Life went on as usual; the king and the ministers soon went back to Cairo. In Alexandria, the Muwasa hospital lottery was as popular as ever. People crowded in front of Cinema Cosmo to watch Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Orphanages were placed under the supervision of the ministry of social affairs, in agreement with the Alexandria city council. Biba Izz al-Din announced that she would be back at the Diana Theater in Alexandria performing the following summer. Al-Shatbi Casino hosted a group of Lebanese young ladies who performed the dabke dance at the annual party of the Maronite Charitable Society.
The east harbor filled with military and merchant marine ships. Camps were set up along the beach in Mustafa Kamil and Sidi Bishr, and late afternoons saw a promenade of horse-drawn carriages carrying soldiers and Alexandrian prostitutes—native as well as Greek, Jewish, Armenian—on the corniche. The soldiers of the Empire did not go far into the city; the women came to them. There were taverns everywhere, big and small, rich ones on the corniche and poor in the alleys of Bahari and Manshiya. They were filled with Australian, New Zealander, and Indian soldiers, who mixed with ship captains, sailors, stokers, and pimps who knew the dark, decaying, narrow ways to the crumbling houses with dislodged tiles and wooden roofs where rats lived. In the entrances of those houses, old, red-haired women sat smoking narghiles. They permitted the customers to enter after they had inspected the young Jewish, Armenian, and native girls, whose white flesh gleamed through their short, flimsy nightgowns. The scene, with variations, could be observed in many quarters: in the houses of Bahari, open to the harbor, or in those behind Tatwig Street, or in the houses of Attarin, hidden behind the stores and shops, or in the houses of Farahda and Bab al-Karasta or Kom al-Nadur—the hill built at one time by Cafirelli, Napoleon’s engineer, as a strong point in the city’s defenses.
Every morning, very early, Magd al-Din would see more than one streetcar stopping at Sidi Karim Square. People would get on the streetcars and sit in silence, looking out the windows fogged with the dawn’s dew. Every morning, Magd al-Din could not help turning and looking at the police station at the end of the square and reading the sign over it: “Ghayt al-Aynab Police Precinct.” Why could he not stop doing that? He did not know.
Many did not take the streetcar, but walked up the little slope and across the bridge. A number of them stopped at the flour mill there, as some had stopped earlier in front of the flour mill on Ban street. Others continued on their way, a path now familiar to Magd al-Din, splitting along the banks of Mahmudiya Canal. From the south they went east to the Muharram Bey textile mill. From the north they went east and west to the ice or oil plants or the Ahliya textile mill in Karmuz. Later, Magd al-Din would often go west, and would work at the oil, soap, or fodder plants, or at the warehouses. He would even make it all the way to Mina al-Basal to work in the cotton ginneries. All of that would be later on. For now he knew nothing about the establishments in Kafr Ashri and Mina al-Basal. For now he was stuck between Raghib and Karmuz.
He did not like to stop at the two flour mills. What could he, a peasant, do in a flour mill? And what could he do anywhere? It must be that he just wanted to work somewhere away from home. He still insisted on going out wearing a new, clean gallabiya and the black patent-leather shoes that he always saved for special trips.
On the Mahmudiya canal he saw ships sailing slowly into the harbor or going back south. Several tugboats stopped in the distance, especially in front of the companies. Anchored on the shore close to the bridge there was always a ferry, which ran back and forth when the bridge was raised for ships to go through. He rarely saw women in the early morning. Every morning he would be certain that he would meet someone he knew, but he never did. The truth was he wished for something like that to happen; he needed someone to take him by the hand in the city.
Bahi was no longer good for anything—he spent all day at the café. How he lived and where he got the money, Magd al-Din did not know. Bahi said that in Ghayt al-Aynab there were more than a hundred men from their village, and he knew each and every one. He knew why they had left the village for Alexandria and what scandals they had been involved in before they left, and he had imposed a five-piaster monthly tax on each of them, thus making five pounds per month. Two months earlier they had rebelled against him. They went to the police precinct and complained to the prefect, who looked at Bahi and could not believe that a hundred people feared the man standing before him. The prefect kicked them out. Once outside, Bahi raised the tax to ten piasters a month. Now they were his fighting force, and he wanted to lead them in battle against the southerners. Magd al-Din remembered but did not believe Bahi’s words.
He kept listening for someone who knew him to call out his name, but that did not happen. One morning followed another, and the search for work never stopped. Every day he saw men with bare feet and bare heads walking or hurrying along with him to look for work. He noticed that one young man in particular, who looked lost and whose eyes rolled in a way that Magd al-Din had never seen before, had tried deliberately to stay close to him. When the young man spoke, saying “Every day it’s like this,” Magd al-Din realized that he had a nasal twang. He always looked angry when he did not get work, but would soon smile and hurry along with the others, following close to Magd al-Din who, for a moment, thought the reason he was not picked for work was because that half-idiot stood next to him. But he knew that these were the blessed children of God, so he asked Him for forgiveness. He was turning left now because most of the men seeking work were turning left after crossing the bridge. He stopped with the others in front of one plant’s big metal gate.
“What kind of work do they do here?”
“Ice.”
“What do we do with the ice?”
“We stack it or carry it to the delivery carts. This plant will close next month—it doesn’t work in the winter.”
A worker at the plant went out and looked at the crowd of job seekers. He picked a few among them, but not Magd al-Din, who noticed that most of those seeking temporary work wore tattered clothes and were barefoot, and so deduced that work was in very short supply. He decided he would not change his new gallabiya or shiny shoes; he was never going to appear shabby, and when he found work he would buy suitable new clothes. Zahra had already taken thirty pounds that he had saved over the last few years and spent twenty pounds to buy all the necessary furniture. Magd al-Din felt sad every time the job seekers jostled each other rudely and cruelly when a company representative would ask for five or less. He would choose a spot in the back of the crowd. In front of the Ahliya textile mill with the big green metal gate, he stood with the others. The black man who came out every day to pick the workers pointed to him and said in a confident voice, “You there—come here.”
Magd al-Din approached.
“Tomorrow I will give you a job,” the man said with a smile. “You have to come in pants and a jacket.”
He got a job at the mill rolling the bales of cotton from the cars that carried them from the ginneries up close to the spinning machines. The job lasted three days, then he went back to job hunting with the others. Their rounds would begin at six o’clock and end at eight. By that time they would have passed all the companies on the north bank of Mahmudiya Canal, the oil, soap, ice, and textile companies. They would have demonstrated their strength for the tugs and ships anchored at close intervals, which came from Upper Egypt to unload their cargo of sugarcane, fava beans, cotton, grains, and earthenware jars and pitchers. Usually a contractor with his own crew of workers would get the job to unload the ships, and if Magd al-Din or any of his colleagues was hired, he would receive ten piasters for the day’s work.
At eight o’clock in the morning, just getting over his disappointment at not finding work, he would sit down in the café next to the bridge and order a glass of tea. Moments later he would feel heartened and get up to buy al-Ahram from the little boy who sold newspapers from a small wooden stand in front of the café. He
was always the only one in the café, but he would hear a voice calling out his name and imagine meeting someone he knew. One day he got the newspaper and gave the little boy a whole pound. The boy said he did not have any change. Magd al-Din did not know what to do and returned the newspaper, but the boy, who recognized him by now, told him he could read the paper in the café and return it when he was done. Magd al-Din sat down to read and realized that the world was a great big mess: sandbags distributed by the civil defense department to hospitals and public establishments; advertisements for Longines, Zenith, and Vulcan watches; this evening, on the radio, Fathiya Ahmad and her band; before that at eight-thirty, comic monologues by Husayn al-Maligi and Nimat al-Maligi, and before that a selection from the Sura of al-Hajj, recited by Taha al-Fashni; Queen Elizabeth arrives at Easton station from Balmoral on her way to Buckingham Palace; Warsaw wiped out; at least five million Poles perish in the war in one month; giant cannons, bigger than the world has ever seen, reduce Warsaw to rubble.
“The world is in a great big mess, Magd al-Din—where are you going?” he thought to himself. He got up to return the newspaper to the little boy only to find that the boy had picked up his newspapers and was running away as fast as he could. Alarmed, he followed after him, but a policeman grabbed him by the arm, saying, “And you’re reading the newspaper, to boot?”
Two other policemen went into the café and arrested two people sitting there. They were all led to a police van originally used to transport criminals between jail and the courthouse. He dropped the newspaper and climbed into the van parked on the bridge. He noticed a car blocking Raghib Street and two others blocking the road parallel to the Mahmudiya canal, so that people were forced onto the bridge, where they were grabbed. Anyone who made any effort to resist was smacked on the back of the neck and kicked every which way.
In the lockup at the Ghayt al-Aynab police station, more than twenty people who were arrested that morning, including Magd al-Din for the first time in his life, were herded in. Before he could think of anything else, Magd al-Din saw that idiotic young man sitting in front of him, his gaze fixed on Magd al-Din and smiling as usual. Magd al-Din turned his eyes away to the yellow walls, visible through the high black bars of the cell. The walls formed a semicircle around them, with bars placed close together, like those on prison windows.
The police station was a rotunda with high yellow walls, and its main gate opened onto the square where the streetcar turned. Inside a corporal with thick eyebrows sat behind an old, black wooden table; three other policemen were milling about. In a corner some rifles hung on the walls; in another corner a closed door led to the prefect’s room. The corporal fixed his glance on Magd al-Din and ordered one of the policemen to open the jail cell. He motioned Magd al-Din to approach.
“What’s your name?”
“Magd al-Din Khalil Sulayman.”
“You don’t look like the rest of the riffraff, Magd al-Din. Why don’t you have your identity card?”
“I forgot my card in the village.”
“Village? What village?”
“My village. I’ve only been in Alexandria a few days.”
“Are you a farmer?”
“Yes.”
“Here for a visit or permanent residence?”
“Residence, God willing.”
“Well, do you have five piasters? Anyone who pays the government five piasters can be released.”
“I do. Nobody asked me before,” Magd al-Din said with a sigh of relief and reached his hand into the vest under his gallabiya, took out the one-pound note, and gave it to the corporal. It was about 2 p.m. Six hours had passed since he had been thrown into the crowded cell to sit in silence with the other detainees. The corporal said he did not have change for the pound and sent a policeman to get change from a streetcar conductor. When the corporal saw that Magd al-Din had not moved, he asked him, “Why don’t you go back to the cell? Are you afraid you’ll lose the pound?”
“No,” Magd al-Din found himself saying, “but this poor idiot boy, why is in there with us?”
The corporal looked at him for a moment then smiled. “We’ll take ten piasters from you then and let him go, if that’s what you want.”
He got up from his desk, walked over to the cell, and dragged out the idiot boy, who kept staring and smiling at Magd al-Din, even twisting his neck to see him, until he was out of the precinct. Magd al-Din sat back down with the others, and the corporal locked them up again.
“Did he take a pound from you?”
“No. He asked for five piasters and sent for change. He’ll give me the change.”
“So, you have five piasters?”
“Of course—you saw I have a pound.”
“Can you believe we’re all being held here for five piasters each? Since the days of Sidqi Pasha, anyone caught without an identity card has to pay a fine of five piasters. If anybody here had five piasters in his pocket, he wouldn’t have gone to work. And you, you’re looking for work when you have a whole pound?”
Magd al-Din was surprised at what he heard. For a moment he thought of paying for all of them, then changed his mind. He needed every millieme now. “How are you getting out?” he asked.
“Same as every other time. Tonight the head of the neighborhood will come identify us and vouch for us, and we’ll get out.”
Once again silence descended. The policeman was taking his time coming back with the change. Magd al-Din squatted, his elbows on his knees and his head between his palms. Bahi was the only one who could get him out of this tight spot. He began to have the feeling that perhaps the corporal had intimated to the policeman not to return with the pound. What would happen if night fell before the policeman returned? How would Zahra feel? As he always did in times of crisis, he left it all to God. He sat down on the floor, found room to stretch out his legs, and closed his eyes for a moment. He saw himself walking on the roof of a fast-moving train, surrounded by troops of every complexion, speaking every language, carrying rifles as if they were spears, walking in sands into which their feet sank on the roof of the train. Above him and them were huge black birds, the names of which he did not know.
Magd al-Din opened his eyes, astonished by this fleeting vision. He saw the feet of the other detainees stretched out in front of him: feet resting on their heels, crossed one over the other, or spread apart, big feet that at first looked like shoes, then turned out to be bare feet, worn on the bottom, completely black on top. Some heels were so furrowed that folds of rolled, dried skin hung down from them. The toes had big outgrowths on top, more than two on each toe, with black nails grown long and bent downward over the fronts of the toes, thus forming a protective layer against unforeseen things in the street. One foot had four toes, another six, the sixth toe hanging, straight on the side, like a baby tucked onto his mother’s side, almost sliding to the ground. Amazingly, that sixth toe was clean. Nearby there was a foot that had no toes, a solid foot from which the toes had been cut by a knife, its front skin wrinkled, a foot that looked more like a rectangular block of old wood. To Magd al-Din it looked like a toothless mouth. On almost all the feet, the ankles were ringed with blue, black, or red blotches.
“These shoes on your feet, don’t they bother you?” Magd al-Din was surprised to hear the man next to him ask. Had he seen him examining the bare feet? Maybe. Maybe he wanted him to take off his shoes so he could steal them. It was the same man who had engaged him in conversation earlier. He looked closely at his face: an exhausted face with a reddish complexion that did not look healthy. Closer examination showed malnutrition and emaciation. The gaunt face had a small, pointed nose, a mouth with a downy mustache, and narrow, amber-colored eyes. His hair was black, combed with a wide-tooth comb, with a few gray hairs. On the whole, the man showed signs of a mysterious anguish. When Magd al-Din did not respond, the man went on, “I saw you looking at everyone’s feet. Being barefoot here isn’t just a sign of poverty—sometimes it’s a hobby.”
Magd al-D
in’s eyes grew wider as the man continued, “You want to know why Egyptians are fond of going barefoot? You’d know if you took off your shoes. Aren’t you more comfortable when you take off your shoes?”
“Of course,” Magd al-Din replied with a smile.
“Well, some people like to be comfortable to begin with.”
The man’s voice was a little loud, so the rest of the detainees were following what was being said and laughing. “When you go into a house with no chairs, can you sit down on the floor with your shoes still on? Of course not. You take off your shoes. None of our houses have chairs.”
Magd al-Din had to laugh with the rest of the men. The corporal yelled at them to stop. Magd al-Din remembered the pound and looked at the corporal, who yelled at him, telling him to wait until “that son-of-a-bitch of a policeman” came back.
“More importantly, shoes wear out, and a man’s got to buy another pair,” the man went on. “A barefoot person, on the other hand, is self-sufficient. Every month he gets new skin on his feet— that is, a new pair of shoes. If it weren’t reprehensible, you could sell those new shoes. Remember, that’s twelve new pairs of shoes a year, all gratis, compliments of God. You can’t buy a pair of shoes for even twenty piasters.”
The laughter got more boisterous, and once again the corporal yelled at them to keep it down. Magd al-Din was now totally drawn in by the gaunt man with his peculiar talk. This man would be his friend for a long time; he would run into him often on the road. It seemed he was the one whom Magd al-Din heard calling his name early every morning. Both of them, like the rest of the detainees, had tears in their eyes from all the cheerful laughter.
No One Sleeps in Alexandria Page 6