No One Sleeps in Alexandria

by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

  “About what, Dimyan?”

  “About this damned job of ours—it’s breaking my back.”

  “You’re complaining now, Dimyan, after we’ve gotten used to it?”

  “The three pounds’ salary we get is hardly enough, with this inflation.”

  “But it’s better than nothing, or spending time in the police station lockup,” said Magd al-Din. He was responding to Dimyan in a perfunctory manner, for they had had this conversation many times before. Magd al-Din reached into his vest pocket and took out the little Quran, then leaned back against the wall, extended his legs, opened the Quran, and began reading.

  “Listen to me!” Dimyan said. “Every time I talk to you, you open the Quran and begin to read. Don’t you read enough at home? At this rate, you’ll make me bring the Bible and read it every time you speak to me.”

  Magd al-Din started laughing at Dimyan’s exasperation and the way he talked. He also laughed because of what Dimyan had said about reading the Bible, when he was actually illiterate. When he had started the job, there was a condition that he learn how to read and write within a year. Now it was four months later, and he had begun to go to school only a week ago.

  After he stopped laughing, he closed the Quran and asked, “What do you want from me, Dimyan?”

  “I’m dying to know the real story of the man sitting at the Raven. Every time I pass by him, he just gives me this strange look. Am I the one who told the birds not to come to the tree? It seems like he wants to kill me.”

  “He looks at me the same way too.”

  “He must want to kill us both, Sheikh Magd.”

  Magd al-Din thought for a little while then said, “Leave creation to the Creator, Dimyan.”

  They were both silent for a long time. Then Magd al-Din read a few pages from the Quran, and he spoke aloud as he finished the Sura of the Believers. “He will say: ‘How many years did you stay on earth?’ They will say: ‘We stayed a day or a part of a day, ask those who keep count. ‘ He will say:’ You stayed only a while, if only you knew. Did you think that We had created you for naught and that you would not be returned unto Us? Therefore exalted be God, the King, the Truth! There is no God but He, the Lord of the Throne of Grace! He who invokes any other god besides God has no proof thereof His reckoning will only be with his Lord. And verily the unbelievers will not be successful. So say: ‘My Lord, grant your forgiveness and mercy for You are the best of all who show mercy. ’”

  Under his breath, Dimyan said, “Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison.” Then he asked,” Why is it, Sheikh Magd, that every time I get into a conversation with you, you say, ‘Leave the creation to the Creator’? For starters, I don’t have anything to leave to Him.”

  Magd al-Din laughed, and Dimyan continued, “And you don’t either, Sheikh Magd. Do you know what I’m thinking now?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “This open door, if somebody were to come and lock it, with us inside, in this godforsaken place—would anyone know? This could happen while we’re napping after lunch. Somebody comes, locks the door, and leaves. Then nobody comes in here or passes by. So, we die. Sheikh Magd, you’ve done something serious in the village, and you’ve managed to escape. You’re very complacent, you accept whatever might happen. It’s as if you want to die.”

  Magd al-Din was quite surprised by this strange talk from his friend. He felt sadness well up in his chest and into his eyes, and he would have cried, had it not been for a shrill train whistle, which made Dimyan jump up and go out to look. Magd al-Din waited for his return. When he did, he said, “An endless train, Sheikh Magd, filled with Africans. The caboose is black and so are the soldiers—everything is black except the cars, which were white to start with, but they’re gray now.”

  Magd al-Din got up and went out with Dimyan and indeed saw a very long train with dozens of black faces with broad, flat noses. Dimyan said in a soft voice as if thinking aloud, “The whole world is with the English. Hitler will never win the war.”

  The train had stopped for a short time to get water at the Raven, then moved slowly again, down the middle of the complex network of tracks in front of the post, where there were several switches. The train was so slow that any soldier, or anyone else for that matter, could have jumped off and then on again.

  “They have tails, Sheikh Magd. If one of them got off the train, you’d see the tail poking out of his shorts.”

  Magd al-Din laughed and waved to the soldiers, who were waving to him from the windows of the train and making the “V” sign that Churchill had invented and that had become famous all over the world. One of them appeared at the door of one of the cars carrying a small cardboard box and gesturing to Magd al-Din and Dimyan.

  “You run, Sheikh Magd, and get the box. I’d die if I saw the tail.”

  Magd al-Din laughed and ran up to the train and reached his hand to catch the box that the smiling soldier handed down. Magd al-Din hesitated for a moment, because the soldier had descended a step and held the box in one hand and with the other held on to the shining metal bar of the car door. It would have been easy for Magd al-Din to look at the soldier’s bare legs under the shorts and to see if he had a tail or not. But he did not look but rather focused on the box and on the black hand holding it, which seemed even blacker when he reached out his white hand to take the box. What frightened him, however, was a strange idea that occurred to him as he reached his hand to take the box: what would prevent the soldier from grabbing his arm and pulling him onto the car, which would take him with the soldiers to the battlefields? Bahi had been grabbed from the road during the earlier war. He could very easily be kidnapped too, even though the corvée system had been abolished. Nothing saved him from his thoughts and fear except feeling that the box was light.

  “It seems to be a box of cookies,” he told Dimyan.

  Dimyan fell silent for a moment as Magd al-Din opened the box and found it indeed filled with cookies.

  “You know what I really crave, Sheikh Magd?” Dimyan said.

  “No.”

  “A can of Australian corned beef.”

  The workers doubled up with laughter at Dimyan’s fear of getting too close to the African soldier. They were drinking their afternoon tea after coming back to work at two o’clock. There was nothing important to do that afternoon. The foreman, Usta Ghibriyal, never joined in their laughter, content with a smile. This supervisor was Dimitri’s relative who had told him of the job opportunities in the railroad. He was of a diminutive build, with a graceful and gentle demeanor, and always kept to himself in a far corner looking at a small notebook that he had with him at all times. He could always be seen scribbling away in that notebook with an indelible pencil, adjusting his beret that he never took off, even while seated, pulling it closer to his eyes or pushing it back a little. When not writing with the pencil, he always placed it, with its shiny metal holder, in the upper pocket of his green jacket, in such a way that it poked from the edge of the pocket, a constant reminder that the pencil was always ready, at a moment’s notice, to write. The workers knew that he took down notes on the progress of the day’s work, prior to copying them in an official report to the administration at the end of each week, yet they never ceased to be surprised at the way he wrote, imagining, perhaps, that it was some form of magic, especially since he took such pains with his penmanship. Hamza commented on that once by saying that Usta Ghibriyal loved to write in that minuscule script of his, that at night when he did not have anything to do, he would erase what he had written during the day. That, he added, was confirmed by the fact that he always used the same notebook.

  Today their co-worker Hamza laughed the most at Dimyan’s fear, but he did not double over because he was too short. Hamza walked in a strange way, with his legs bowed. And even though he was not yet forty, he looked older. He had a ruddy complexion and blue eyes, like so many people from Rosetta. He was so excessively polite that it made people uncomfortable. He always greeted everyone he
met, and if it happened that he left the post and returned in a short while, he would greet his colleagues as if he had not been with them only a few minutes earlier. He was also constantly apologizing for any mistake, no matter how trivial, such as standing up before someone else did. At the beginning, Hamza’s demeanor surprised Magd al-Din and Dimyan, but little by little they grew used to it. Magd al-Din concluded that he was a good man, whereas Dimyan thought that he was almost an idiot. Hamza had a bad habit, though, that caused his colleagues to make fun of him; no sooner would someone say something or tell a story than Hamza would say that the very same thing, in exactly the same manner and at the same time, had happened to him. This became such a well-known trait that some of them made up stories so that Hamza would retell them as things that had actually happened to him, whereupon they would burst out laughing, declaring that they had made up the story. But he would counter by saying that his was a true story, and he would laugh with them, proud and triumphant. Thus he was the hero of all stories, both fantastical and true. If a killer in southern Egypt escaped and hid in a corn field, forcing the police to burn down the whole field to capture him, that same thing happened to him, but in the Daqahliya province, not southern Egypt. As for the man who went out at night to relieve himself on the bank of the Mahmudiya canal and was pulled down by his ass into the water by a female jinn, never to come out again, Hamza had seen someone pulled into the water in the same way. The man cried for help, but Hamza stood there, nailed in place, unable to move at all to rescue him; he could only move after the man had settled down at the bottom of the canal. As for the white donkey that more than one person had seen in their villages at night and that then disappeared as they approached it, Hamza had met innumerable white donkeys and ridden them all.

  The strangest story was the one about the man who went at dawn to the Mahmudiya canal to perform his ablutions there. When he was done and as he stood up, pulled his pants up, and started walking, he felt something moving between his legs and under his buttocks, something giving him a little squeeze. The man pulled up his gallabiya and undid his waistband to see what was here, and found a number of white baby rabbits, dozens of them that looked like little mice playing in his underpants. The man ran home but could not stand still afterwards because of the strange movements of those rabbits. Then he could not sleep; what would he do about those rabbits that had taken up residence in his pants? He had to go down to the street again, and stopped screaming only when he noticed that everything around him was silent. He was so unable to get a grip on himself that finally he fainted and people saw dozens of rabbits running out from between his legs, white rabbits running every which way. The man died of fright. Hamza wore the most solemn oath that that had happened in his village also. Dimyan bent toward Magd al-Din one day and said to him, ‘This Hamza, for sure, is an inveterate liar.”

  “Why should that bother you? Leave creation to the Creator, Dimyan.”

  Dimyan could not stay quiet. “Nothing annoys me more than four forbearance and patience, Sheikh Magd!”

  “You cannot change him,” Magd al-Din said with a smile. ‘He’s used to it, and the men have gotten used to him.”

  Today, as Hamza was laughing at Dimyan’s fear, his face looked very red because he had just finished making tea on the wood-burning stove. He almost choked while laughing; blood gathered in his face as a result of the laughing, the fire, and the choking, and he almost ignited. When he was able to speak again, Hamza said, “Me too, the first time I saw an African, I was afraid of his tail. He was handing me a can of choice Australian corned beef, but I was afraid. I moved away and told him to throw it to me, but he didn’t respond, so I said to him in English, “Throw it!” and he did. The strangest thing was, he understood the English and not the Arabic!”

  Dimyan looked at him, barely concealing his annoyance, and asked, “Did you see his tail, Hamza?”

  “Yes, I did, but I was afraid to grab it, yes, sir.”

  The workers burst out laughing and Dimyan remarked, “Maybe you were afraid, when you grabbed it, it would turn out to be something else!”

  At that point the laughter was hysterical, and Hamza joined in, once again choking, which only annoyed Dimyan all the more.

  Usta Ghibriyal smiled faintly and continued his magical scribbling.

  Hamza asked Magd al-Din, “What do you think, Sheikh Magd—is it true that Africans were originally monkeys?”

  Magd al-Din thought a little, and the workers waited for him to answer.

  “Only God knows,” he finally said. “What I heard was, the monkey was originally a man who wiped his ass with a loaf of bread, so God changed him into a monkey. That’s what we heard as children. But I don’t believe it, because God has ennobled man, so God would not change him into a monkey. Also, it could not be that man was originally a monkey.”

  The workers looked relieved, and so did Usta Ghibriyal, who said, “You speak wisely, Sheikh Magd, What do you think, Hamza? Did you see a man turn into a monkey?”

  The workers laughed uproariously because this time the speaker was the usually silent Usta Ghibriyal.

  Hamza composed himself and replied, “I am afraid that if say I did, nobody would believe me. I’d better keep quiet, Usta.”

  Everyone fell silent in the manner familiar to Egyptians after they laugh; a sudden quiet descended on everyone and everything. One of the workers said, “May God make it good.”

  “I have a curious story to tell you,” Magd al-Din spoke up.

  They looked at him expectantly. Hamza was particularly attentive—he pricked up his cars and was the first to speak, “Go ahead, Sheikh Magd. Perhaps you’ll tell us something new that I don’t know or haven’t seen.”

  Magd al-Din smiled and winked to Dimyan to follow the situation. Dimyan was surprised at his friend, who began, “Once when I was a little boy, a young peasant man grabbed me and had his way with me in the field.”

  Everyone fell silent in shock. What was Sheikh Magd al-Din saying and why? What exactly did he mean? At that point Hamza got up holding the empty cup of tea and headed for the door as if he was going to make some more tea.

  “Why are you silent, Hamza?” Magd al-Din asked. “Why didn’t you say that that happened to you too?”

  They heard Usta Ghibriyal laughing loudly for the first time. Dimyan jumped up and exclaimed, “God is great! God is great!”

  As for Hamza, his red face turned a yellowish blue. Magd al-Din stood up and went over to Hamza, embraced him, and kissed his head, saying, “I didn’t know it was such a bad joke, my friend.”

  When they stopped laughing, Usta Ghibriyal went back to scribbling in his notebook. They noticed that from time to time he was casting furtive, sly glances at Magd al-Din. As for Hamza, he went out to make tea that no one wanted.

  A little while later, Magd al-Din went out and saw him sitting away from the wood-burning stove. He had not even put the teapot on. Magd al-Din sat next to him, and Hamza looked at him with a smile and said, “One does not usually make enemies with decent folk. A free man, no matter how poor, never forgets a good deed.”

  Magd al-Din felt a great relief. “I don’t know how I got carried away joking like that. When I saw you were embarrassed, I was quite upset with myself.”

  “We say more than that everyday, Sheikh Magd.” Hamza answered. “Look at that train!”

  It was a freight train. Its flatbed cars were loaded with military equipment and made such a deep grating noise on the tracks that all the workers came out to see it. On every car was a tank or an armored car covered with netting, with one or two soldiers standing next to it. The train was coming from Suez or Cairo and heading for the desert, where there were great concentrations of Allied troops in al-Alamein, Bir Fuka, and Marsa Matruh. The soldiers were not African this time, but English or Australian and wearing khaki shorts in the middle of winter. They were perhaps coming from the south, maybe South Africa. On top of the shorts, they wore khaki short-sleeved shirts and vests without slee
ves. The ruddy complexions of the soldiers and their white arms and legs meant that they had not seen the desert before, and since they looked young, perhaps they were new to soldiering.

  The train was too fast. The workers saluted the soldiers and shouted, “Hello! Welcome! English is good. German is no good. Churchill is right. Hitler no right,” and other such things that they said on this and other occasions, words that most of them did not understand but which guaranteed good results. The soldiers began throwing packets of Lucky Strike cigarettes, cartons of cookies and chocolate, cans of Australian and New Zealand corned beef and cheddar cheese. Usta Ghibriyal cautioned them to wait until the train cleared the post. They had gotten used to that and also, after the train had left the post, to running and gathering up the goodies on the ground, then bringing them into the post and divvying them up equally, according to who wanted what. Usually the catch was more than enough for all ten of them, and now everyone knew what everyone else wanted or liked. Usta Ghibriyal, for instance, liked Cevlon tea. Hamza, on the other hand, liked cookies and chocolate, which he handed over to his three children and to his co-workers’ children, since they all lived in railroad housing together with workers from posts one through six, whose job sites were not far from them. All the workers would get together for big jobs or when there was an accident. When accidents happened there were no disputes about the goodies. The trains went through more than once every day; the soldiers liberally threw candy, food, and tea. It seemed the war would last for a long time.

  On the way home, Dimyan asked Magd al-Din, “Why all these weapons today?”

  “Don’t you see the trains loaded with Italian prisoners coming from the desert? The war there is quite hot.”

  “It seems like the war will go on for a long time, Sheikh Magd.”

  “The weapons come from Suez and from the harbor in Alexandria, and the soldiers come from all over the world, Dimyan. It seems to me it’s not war, but Judgment Day.”