No One Sleeps in Alexandria

by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

  “Let’s stick to sugar cane,” Lula said with a laugh. “We don’t understand anything.”

  Khawaga Dimitri was working the night shift at the city garage. The Feast of the Sacrifice was approaching. Lula said with joy in her voice, “May God make every day a holiday!” The rain began to let up, and the black clouds stayed away. Yusuf Bey Wahbi’s play The Murderer ended its run at Brentania Theater in Cairo. A big counterfeiting ring was apprehended with thirty thousand one-pound notes. Cosmos Cinema screened a new film featuring the singer Malak, Back to the Countryside. The Egyptian government sent the victims of the earthquake in Turkey twenty-four hundred wool blankets and vaccines for fifty thousand people. Dimyan said to Magd al-Din, “Do we have to have an earthquake here to get some blankets?” Then he smiled and said, “Dying of cold is better than dying in an earthquake, in any case.” Construction of the chest hospital in Abbasiya, Cairo, was completed. It was announced that the Czechoslovakian army was formed in France. The Feast of the Sacrifice passed, and no one from the village came to visit Magd al-Din. It had started the day after Epiphany, and there were some murmurs among the Muslims: the rains, a blessing for the Christians on Epiphany, would, if they continued, not be a blessing for the Muslims on their feast days. People were surprised to see the feast start on a clear day, on which the sun rose early, and the earth drank up the water that had been pouring down until the previous midnight. After wishing Magd al-Din a happy feast, Khawaga Dimitri told him, “God has bestowed his mercy equally among the people, Sheikh Magd.”

  Magd al-Din was confused by this remark, especially because Dimitri had called him ‘Sheikh Magd.’ Dimitri explained that he was referring to how the rain had been pouring down non-stop for the last two days, Epiphany and the day before it, and it could have ruined the celebration of the Muslims’ feast—they would have had to stay home and not go out to pray and visit. But God saved the day.

  “God be praised,” Magd al-Din assented. “Everything that comes from God is good.”

  “I was kidding you,” Dimitri laughed. “I know you’re a good man and that you don’t treat Copts any differently from Muslims. This country. Sheikh Magd, has a slogan that goes back to the days of Saad Pasha Zaghloul: ‘Religion belongs to God, and the country belongs to everyone,’ but there are some bastards who like to kindle the fires of discord, especially in poor neighborhoods like ours.”

  Magd al-Din fell silent. He remembered Bahi, who had told him that the strife between the Muslims and the Christians had greatly diminished.

  “There’s always strife between different communities,” he finally said to Dimitri. “Somebody must have given our country the evil eye, Khawaga Dimitri. Thank God the war is keeping everybody preoccupied.”

  The Feast of the Sacrifice was over. The Piaster Project Committee was still collecting donations for the Egyptian national industry in Cairo and the provinces. A new and unfamiliar type of mosquito descended upon Alexandria from the environs of Lake Maryut. The laboratory at the city’s Center for Epidemiology studied it, and concluded that it was not a mosquito but some kind of feeble fly that the cold weather would take care of, and that it did not pose any threat. And indeed the remaining days of the Coptic month of Tuba wiped it out. The Muwasa Society conducted its annual lottery. The Opera House dedicated its shows to the Commonwealth troops. Queen Farida and Queen Nazli were keen on attending these shows. News came that Charlie Chaplin had finished The Great Dictator. Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab’s film Happy Day was shown in Alexandria, and Camilla and Yvonne attended its last screening and told Zahra about penniless Abd al-Wahhab and the charming new child actress, Fatin Hamama. In the newspapers, Mrs. Aziza Amir thanked the Egyptian people for making her film The Workshop such a success and gave special thanks to the army and the art critics. Joint Egyptian-British maneuvers were conducted in the east at the eightieth kilometer on the Suez Road. Rita Hayworth was crowned Miss Hollywood for the year 1940. A new tomb dating back to 4500 B.C. was unearthed near Saqqara. King Farouk donated a movie projector for the entertainment of the troops and the people of Marsa Matruh. Three bodies were found in the Mahmudiya canal in the month of March. Among them was the body of the boy who spoke with a twang. The police apprehended the perpetrator, his own father, who had gone crazy. He also admitted to killing the mother. Magd al-Din stayed in his room for three days, blaming himself for the murder of the idiot boy, because he had not believed him the day he cried and said his father had killed his mother. Dimyan had advised him not to go to the police, saying that if there was a crime, it would be discovered. And it was, but it claimed the poor boy as its victim.

  Dimyan saved Magd al-Din from his sorrow by taking him one evening to a faraway café on Mahmudiya Canal between the Raghib and Karmuz bridges, where lupino bean vendors lived in the houses scattered along the street parallel to the canal. They would place the lupino beans in sacks, which they secured firmly and left in the running water of the canal for a few days until the bitterness was gone. They would then pull the sacks to the bank of the canal and load the beans onto pushcarts and start selling them in the early morning in the neighborhoods of Raghib, Karmuz, Mahattat Masr, and Muharram Bey to the east and Qabbari and Kafr Ashri to the west. In the evening they would return exhausted and leave their pushcarts safely on the bank of the canal. In the morning they began their rounds again. A few of them sat in the remote café, in the empty area that was a good place for murder and love, as well as prayer and devotion.

  Magd al-Din and Dimyan sat every evening in the very small café on the bank of the canal, which was really no more than a few wooden tables and straw chairs outside a small tin-sheet kiosk in which the coffee and tea were made. A pleasant breeze blew from Mahmudiya, laden with white mist, as if winter wanted to breathe its last breath there. In front of them passed boats with their sails unfurled, pulled from the bank by strong men with ropes tied between the masts and their chests. Around the big boats were small, colorful feluccas, in which young people were singing and making merry. The boats came from all over, ended their route at Nuzha, then went back.

  Magd al-Din felt that everything around him was free except him, who had been shackled to Alexandria indefinitely. He was doomed to stay in the very Alexandria where yesterday he had seen Ghaffara, the sawdust vendor, stand in front of his cart and donkey and exclaim, “Please God, let Italy get together with Germany so Alexandria might be lit up with foreigners and sexy dames!” Everyone laughed—the passers-by as well as the store owners who bought sawdust from him to strew on the floor before sweeping their stores at the end of the day.

  Ghaffara had a wooden cart with a wooden box about one meter high extending the length of the cart, about two meters, The cart was drawn by an old donkey that always looked exhausted. On both sides of the cart Ghaffara had written “Capacity: four tons; nationwide transportation; will take telephone orders and deliver sawdust.” People would read the sign and laugh, as the whole cart—the wood, the donkey, sawdust, and Ghaffara himself—could not weigh a quarter of a ton. Ghaffara had appeared the day before with a fez on his face. He had removed the tassel of the fez and attached a rubber band that secured it behind his head. He had attached a round water filter to what had been the top of the fez and cut two small holes, into which he fixed two pieces of glass that stuck up to protect his eyes. He told everyone that he had heard an educated man reading from the newspaper about a proposal submitted by a doctor to the ministry of health to use fezzes as gas masks, since there were no gas masks in the market. Since the face and head had the same circumference, the fez could be secured to the face by means of a rubber band and a person could then make mica eyes for the fez. Ghaffara did not know where one could buy mica, so he used glass instead. The doctor suggested placing an air filter through which to breathe. In the stores in Attarin, Ghaffara could find no air filters, so he bought a small water filter. But there were no gases, or even raids against Cairo, or Alexandria, or anywhere else in Egypt. Ghaffara knew that and countered that the
air in general was dirty and full of poisonous gases. One did not have to wait for the raids to get the gas.

  Cannons were fired in Alexandria and throughout the country to bring the good news that a new precious gem had been added to the royal crown, as Princess Fawziya had given birth to a baby girl on the eighth of April. When the news was broadcast, a large number of Egyptians went to the royal palace in Cairo to offer their felicitations. Contrary to what was expected, Hitler did not attack Holland, Belgium, or France. He attacked Norway and Denmark instead. Russia was now done with Finland. The northern seas witnessed the fiercest battles over Norway, but the king of Denmark surrendered quickly and called upon the people to be calm. The Germans increased their pressure against the Allied forces in Norway. Troops from Rhodesia arrived in Egypt and were welcomed in Suez harbor by Ahmad Rasim Bey, the governor of Suez, whom the newspapers did not mention was also a great poet who wrote in French, and also a great lover of women. Joining him to welcome the troops was the British minister plenipotentiary, who delivered a speech welcoming them on behalf of the soldiers of the empire, not just in Egypt but in the “greater fatherland, from New Zealand to India.”

  Dimyan was beset by fits of dry coughing. He told Magd al-Din that he was afraid he might have developed asthma, in which case he would undoubtedly die, since a bottle of Mendaco pills cost thirty piasters, and besides there was a shortage since it was usually imported from England, and that was no longer feasible because of the war. Then Dimyan looked sad and told Magd al-Din that he had decided to go to church, confess his sins, and go regularly on Sundays. The Prophet’s birthday had already passed in silence. People listened to the Quran on the radio, but there were no nighttime celebrations with the usual pavilions. Huge amounts of traditional sweets and sugar dolls and horses were still sold, however. Dimyan was observing Lent, which he believed was two weeks too long. He went to church without much thought and came back with tired eyes. “I cried a lot, Sheikh Magd,” he said, “and the reverend father blessed me. I asked Mari Girgis to find a permanent job for you and me. And, as you can see, I am no longer coughing. The reverend gave me oil that got rid of the cough. Faith is sweet, Sheikh Magd. It’s thanks to you that I’ve found faith, even if you didn’t mean for it to happen. I had forgotten that faith, and men of faith, were still around.”

  Sitt Maryam gave Zahra a jar of ‘Hazelin Snow,’ a compact of powder and some lipstick and taught her how to use it. She told her, “You’re still young, so why not do this for Magd al-Din’s sake?” Magd al-Din saw her and realized what had happened but did not say anything at first. His wife was going to learn the ways of the big city whether he wanted it or not, and he had to keep quiet about it, otherwise she would seek it even more. He knew that forbidding something only made it more desirable. He even went out of his way to say to Zahra, “You’ve become more beautiful than before.” And he knew he was not lying. He would come home exhausted after making the rounds of the factories along the Mahmudiya canal. He had made it all the way to the warehouses of the credit bank in Kafr Ashri. He had carried heavy sacks on his back all day long or worked at the cotton ginneries in Mina al-Basal amid hundreds of women who carried the raw cotton before the seeds were extracted, and he saw the collapsed chests of men with respiratory diseases as a result of inhaling the cotton dust, especially those men who oversaw the initial ginning process. And yet work was not always available, since the little cotton at hand had been left over from the previous season. So he made the rounds of the boats anchored in Mahmudiya Canal to load or unload cargo. From time to time he would catch himself looking around for someone and always found Dimyan, who never left his side. But he was not looking for Dimyan, but rather the murdered idiot boy of whom he thought quite often. And so as days passed, employed or unemployed, that huge area in the south of Alexandria became the daily arena of Magd al-Din and Dimyan, a painful arena from which he came back longing for something beautiful. And he was not lying when he told Zahra that she had become more beautiful. Biba Izz al-Din opened her summer season at Teatro Diana at Raml Station, as she did every year, but earlier than usual. Cinema Metro screened The Wizard of Oz, and the music caught on with the soldiers in the trenches and battlefields in Europe. Early khamasin dust storms blew in from the Western Desert for one whole day. As the month of May arrived, the Muwasa Society had finished building its hospital in Mina al-Basal. The city of Alexandria banned swimming in Anfushi this year, and future years if the war continued. The Christians celebrated Easter and seemed more joyous than at Christmas. The final examinations in schools started, and Zahra noticed that Camilla was looking paler, that she was not her usual cheerful self. Zahra asked her what was the matter, and she said she really loved school and that this happened to her every year with finals and the beginning of the long summer vacation. Zahra was surprised, and continued to notice Camilla’s pallor, and saw her more than once struggling to hide her tears. She was surprised to see Yvonne also look pale. She talked about it to Sitt Maryam, who seemed baffled. Lula got into the conversation, saying, “If it was just one girl, we’d have said it was love.” Zahra looked at her, annoyed, and Sitt Maryam blushed. At night Zahra thought a lot about the two girls and told herself that one of them was in a tight spot and the other knew about it. She immediately added to herself that Camilla, who showed more pallor and who had an angelic face like that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was the one in the tight spot. She was like a flame that would not quit until it was extinguished. She asked God for forgiveness and to protect the two girls and the good family. The streets and gardens filled with lettuce leaves, green chickpea plants, green onions, and remnants of herring, sardines, and onion skins. True, all of that was in the garbage bins, but the passers-by and even people indoors could smell it. Zahra went out for the first time on a felucca in Mahmudiya Canal with Camilla, Yvonne, and Sitt Maryam, and they went to the zoo. Everything around them appeared cheerful, even the two girls. But their laughter was not as joyful as usual. Besides, Camilla left them and disappeared for more than an hour, then returned. Zahra noticed a new color in her cheeks and a joy that disappeared only minutes after her return. Those days, Camilla was never seen without an English book in her hand. She and her sister were enrolled in the most famous secondary school in Alexandria, the Nabawiya Musa School.

  Shamm al-Nasim (the spring festival) and the other feasts were over. Finally Norway surrendered, and the Allies were beaten. The world waited with bated breath for Germany’s next blow. The German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Grieisenau attacked the British aircraft carrier Glorious and sank it in less than ninety minutes. The Egyptian minister of national defense issued an order prohibiting marriage for second lieutenants in the Egyptian army so they would not be distracted from military affairs by family obligations. Opening Marsa Matruh as a summer resort was postponed indefinitely this season, in view of the war and because there was no place for people to stay anyway. The United States began exporting to the Allies the fighter jet Bell Airacobra, which flew at a speed of seven hundred kilometers an hour, at a price of twenty thousand pounds apiece. Fishing was banned in the western harbor in Alexandria, just as swimming had been banned in Anfushi earlier. General Baker Pasha, Alexandria’s police superintendent, issued orders declaring May eighth an emergency day, so air-raid drills were conducted as were mock rescue operations. There was a call for volunteers to be trained, and the locations of public shelters and their capacities in the neighborhoods of Gumruk, Manshiya, Labban, Attarin, Mina al-Basal, and Muharram Bey were announced. Fifty prominent figures in the city of Sydney, Australia, agreed to a proposal to give, free of charge, tracts of land in the northwestern part of the continent to the Jewish Colonization Society for Jews fleeing Europe. The police superintendent’s office in Cairo formed a six-hundred-man force of different ranks from the police and the army and placed it at the disposal of the political section. The dawn of the tenth of May brought the world the news it was afraid would happen one day. The Germans struck their bigges
t blow: their armies invaded the Netherlands and Belgium and part of France. The invasion of Norway was accomplished, and the world realized that the most horrific military revival in human history had taken place in Germany, which was now spreading terror everywhere in Europe. Mr. Chamberlain resigned, and Winston Churchill formed the new cabinet and stood in the House of Commons to say that his policy would be to wage war from the sea, the land, and the air, that the goal was one word: victory. King Farouk unveiled a statue of Mustafa Kamil, a young king dedicating the statue of a young leader. The newspapers published his now famous words, “Free in our land, hospitable to our guests. My soul, forged from the shining light of patriotism, cannot live in the dark of oppression and despotism.” Preparations were begun to evacuate Alexandrians, if necessary, to the Bihayra governorate. The world discovered that Germany had deployed 126 divisions in its invasion of France. The Netherlands surrendered, since resistance was futile. Queen Wilhelmina broadcast a speech in English, in which she said that all prayers for détente and understanding had been in vain, that her nation had been defeated because of the enemy’s superior forces, but that it would not be defeated morally, that the Dutch spirit would remain sound and strong. The newspapers in Egypt announced a new line of defense, comprising the Delta from Alexandria to Port Said as well as Cairo, and it turned out to be a line of defense coverage offered by a life insurance policy sold by the Sun Life Insurance Company. The area around the Muhammad Ali barrages was closed to the public as of May 15. The pricing commission of Alexandria met at the city hall to set the prices of staple goods and decided to keep the current price structure in place, with the exception of the price of matches, which was raised. The Postal Authority issued a five-millieme commemorative stamp bearing a picture of the year-and-a-half-old Princess Faryal. The Germans were able to open a fifty-mile-wide breach in the French lines of defense. Through it they placed their armored divisions sixty miles behind French army lines, thus encircling about half a million French soldiers behind the Maginot line, which the Germans did not attack directly, but in which they opened two breaches and went around it. The Belgian army laid down its arms after losing three quarters of a million of its men. In Alexandria foreign nightclub artistes were deported on a boat, and it was announced that all foreign artistes would be deported for fear that they might be recruited as spies. The number of English recreational women members of the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) in Alexandria and Cairo increased. A special camp was set up for them on the Mustafa Kamil section of the beach and anyone who wished could get close and watch them in their swimsuits. Some malicious liars even said that sometimes they went into the water without said swimsuits. The first evacuation from Alexandria took place when a thousand orphan children were evacuated to orphanages in Mahalla al-Kubra and Mansura. A man in whose possession were papers written in code was arrested and taken under guard to the main police headquarters in Cairo. There was only one merchant in Alexandria who violated the official pricing code, only one burglary, of a jewelry store in the goldsmiths’ row. There were fifty traffic violations and one attempted murder. Britain was now like a dignified man with his pants down, trying desperately to pull them up but failing to, then finally managing to do it, after his heart had almost stopped. Britain had to withdraw its forces from France with the least possible losses, and it did manage to evacuate the troops from Dunkirk and Calais and other locations using all available vessels, big and small, and volunteer boats— the biggest escape operation by sea in history with about four hundred thousand soldiers evacuated back to their island under German bombardment on land and sea. Magd al-Din would read the news to Dimyan, who could not believe that human beings could wreak so much destruction. Dimyan asked him, are people in Europe human like us, or or are they devils? How could the Earth bear all of this without exploding? When Dimyan saw a picture of Laurel and Hardy, he asked Magd al-Din about the name of the film. He told him it was The Air Devils, and Dimyan suggested that they watch it together, give up a lunch or a supper and watch it, so long as the cinema was not screening any Chaplin films.