There was a long interval of silence until Magd al-Din asked, “You didn’t tell us what you do in the desert and where you live.”
“I told you my nickname was Radwan Express. Actually, I work as an abonne. Do you know what that is?”
“I think an abonne is like a postman, except that he works on the train.”
“Very good, brother Magd al-Din. He’s like a postman but he doesn’t work for the post office or for any office. He works for himself. He gets a permit from the railroad to ride the trains, and abonne means a pass that exempts him from buying tickets. He delivers peoples’ mail and goods at different stations. I used to be the abonne of the desert trains until Mussolini entered the war. I had my own corner at the door of the car—the abonne corner— and at every stop people came and gave me letters and bags and baskets and bundles and boxes and everything that could be sent, big or small, and the name of the person they wanted them sent to, and the name of the station. And at every station everyone who wanted to receive a delivery would come to me. If I didn’t find the addressee, I would leave the letters and parcels with the stationmaster. But people used to come and ask about letters and other things just on their own. Many times they would find that I had letters for them from their loved ones. At every stop I saw peoples’ faces light up when they received their letters and the eagerness with which they took the letters. At every stop I saw the kindness and goodness in the eyes of those sending things to their sons or relatives or loved ones. A lot of times they would cry just because they’d gotten a letter. Of course a letter in the desert is something else! I could figure out the contents of the letters from the eyes of the senders and recipients. Now, as you can see, the train is empty. Business in the desert has dried up. The desert is now a battlefield. Nobody is left except armies and the Bedouin. Armies don’t send their letters with the abonne, and the Bedouin don’t send anything. The peasants and people from the Delta have returned to their villages, and nothing is left but me and this train.”
They fell silent. Magd al-Din and Dimyan exchanged glances. The train had stopped at a station. The abonne stopped talking then stood to look out the window at the platform.
“Nobody got on. Nobody got off,” he said. “The station-master didn’t even leave his room.”
The train moved on.
What do the armies of the Earth amount to?
Look at the moon in the sky.
Jalal al-Din Rumi
22
Magd al-Din had never before seen such an arid expanse before, True, there is open space in the countryside, but it is an expanse of soft green fields teeming with birds flying and humans playing or working peacefully. Next to the water wheels you can see children having fun, animals sleeping, women talking, old men playing tictac-toe, and ducks splashing in the water on which willows cast their shadows, while on the land, camphor, sycamore, and oak trees cast theirs. Now as Magd al-Din stood on the short, low platform of al-Alamein. railway station next to Dimyan, he was seeing nothing but a wilderness, with no birds and no trees. Dimyan likewise was staring incredulously at the awesome, vast expanse. The train had started again slowly, then moved away, looking like a green worm spotted with yellow, wiggling away into the endless beyond. In the distance was military equipment, some scattered, other pieces arrayed close together. Among them were a few wooden kiosks and half-naked soldiers, their bodies above their khaki shorts gleaming in the distance, and other soldiers whose black bodies did not gleam. The train that sped away like a wondrous yellow-spotted worm, the high faraway sky, the mysterious groupings of soldiers, and the all-engulfing wilderness gave both Magd al-Din and Dimyan a sense of being lost. Five or six Bedouin had gotten off the train from the other cars, but they had not paused for a moment. Waiting for them were a few others, who spoke in loud, fast rattling voices, of which Magd al-Din and Dimyan could not understand a word. The two of them watched the Bedouin hurrying away down the narrow road next to the station between two rows of low, limestone houses deserted by their inhabitants. The Bedouin stirred up little eddies of dust, as if they were a herd of goats scurrying around. The stationmaster had gone out of his room to meet the train and spoke briefly with the engineer. As soon as the train began to move and the stationmaster turned around to go back to his room, he saw Magd al-Din and Dimyan and recognized them, for only a railroad worker would be wearing a green suit when he got off the train at the station. He approached them slowly. On the platform were two wooden rooms with pitched roofs also made of wood, painted a dull gray in several thick, clotted layers, betraying the painter’s lack of skill.
“Welcome,” said the stationmaster once he had come very close to Dimyan and Magd al-Din. Either they were still too awed by the expanse to respond or he did not wait for a reply.
“Are you the new workers?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Come on in.”
He walked and they followed him to his room. At that moment, another man appeared at the door of the other room and stood there, staring at them. The stationmaster told him that they were the new crossing workers. The man welcomed them. Before they got into the stationmaster’s room, Dimyan said, “Our stuff’s on the platform.”
The stationmaster smiled and said calmly, “Don’t worry. Nothing gets lost here.”
In the stationmaster’s room they all sat, Dimyan and Magd al-Din on a small wooden bench and the stationmaster and his colleague on another one facing them.
“My name is Hilal,” said the stationmaster. “My colleague here is Amer—he’s the telegraph operator. His work is extremely important. Being late sending or receiving a telegram can have serious consequences.” He paused for a moment and looked at Amer as if he needed confirmation for what he had said, then continued, “There may come a time when neither he nor I will be needed. Perhaps only the two of you will remain to handle the army traffic at the crossing. Military trains will not stop, which means your work is very important. Here we are working directly under the British command, supervised by a young English officer who knows a little Arabic. He’s a little arrogant but quite sympathetic. There’s an old housing compound, which is vacant now. Amer and I live in one of the houses. You can take the one next to it. The water train comes only once a week, and if it’s late we get some water from the soldiers. There’s no one in town except a few Bedouin in a settlement to the south. Some of their men sometimes show up when the water train arrives. They fill their jerry cans, but they don’t mix with anyone. They walk fast and they look like camels. Every one of them is so tall you’d expect them to keel over any minute.” He laughed by himself and continued, “They never feel hungry. They live on the fat of their bodies, exactly like camels. And they guard their dignity fiercely. Sometimes a young shepherdess comes with her sheep and her little brother. I hope no one will give her any trouble—but I haven’t had the honor of your names.”
“Magd al-Din.”
Dimyan was a little hesitant to say his name. He had had it with the man’s chatter, but politeness, especially because this was the first meeting, compelled him to listen on. “Dimyan,” he finally said.
Resentment showed on the face of Amer the telegraph operator. Hilal was silent for a few moments, then said as if to rebuke Amer, whose resentment was visible, “In any case, Jesus is a prophet and Muhammad is a prophet, too.”
But Dimyan was still thinking about what the man said in his long talk and was amused by the thought that the stationmaster’s name meant ‘crescent,’ while his face was as round as the full moon.
It was noon. There was a big clock in the stationmaster’s room, and Magd al-Din thanked God for that, otherwise how would he know prayer times when there was no mosque calling the faithful to prayer, for neither he nor Dimyan had a watch. He did not know that he would soon meet Muslim soldiers of the empire on which the sun never set.
The stationmaster got up to show them the house where they would stay. No sooner had they made it to the platform than they saw in front of them
the young English officer wearing khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. His knees were dark, which meant that he had spent a long time in the desert unlike new soldiers whose knees looked white and red, with the exception of the Africans, naturally. The officer wore a green cap.
“Hello Mr. Spike,” the stationmaster called out. The officer pretended not to hear him and asked Magd al-Din and Dimyan in English, “Do you speak English?”
They understood the question but did not answer. Magd al-Din was at a loss for words; he thought immediately of Hamza, who knew a little English, actually a lot of English compared to the two of them. Hamza was lost.
Magd al-Din felt his face cloud over and sadness came over him as if ants were crawling all over his hot cheeks. He bowed his head and looked at the floor and almost asked the officer if he knew anything about Hamza. He heard the officer ask the stationmaster in annoyance, “What happened, Hilal?”
Dimyan blurted out, “Yes, sir, afandim?”
The officer stared at him in confusion. Now everyone was confused. Magd al-Din realized the mess that Dimyan’s comment had created. The officer was now muttering audibly, “A pair of stupid Egyptians!”
Then he said to the stationmaster in a mixture of Arabic and English, “What a bunch of jackasses!”
“You know Arabic wonderful, General!” Dimyan said to the officer, smiling and blushing.
The officer, still staring, could not help smiling himself. Hilal, Amer, and Magd al-Din were visibly relieved.
“Give them some blankets, tins of food, and anything else they need,” the officer told Hilal.
Hilal accompanied them to the housing compound, then left them after opening the door of the house where they would live. Magd al-Din had been inside a railroad-authority house the night that Shahin had invited him to see his son Rushdi. Magd al-Din and Dimyan had both applied to get homes in that compound at the earliest opportunity—and now they were getting a house not much different from the ones in Alexandria. But here there were no tiles, and the walls were not painted. The big white stones were now dirty and no longer white. Spiders and little insects were in the cracks. The wooden roof here was old and unpaintcd. Magd al-Din knew that when a human arrived in a place, he became the master of all beings in that place. So he would have to clean the walls and get rid of all the insects, even if he had to apply the flames of the kerosene stove to them. From the soldiers, he could probably get some substance that would get rid of the insects for good. Perhaps Dimyan was having the same thoughts: neither of them would spend the rest of his life here. This was a land of war, a land of death. This horrendous wilderness would swallow everything. Magd al-Din opened the little window of the inner room and saw the stark desert looking him in the face. Dimyan was in the outer hall looking closely at the filthy walls and wondering at the smell rising out of the dry bathroom that had no faucets and no pipes. He went into the room and found Magd al-Din standing, transfixed, in front of the window looking at the endless emptiness.
“What’s the matter, Sheikh Magd? Do you miss Umm Shawqiya?” Dimyan asked.
Magd al-Din took a long, deep breath. “I am a peasant, Dimyan. I’ve never seen the desert before.”
“And I’ve never seen the desert before cither, even though I’m from the city.”
He was silent for a few moments during which Magd al-Din thought about the work arrangement. They would have to split the day at the crossing: if he worked days, Dimyan would work nights and vice versa.
“You think the time can pass here, Dimyan? It seems like the world has come to a standstill.”
Dimyan looked at him in surprise while Magd al-Din was overcome with shame, as he appeared, for the first time, awkward and impatient.
“Leave creation to the Creator, Sheikh Magd,” Dimyan said sheepishly. “God has the power to make a whole lifetime pass in the twinkling of an eye,” Then he laughed boisterously and said, “Do you know what I was thinking just now, Sheikh Magd? I was thinking of the abonne Radwan Express. He doesn’t seem normal.”
“Just because he never leaves the train?”
Dimyan did not answer. He fell silent and so did Magd al-Din. It looked like Dimyan was about to cry.
“I feel like I’m going to die here, Sheikh Magd,” he said suddenly, tears welling up in his eyes.
Quickly Sheikh Magd al-Din assumed his old confident posture and patted his friend on the shoulder.
“People like you don’t die so fast, Dimyan. Yes, it’s only right that the world keep the few good folks it has.”
Time waits for no one. There was a light air raid on Alexandria, where many Libyan refugees from Cyrenaica had arrived. They were placed under quarantine then moved to the Maks and Wardian neighborhoods. Dimyan and Magd al-Din had seen them on the train coming from Marsa Matruh, which stopped for a long time at al-Alamein. Magd al-Din got on the train and went through the cars but did not see anyone he knew except Radwan Express, who was sitting with a group of refugees, talking to them enthusiastically while they listened, enthralled by what he was saying. Why did he get on the train that day? He did not know. Perhaps he was hoping to come across Hamza. He still felt that his insult to Hamza was behind his getting lost. Hamza’s forgiving nature was not enough for Magd al-Din to forget. Five years had passed since the coronation of King Farouk, so the country celebrated for a week beginning on the sixth of May. A gala event was held at Cinema Metro in Cairo for Gone with the Wind to raise funds for the war victims. The papers were filled with pictures of Vivien Leigh under which were ads for all kinds of Egyptian and foreign products: perfumes, furniture, clothes, shoes, food, cars, cigarettes, matches, aspirin, and sports and health goods. A new airport was inaugurated at Nuzha in Alexandria to receive civil aviation at a time when all civilian flights from Europe and America had stopped. The Greeks celebrated over a bottle that a Greek soldier had filled with dust from Athens. The celebration was held at the Greek Orthodox church of Saint Saba, close to Cavafy’s deserted home. The Greeks wrote on the outside of the bottle, “Free dust for a free people.” An elementary school teacher won the Muwasa hospital lottery grand prize, a twenty-five-thousand pound apartment building. But a colleague of his named Muhammad Ismail claimed that he had paid half of the fifty-piaster price of the ticket and therefore he was entitled to half of the prize, but that the teacher who had possession of the ticket refused to give him his share. Thereupon he sued the teacher to force him to give him his due. The story spread throughout Alexandria and all over Egypt. So Umm Hamidu clicked her tongue and said, “Now that somebody with an un-aristocratic name wins, they make trouble for him.” Rudolph Hess flew a plane to Scotland, where he landed and was found by a Scottish farmer who recognized him from his pictures in the papers.
The world was all abuzz with Hess’s flight. He was said to be mentally unbalanced. He was also said to be the third man in the Nazi party after Hitler and Goering. It turned out that Hess had spent his childhood in Egypt and had studied at one of the English schools there. His father had lived in Alexandria before World War I and had a big office on the street later named Saad Zaghloul Street. He was an agent for German marine, pharmaceutical, pen and pencil, and chemical equipment companies. He had lived for some time in Zifta before settling down in Alexandria. From Zifta, Rufail Masiha, B.A., sent a letter to the editor of al-Ahram in which he said that of all Egyptian villages, Zifta was the most closely related to Hess, that he had spent his childhood there with his father, who had owned a mechanic’s shop and flour mills and whose farm was still referred to as the Hess Estate. He added that some inhabitants of Zifta still remembered the fifteen-year-old Hess boy walking in the streets of the village. The author of the letter concluded by wondering whether that humble village on the bank of the Nile knew that it had been home to a personality who would one day be talked about by the whole world as it was living the most colossal war that humanity had ever known.
The newspapers outdid each other trying to prove that Hess was born in Alexandria in 1886, th
en met with Hitler in 1914 at the western front. The two young men, weary of life and the war, were united by a feeling of injustice done to Germany and became comrades in arms. The problem, though, was that the Germans were now saying that he was crazy. Drunkards in Alexandria bars agreed that he was crazy, not because they believed Nazi propaganda, but because he had spent his childhood in Zifta, and they laughed. A poet even wrote a short poem about Hess’s flight:
Was it flight, a ruse, or insanity
That enabled Hess to evade mortality?
If flight, then flight is bad—
There are so many ways to be mad!
Aziz al-Masri, together with the pilots Abd al-Munim Abd al-Rauf and Husayn Dhu al-Fiqar Sabri, flew a plane to meet Rommel in the desert, but the plane crashed near Qalyub, and they hid in the countryside. The government announced a one-thousand pound prize to whoever led to their capture.
German airborne troops landed on Crete in huge numbers, in a unique assault hitherto unknown in the world. The landing was preceded by intense aerial bombardment for hours, and Goering said that the assault on Crete was the greatest that paratroopers anywhere in the world could accomplish. Faced with this massive attack, the English had to evacuate the island and save as many of their troops as they could by transporting them to Alexandria. The Greek king and his ministers left the island for England. At the end, there were thirteen thousand dead, wounded, and prisoners of war, in addition to two thousand Royal Navy troops. Sixteen thousand troops made it to Alexandria. Crete was only one of the marvels of German victories that seemed as if they would continue forever.
Dimyan went to Alexandria at the end of the month and returned the following day after receiving his and Magd al-Din’s salaries and spending a night with his family. He told Magd al-Din that he could not stay away from him, then he laughed and said, “Maybe I’m also attached to Brika.” Brika was the young Bedouin girl that the stationmaster had told them not to give any trouble. Dimyan had seen her every day late in the morning with her sheep and her little brother and could not help starting a conversation with her. She spoke with him with spontaneity and sweetness, and he gave her some goodies, especially cookies and chocolate, that the Indian soldiers, whose acquaintance he had made, had given him. When Brika left, she left behind a smell of sheep and their wool that never left his nose until the evening when to his astonishment he carried the smell home with him. He realized that something was going to happen between him and the little girl, and he felt fear mixed with a strange kind of joy.
No One Sleeps in Alexandria Page 28
