He had decided to make it to the Nile then go south until he arrived at Asyut, and on his way would examine all the corpses that he came across. He was certain that Camilla had been killed and that her body was dumped in the Nile. He was determined either to find her dead or alive. A rumor had spread in the country about a young nun with an aura around her head and face who was healing the sick in Asyut, and people started converging on her place from the surrounding villages. A butcher was arrested and faced a military tribunal for refusing to sell meat. There was meat hanging in his store, and a customer came to buy a kilo, but the butcher refused, saying the meat was not for sale, that it was for display only. The customer felt that he was mocking him so he went to the police station and lodged his complaint. Prices for birds rose: a nightingale was priced at twelve piasters, a canary at thirty-five piasters, and likewise for a parrot. The fighting powers pledged to observe a ceasefire on the last night of the year to celebrate the new year, but most houses in Alexandria were closed, destroyed, or deserted.
Traveler, must you go? . . .
Is the time for your parting come? . . .
Traveler, we are helpless to keep you.
We have only our tears. . .
Rabindranath Tagore
25
The new year started with a big commotion in al-Alamein. German and Italian planes conducted raids on the desert all the way to Alexandria. Anti-aircraft artillery scattered all over the desert kept firing, but no planes were hit.
The number of German and Italian prisoners of war being captured dwindled. It was Rommel now who was trans-porting more prisoners to Germany via Italy and the Mediterranean. Rommel’s name now struck fear in the Allied troops. In the middle of January, in the early hours of the morning, Rommel turned off the little reading light and lay down on the bed in his command post, asking his private secretary, Staff Sergeant Boettichcr, to wake him up in an hour. When he got up he held his morning briefing with his officers and told them, “We will attack at once.” Then he explained to them that the British would exploit any relaxation to make use of the huge supplies that they had started to receive. That would give them vast superiority over the Axis forces, hence their lines and their plans should be penetrated to make it all the way to the Delta.
A major operation to deceive British intelligence from Rome to Libya began. Strong rumors were spread that the Germans were withdrawing. Rommel began to blow up mock ships and mock camps. The rumors were so strong in Alexandria that the Allied soldiers started drinking roasts to the withdrawal of Rommel, who was now reduced to blowing up his own ships. But only the belly dancer Hikmat Fahmi in Cairo knew that this was just a ruse. She lured high-ranking English officers to her houseboat, and gathered information and secrets and conveyed them to the Germans by a secret transmitter with the help of the two spies, Johannes Eppler and Hans Gerd Sandstetter.
After pretending to withdraw, Rommel began his daring and sudden offensive by dividing his armored force into two divisions, one for the coast and the other for the desert. He seized Ajdabiya, then Antalat and Sawinnu. British armed forces retreated in a state of great disarray toward the Egyptian borders. The road to Benghazi on the one hand, and to al-Makili on the other, was now open to Rommel. Toward the end of January he pretended to launch an offensive against al-Makili, so Auchinleck moved his armored force and his infantry there, but, making a tiger-like leap, Rommel changed direction to the coast, cutting off the Indian Fourth Division and taking Benghazi. The Führer promoted him to general. The British had lost their morale and ran away as if bitten by a snake. Rommel had unleashed his eighty-eight-millimeter anti-tank guns on their armored vehicles, then overran them with his heavy Panzer tanks.
At that time the Russian forces had smashed six German divisions and a big Russian offensive extending from Sevastopol in the south to Finland in the north. Hitler admitted for the first time that the Russians were advancing. Germany prepared by deploying five million soldiers, Russia by deploying ten million. The United Sates allocated the largest budget for the war, fifty billion dollars for military industries and operations. The French ship Normandie caught fire as it was anchored at the harbor of the Houston Ship Channel in the United States, resulting in forty dead and 165 injured. The Japanese landed in Java, and the Kingdom of Siam declared war on Britain after it was captured by Japan. Indian leaders Nehru and Gandhi rejected anything less than total independence from England. The city of Alexandria established fifteen new shelters. The Coptic Church celebrated Christmas in the first week of January amid prevalent sadness because of the raids. A woman died in Karmuz, leaving behind three children. As the people carried her bier, they were forced back to where the children stood in front of their house, crying. That happened three times, and every time the bier would turn and take the men carrying it back to the house. Men, young and old, cried out “God is great!” and women and girls cried. The world was bathed in a brilliant light as the heavy clouds lifted over the city and a gloriously beautiful sun shone. People knelt down and kissed the ground and prayed and cried. The mother could only be buried after the children were carried away. Alexandria spent the night in a state of amazed wonderment. Stones surrounded the statues of Muhammad Ali Pasha and Ismail Pasha to protect them from the heavy raids. The cabinet ministers began to prepare headquarters in Luxor and Aswan, away from Cairo, because of winter, it was said. In reality they wanted to get as far from Rommel as they could. His Majesty the King went on a trip to the Eastern Desert, in which he visited the mines and the Bishariya, the inhabitants of Halayib. Epiphany coincided with the Islamic New Year; a newspaper reader observed that Christian and Islamic feasts were coinciding with, or occurring closer to each other these days. Another reader said in reply to it that that happened only every few generations and that this generation was luckier than others because of this divine blessing. Nahhas Pasha became prime minister after great pressure on the king from the English. Husayn Sirry Pasha resigned, or was forced to resign by the king. Demonstrators chanted, “Forward, Rommel.” The people expressed their love for their young king. A poet poked fun at the English by writing,
They came into the lion’s den
Armed to the teeth.
Losing their way to Benghazi,
They arrived at Ahdin.
Blood and Sand, starring Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth, was screened in Cairo. Taha Husayn published his beautiful novel, The Call of the Curlew, and kosher meats were included in the official price lists in Alexandria, a move Jewish butchers resented. The sisters of Abd al-Fattah Inayat, who had been convicted of killing Sirdar Sir Lee Stack in the twenties, petitioned Nahhas Pasha to pardon their patriot brother, who had served three-quarters of his sentence. The parliament session opened with the speech from the throne delivered by Nahhas Pasha before the king. A thaw began in Moscow. The population increase in Egypt for the whole of the previous year was calculated to be forty thousand. Dimyan and Magd al-Din began to see soldiers coming back from the front, tired, dirty, and in a state of shock and fatigue, to be replaced with fresh, rested troops from Alexandria. The soldiers whose eyebrows and eyelashes were burned by the sun and the cold looked no different from the prisoners of war, so much so that Dimyan mistook them. Every time he saw them he would tell Magd al-Din, “Look! Here’s another batch of prisoners!” Magd al-Din would assume they were Allied soldiers, since prisoners of war did not carry rifles. Dimyan would laugh, but he would make the same mistake again and again.
Rumors increased about Rommel’s advance on the Egyptian borders. Rommel by now had become the unrivaled champion of the desert wars, the “Desert Fox” whose blows no one could anticipate. For the first time, English soldiers began to see their comrades coming back from the battlefield with eyes that had lost all hope. But in the evening the music played from the battery-operated radios in the trenches and the rooms: Bolero, The Wizard of Oz, Beethoven, Strauss.. And there was laughter.
“I wish we had a radio here,” Dimyan said to Magd al-Din.
Magd al-Din liked the idea, but said nothing.
‘I’m fed up with sitting with the Indians and al-Safi al-Naim,” added Dimyan.
Actually, it was Brika’s absence that bothered him and gave him the crazy idea to go to the village and ask about her. Al-Safi al-Naim’s English was quite good, and he conveyed to Dimyan and Magd al-Din the heated discussions that the Indians were having about independence. The Muslims from Peshawar and Lahore supported Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who called for Pakistan’s secession from India. The Sikh, on the other hand, considered Jinnah a traitor and did not believe the Muslims should establish a separate state. The arguments raged back and forth, but eventually subsided. Dimyan kept wondering, “Shouldn’t they get independence first, and then argue?” Magd al-Din did not comment. Once al-Safi al-Naim, who was siting alone with Magd al-Din and Dimyan, told them, “India will gain its independence before Egypt and Sudan.”
“Why?” asked Dimyan.
“India is a large country,” al-Safi al-Naim said in a confident tone. “It has about three hundred million people. True, they have many religions, but they also have Gandhi.”
“The guy with the goat and the spindle?” exclaimed Dimyan.
“Exactly. He’s the one who’s fighting the English. He’s fighting them without weapons. He tells the Indians to fast, and they all fast, to stop dealing with the English, and they all stop, not to trade with them, and they all refrain, to stand on one foot for a whole month, and they do. They are like one strong man. Gandhi doesn’t have any army, but he has a whole people.”
“In Egypt too, the English will leave after the war,” Magd al-Din said after a short pause. “The people support Nahhas Pasha.”
“But it was the English who brought Nahhas Pasha to power,” said al-Safi al-Naim.
“True, the English brought him, but the people are against the English, and he will side with the people as usual,” replied Magd al-Din quickly.
After a short while Corporal Bahadur Shand joined them. Now al-Safi al-Naim had to interpret for them and the corporal, or at least convey the gist of what was being said. It was in the afternoon with a hint of spring in the air, interrupted from time to time by a short quick khamsin storm, heralding the real khamsin that was due in a few days. Suddenly Dimyan told al-Safi al-Naim not to translate his words, as he was going to speak English himself. Magd al-Din looked at him in surprise, thinking that Dimyan was heading for a catastrophe. The young Indians who had come to perform the mid-afternoon prayer behind Magd al-Din joined them. Dimyan began speaking in ‘English,’ but he was actually wondering aloud in Arabic, “Are there really people who worship cows in India? If a cow crossed the street, do traffic and people actually come to a standstill?” Dimyan was saying these words in such a way that every word was separated from the other and was pronounced very distinctly, also softening the pronunciation of his vowels. When he was done everyone was silent, but Magd al-Din and al-Safi al-Naim burst out laughing. As for Bahadur Shand, his face grew pale, because Dimyan was pointing at him while he spoke, so he thought he was making fun of him. The three young Indians smiled, and their eyes gleamed as they exchanged glances in polite bewilderment.
“You think when you emphasize the words and soften your vowels that you’re speaking English? You’re speaking Arabic, Dimyan,” Magd al-Din said.
Dimyan came to, his eyes growing wider, then burst out laughing and told al-Safi, “Translate for the Indians that I was asking whether they will really get their independence after the war. Don’t say anything about the cows.”
Al-Safi al-Naim translated what Dimyan told him and Bahadur Shand nodded confidently and proudly. The three young Indians said, “Of course.”
“Sudan also must gain independence from Egypt after the war,” al-Safi said.
Dimyan and Magd al-Din looked at him in surprise. “Don’t you mean independence from England?” corrected Magd al-Din.
“From both, Sheikh Magd.”
“All my life I’ve known that England occupies Egypt and Sudan,” said Dimyan. “This is the first I’ve heard of Egypt occupying Sudan. Perhaps it’s because of this that we have too many monkeys in Egypt nowadays.”
Al-Safi al-Naim growled, or rather made a gentle roaring sound.
“Egypt and Sudan have always been sisters,” Magd al-Din said.
“Exactly, Sheikh Magd,” said al-Safi al-Naim, “What sweet words!”
Everyone laughed with the exception of Bahadur. Even the young Indian soldiers laughed when they saw Magd al-Din, Dimyan, and al-Safi al-Naim laugh. Perhaps that was why Bahadur felt awkward and told al-Safi al-Naim to translate. Al-Safi thought a little, then said quickly, “Sudan, like India and Egypt, is under Britain’s control.”
Bahadur nodded and al-Safi added, “They will be independent as quickly as possible.”
Once again Bahadur nodded gently, and the three other Indians smiled. Magd al-Din suggested that they stop talking politics. They looked at him in surprise and asked why. He hesitated before answering. Actually he did not know why he had made the suggestion or how to answer.
“Because we’re in the desert,” he finally said.
He never understood, even later on, what the desert had to do with not talking politics. But that’s what happened. Everyone fell silent, unconvinced and a little bewildered, then they stared at the vast expanse of the desert.
Faint lights came from the trenches, and from the scattered rooms above ground. In the morning the officers and soldiers came out of their holes and went to the great sea. Spring had arrived and nothing remained of the winter except the bitter cold of the night. Summer uniforms came out anew, and the scorpions and insects came out of their holes. Every morning the soldiers went into the sea, naked except for their dirty underpants. The bodies of the soldiers were no longer white, they had turned bronze-colored. The new soldiers exposed their bodies to the sun as long as possible so they would look more awe-inspiring, as if they had had a long fighting experience. In truth, as Magd al-Din said of them, they were all poor children, “God’s little children who have come down from heaven for this difficult test,” in exactly the same way he had been driven out of his village, and perhaps just as easily.
“Do you still carry the snake in your pocket?” Dimyan asked Bahadur.
“It’s with me all the time during the war.”
He took the snake out of his jacket pocket, a small, thin, yellow snake with dark speckles that coiled itself on his fingers. He returned his hand to his pocket and took it out easily without the snake.
Al-Safi translated what Bahadur had said, to the effect that in India they domesticated large and small snakes, even cobras, that certain Indian sects worshipped snakes, cobras in particular, that Indians in general were skillful at domesticating snakes and handling them, that the snake in his pocket had not come from India but that he had caught it in the desert the previous summer. At night he placed the snake in a tin can with some food, like chopped eggs and corned beef. The snake had not escaped, or even thought about it so far.
That was not the strangest part of what Bahadur had said. Al-Safi al-Naim translated and no one believed that the world could be so small. Bahadur said that his father also served in the cavalry in the British army in Egypt during the Great War. When the war ended there was a big revolution. Dimyan interrupted him to say that was in the days of Saad Pasha. Al-Safi did not translate what Dimyan said, and Bahadur continued to say that there was an uprising in a town named “De-rut.” Bahadur paused to look at the faces of his listeners and Dimyan told him, “You probably mean Dayrut.” Bahadur continued to say that its name was “De-rut.” No one commented, and he added that in a village near De-rut there was a big rebellion attacking the British forces, so the English sent the Indian Sikh cavalry to the village. “My father was among them, and their commanding officer was an Englishman. He ordered his men to rape the women of the village before the eyes of their men, who had been bound with ropes.”
Magd al-Din cl
osed his eyes in pain. Dimyan looked shocked, his lips trembled, and he said nothing. Bahadur smiled and added that his father had told him how the women ran and threw themselves into the Nile, preferring death by drowning to rape. “My father lived in pain because he had done that, and especially because he had seen the English rape Indian women also.” Bahadur fell silent and so did everyone, until Magd al-Din said calmly, “That’s a strange story; we didn’t hear of it during the revolution. We took part in the revolution. We attacked the English and sabotaged the railroad, but we never heard that any force from any army raped the women of any village—no English army or Indian army.”
No One Sleeps in Alexandria Page 32
