“How is French?”
Strength came back to her. She answered with a question, “How did you know?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that before I left you I had seen in your eyes a desire to do everything that I liked to do.”
They walked. She left her hand in his. He was back, with that strange talk that she did not understand. He seemed to her like a rainbow in the sky. She did not understand what that feeling meant; she did not know if she had thought about it before, but that was how he seemed to her, really: a rainbow crossing the sky in a fire chariot drawn by rainbow horses.
“Woe to you, Camilla, woe to you,” she said to herself after silence had descended for a short while.
“What did you say?”
“Will you wait until I finish my lesson?”
“I will wait for you until the end of time.”
“You talk funny, Rushdi,” she laughed. “I don’t understand you at all.”
“What do you say we change the lesson this time and walk for a little bit?”
They walked to Rami station. They stood on the corniche, invigorated by the cool breeze and the sea spray. He feared the lecherous eyes of the soldiers, white from England and Australia and black from all over the world, so he walked quickly with her to the opposite sidewalk, with its old, typically Alexandrian cafes filled with Greeks, sailors, and soldiers as well. A number of drunken soldiers came out from the Windsor, hurrying together with a number of young women who wore short khaki skirts that reached above their knees despite the cold. Each soldier had his arms around one of the young women as they walked and sang, opera style. He told her, laughing, that students were now saying that after the war the English should leave the country but leave behind the young women of the ATS. Camilla knew that they were conscripts, but he told her that their official jobs were as secretaries and telephone operators in the English camps and establishments, that they had different military ranks exactly like the men, but that their real job was to entertain the soldiers. He said they were not just English but French, Greek, Cypriote, New Zcalanders, Indians, and South Africans and from all over the British Empire. Camilla never thought beyond the literal meaning of these pretty young women in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, abbreviated by the press to ATS and pronounced al-Atsa by the Egyptians. They stopped in front of the statue of Ismail Pasha in Manshiya.
“Let’s stand here like a couple of European tourists,” he said.
“Have you been to Europe before?”
He had put his arm around her and she felt his ribs under his shirt and light pullover, and he felt her fleshy warmth.
“I must go one day.”
“You’ll take me with you?” She clung to him even more closely.
“We may very well find that to be the only option available to us,” he said, reminding her of what she had managed to forget in the summer. If only she had never studied French!
They kept on walking. Many fezzes appeared in the square, with its cafés that attracted brokers; merchants; stock-exchange experts; seekers of fame, fortune, glory, and happiness; would-be pashas and beys coming from the countryside to do business; and sailors who had gotten tired of the cheap bars of Bahari and the cheaper women of Haggari and who came here in search of better bars and prettier women. The square was also filled with horse-drawn carriages that raced along with their human cargo. And above it all was the statue of Muhammad Ali Pasha, ready to take off as the wind mirthfully played in the wide open space and on the ground where it kicked up the little leaves that had fallen indolently from the tree in the middle of the road.
“Where do you live?” she asked him.
“Not far from you. You live in Ghayt al-Aynab. I followed behind you once all the way to your door.”
She looked very surprised as he continued, “I live halfway between Karmuz and Kafr Ashri bridges. There’s housing for railroad workers there. It’s an isolated, quiet place in front of Mahmudiya Canal and a big, empty stretch of land—completely safe.”
“I know the place well,” she said. “It’s a really beautiful place, and the most beautiful thing about it is that no one can spot it or get to it easily.”
He stopped and looked at her very closely, holding her shoulders without fear or shame. “Listen to you, you’re saying beautiful things.”
She laughed and started to walk again after gently removing his hands from her shoulders. “I’ve gone there with mother many times to buy fish from the salt works,” she said. “There’s a long, dark tunnel you go through, and then you find yourself right smack at the salt works.”
“Exactly.”
She did not want to tell him that she had gone several times to that very housing compound with her father, mother, and Yvonne to visit their relative Usta Ghibriyal, whom Rushdi surely knew and who surely was his father’s boss.
“A man who lives in our house works for the railroad,” she said.
“I don’t know him. He doesn’t live in our house,” he said, and they laughed. She felt regret for her indiscretion but soon overcame it, for she had not mentioned the name of their tenant or that of Ghibriyal in any case.
Camilla went home that day like a free sparrow flying in a magnificent space. But as soon as she sat down, a gloom that she could not shake descended upon her. Her mother could not figure it out, nor could anyone else except Yvonne, who realized that her sister was at it again. Every night now Camilla would decide to break it off with Rushdi for good, and in the morning would wait for the afternoon when he came. He was very considerate. He asked her to let him follow her four days a week, and two days a week go out with him to some place far from home.
The priest, with his ruddy complexion, black beard, and black cassock, appeared at the house, and Zahra saw him for the first time, even though he had been to the house many times before. Zahra started hearing long speeches that she did not understand, and prayers and chants that she did not understand either. Every time the priest came, silence descended on the house, and Sitt Maryam closed the door of their room without looking at anyone who might be there, even when Khawaga Dimitri was present. An hour or more later the priest would come out, and Zahra would hear loud voices bidding him farewell, “Good-bye, father, may the Virgin protect you!” She also heard sobbing, but she could not tell whether it came from Camilla or Yvonne. She also rarely saw Camilla and Yvonne now, as they no longer sat out with their mother but stayed in the inner rooms after returning from school.
That continued to be the case until one day the air-raid siren sounded ominously, heralding imminent danger. True, the siren sounded intermittently with every raid, every day, and it sounded the same, whether the raid was big or small, but somehow, people had developed a sense, a sort of intuitive feeling about particularly bad raids by hearing the sound of the siren. Did that sound actually change, or did the war unite people and sensitize them in such a way that they were able to prophesy, like prophets or mystics? The feast at the end of Ramadan had ended ten days earlier with a big raid that lasted from six o’clock in the evening to ten, but it was scattered over various neighborhoods, so it did not leave a large number of casualties concentrated in one place. Today, however, people in Karmuz, Ghayt al-Aynab, Raghib, Masr Station, and Attarin felt that they, the very heart and pulse of Alexandria, were the targets.
That day Zahra had asked Magd al-Din several times about the priest and his visits, which occurred sometimes more than twice in one week and about the silence, the crying, and the mumbling, but Magd al-Din told her, “Leave creation to the Creator, and take care of what’s in your womb.”
When the siren sounded, she clung to him, and her daughter Shawqiya cried, as she sensed that the intermittent siren was bad from the way people around her panicked. She had also figured out that the long, uninterrupted all-clear was good and would clap her little hands when she heard it. Zahra hurriedly put a shawl around her shoulders, for the shelter was cold and humid, and went downstairs, followed by Magd al-Din,
who carried Shawqiya. Zahra saw Sitt Maryam, the two girls, and Khawaga Dimitri going downstairs in silence. Zahra’s fear did not prevent her from seeing how Camilla was withering away like an ear of grain left in the sun too long. They all went into Bahi’s room, which was always open since no one had rented it, or Lula’s room, which was also open since the migration of people from Alexandria left behind many vacant apartments and rooms. As soon as they got into the room Sitt Maryam said, “Turn off the light, Dimitri.”
It seemed to Zahra that the woman said this because she did not wish anyone to see her daughter in her bad condition, rather than because of the raid, even though civil defense instructions clearly specified that all lights be turned off. It was the second half of the lunar month of Shawwal, and the moon had waned almost to a crescent, but its light was enough. Magd al-Din opened the window of the room to hear people’s comments and to see them. Then he suggested to Dimitri that they go out on the street and join the men. Dimitri thought it was a good idea and they went out.
Magd al-Din saw the searchlights from the harbor and Kom al-Shuqafa filling the sky. Then he heard the loud droning noise of approaching planes, and as they flew within range, the anti-aircraft artillery in Alexandria let loose a barrage of red missiles from all the highest points in Alexandria. The sounds of the guns reverberated intensely from all directions. Boys and young men on the streets cheered as they saw some planes catch on fire, but the sounds of explosions were soon heard, and smoke could be seen in various quarters of the city in the west, east, and north. Then the explosions were concentrated in the downtown area. Children could be heard crying loudly in many houses, and various people began to recite loudly verses from the Quran. Ghaffara’s voice boomed from behind his fez-mask, “That son of a bitch Graziani doesn’t like us. What really kills me is, how come the planes come over from Italy to hit us? Why don’t they go to England? Isn’t England closer?”
The voice of a young man was heard to reply, “The planes come from Libya, idiot.”
Suddenly Dimyan appeared. It looked as though he had just come from a strenuous race. His voice shook as he spoke.
“I didn’t come here to hide, Sheikh Magd. The piazza, Karmuz, and Bab Sidra are all on fire, sky-high, worse than the six-hour raid. We’ve got to run and help our brothers.”
Magd al-Din was silent, thinking how he had failed to heed the call before, that it would not be right to do that again. Then he heard Ghaffara say to the youth gathered there, “It’s a black night, young men. Come on—let’s go to Karmuz. Houses have fallen down, and people have died.”
It was a night beyond the limits of the human mind. In the dark, frantic feet trotted like horses, and eyes hung on every explosion that filled the sky with fire and showering missiles. When they approached the Mahmudiya canal, they saw only pitch dark over the water and a few barges on which sailors stood watching the battle raging in the sky. In record time they covered the distance on Karmuz Street and entered the piazza by the clock tower. Magd al-Din saw fires the likes of which he had never seen, a huge mass of red, higher than the tallest buildings and houses. He stood helplessly reflecting, “God, most merciful!”
“Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison,” Dimyan repeated, and Ghaffara exclaimed, “God, have mercy on your servants!”
Magd al-Din had seen many fires before in the countryside in which he could smell burning dung, straw, and firewood. This time however, he was smelling burned flesh, hearing cries from all directions, and watching as women ran through the streets in their nightclothes and men carried children from their homes to stand at a distance. Everyone was crying, the sound of planes droned ceaselessly over the city as the guns chased them and the searchlights raced all over the sky. He could hear the fire trucks coming from Kom al-Dikka and saw some parked in the distance in front of the burning houses, as the fire fighters in their helmets scrambled to the fire hydrants on the sidewalks to which they attached their huge water hose and began to put out the fires.
The bombing had moved to Mina al-Basal, and Magd al-Din could see Dimyan standing helplessly in front of him, and Ghaffara as usual wearing his fez-mask, and Hamidu and the young men running to the collapsed houses to pull out people pinned down or just lying there. There were many musical instruments lying scattered everywhere on the ground—lutes, drums,, tambourines, accordions, saxophones, and flutes that looked like snakes and serpents. There were groups of almost-naked women who had been surprised by the raid, the destruction, and the fires. Some women from the houses that were not effected began to hand the others robes and gallabiyas to cover themselves. Curses poured forth against the Germans, the Italians, and the English who were behind it all. The air was filled with the smell of human sweat mixed with dust. They all began to remove the corpses from the debris. Then the all-clear sounded as the planes moved away, but the fires still lit the place, as did the headlights of the fire trucks. There were screams coming from the ruins and sounds of faint moaning as if someone was gasping a last breath. Every time someone alive was brought out, shouts of “God is great!” rang out. Magd al-Din had not expected to meet anyone he knew here, let alone find them in the ruins. He saw three men carrying a women on a stretcher and running; two were carrying it from the front and one from the back, and he heard a voice call out, “Sheikh Magd al-Din.”
They were placing the wounded next to each other on the far pavement so the ambulances could transport them. The person carrying the stretcher from the back was his friend Dimyan, who came back and told him, “We took out a woman from the rubble. She saw you and called out to you. Didn’t you hear her?”
“I heard her and didn’t believe it. I don’t know anyone here.”
“She’s right there with the wounded, anyway, so you can go over to her,”
Dimyan ran off again to help rescue others. Magd al-Din made his way to the wounded. When he drew near, he saw her looking at him with a trace of joy in her eyes. It was none other than Lula. Merciful God! She motioned him to sit next to her, and he did, “Please forgive me, Sheikh Magd, I tried to seduce your brother Bahi, but he wouldn’t give in. Dozens of times I came up to him at night, but he wouldn’t do it.”
“He’s the one to forgive you, Sitt Lula.”
“He did. But I need for you to forgive me also. I’ve thought a lot about you.”
“I ask God Almighty for forgiveness.”
“Then please forgive me.”
“God is the One who can forgive you. I forgive everything, even though I don’t think you’ve done me any wrong.”
“Even my infidelity to my husband?”
“It’s fate, Sitt Lula. Where’s the injury?”
“My legs are broken.”
He noticed that her legs were very swollen under her nightgown—a sure sign of severe internal hemorrhaging. As soon as the ambulance appeared, he lifted the stretcher at one end, and Dimyan saw him and ran over to help. They placed Lula in the ambulance, then carried over three other wounded women, and the ambulance rushed them to Muwasa Hospital. Before the ambulance had arrived, Lula was raving, “I’ve loved no one like King Farouk, nor desired anyone as I desired him. Now I won’t dance in front of him. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to dancing.”
Tears poured down her cheeks, and she held Magd al-Din’s hand and kissed it. He let her do it.
As he went out to wash the next morning, Magd al-Din passed Khawaga Dimitri, who was just finishing up, in the hallway.
“Are you going to work today?” asked Magd al-Din. “I don’t think anybody’s going to work today. I’m going to the café, to meet people and find out what’s happened to the city after that raid. Do you want to come with me?’
Magd al-Din went with him. Ever since he had started working for the railroad, he had not once sat in the café in the morning. In the café, Dimitri told him about Karmuz Street and Rhakotis, which Alexander connected with Pharos, now called Bahari. He told him that Rhakotis was a dangerous area, full of drugs and criminals, but that in the past it
had been a place where Christians were tortured. He said that Pompey’s Pillar was built on the hill of Bab Sidra, which in Roman times had temples and stadiums where gladiators fought to the death and where lions were set loose upon converts to the new religion. Dimitri told him that it was an old martyrs’ field; that, in honor of the martyrs, the Coptic calendar began the same year that Diocletian massacred hundreds of thousands of Christians; that it had been a bloody area from time immemorial; and that the blood would not be washed away by Pompey’s Pillar, which the Alexandrians had built to immortalize an oppressive ruler.
No One Sleeps in Alexandria Page 19