maryut, and Burg al-Arab. During times of peace, the road was taken by the Bedouin tribes of Ali al-Abyad and Ah al-Ahmar of the Awlad Ali of the Saadi Arabs, and the sedentary Murabitin tribes of Jamayat, Qawabis, and Samalush, who were usually charged with guard duties and took up their positions among the settlements of the different tribes to provide them protection when the Saadi Arabs were busy fighting.
No One Sleeps in Alexandria Page 26
