No One Sleeps in Alexandria

by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

  Yusuf Wahbi’s play The Air Raid Siren opened. Cinema Olympia screened the film Dananir, starring Umm Kulthum; Cinema Misr showed Mary Queenie’s A Rebellious Girl; and Cinema Cosmo was playing One Million Years B.C., which starred the new actor Victor Mature and which Camilla saw with Rushdi and saw in Rushdi’s eyes the same sadness as in Victor Mature’s. The Commandant of the Traffic Police, Muhammad Shukri Bey, issued an order requiring all cab drivers to wear a uniform as they did in European countries, a khaki coat over their clothes. In Alexandria the Israelite Sports Union had a gala party to benefit victims of the air raids, which was attended by Salvatore Cicurel and many other notables. Marshal Wavell’s reputation spread. In disbelief, people watched the sweeping British offensive on Libya and the defeats raining down on Italy.

  But Magd al-Din believed, for he saw the weapons being shipped by train to the heart of the desert every day, weapons that only red demons could make and only devils and giants could use. Hamza expressed amazement as he saw the young Italian prisoners of war, barefoot and heads shaved, shipped in open and closed freight trains, looking more like homeless children, and sleeping without a care. Some of them even smiled at the workers or waved to them. Commenting on their great numbers, Hamza sang, “If time deals you a bad hand, son of noble ones, bow your head, but follow not the ignoble ones.” His co-workers, who could not see the connection between what he said and what was happening, laughed.

  “Aren’t they the ones who were fighting?” Dimyan asked him.

  “My heart tells me these are good-hearted men who don’t know how to fight in Egypt or Greece. It’s all the devil Mussolini’s fault,” was Hamza’s reply.

  Roosevelt delivered a speech in which he said that America was going to be “the great arsenal of democracy.” The licensed prostitutes of Alexandria complained about the dwindling number of patrons after the great emigration from the city. They requested that they be used to entertain the English soldiers in their camps in return for a fixed income, since Commonwealth soldiers who went to the brothels went there drunk and did not pay. Besides, the local customers, knowing that they had become a rare commodity, were no longer going to the poor brothels in Farahda and Kom Bakir, but to the posh ones in Hamamil, and were paving there what they used to pay in the poor ones. The newspapers announced that mentally retarded persons in Germany and countries under German occupation would be executed: “In Germany alone, one hundred thousand wretched creatures, idiots, and incurably insane creatures will be executed in the next few days.” The workers laughed when Hamza said that only today he did not wish the Italians to enter Egypt because that meant that “the Germans would enter too, and execute all railroad workers like us.” When he saw Ghibriyal’s fox-like glance, he immediately added,”Except foremen,” and everyone laughed even more. Dimyan began to feel a spiritual affinity with Hamza, and Magd al-Din forgot his previous insult to him,

  Churchill gave a speech in which he praised Anglo-American cooperation, saying that they were in the sentinel tower guarding history. The air raids against Alexandria since Italy entered the war numbered one hundred, the most vicious of which was the six-hour raid and the two of the previous November. But the Italians had not come to drink Nile water; rather, they came as prisoners of war, as lost souls walking hundreds of miles on foot from Libya to Marsa Matruh. Many of them died on the road in the sun, the rain, and the desert winds. From Marsa Matruh, they were shipped by train or boat to Alexandria. The newspapers also reported on the trial of those accused in the case of the defective helmets supplied to the Egyptian and the British armies. It was a cause célèbre, widely covered in the papers and talked about everywhere, especially in cafés and bars. The Royal British Army and the Royal Egyptian Army had, at the beginning of the war, announced an invitation to bid on supplying fifty thousand helmets for Commonwealth soldiers and twenty thousand for Egyptian soldiers. The bid was won by a team of Egyptian and Greek contractors, who delivered the helmets on time. It turned out afterwards, however, that the helmets were fake, that they were all made of tin rather than steel, as was customary. In trying to excuse himself, one of the defendants said, “What good would a helmet, tin or steel, do against bombs from the air or against the big guns? Would a helmet protect a soldier or prevent his death if God had already decreed his death?” The case, and news of it, proved to be a welcome diversion for the Egyptians during the war. The trial was continued, as the defendants and the Egyptians had hoped. Kassala fell to the English, and Ethiopian troops and the Italians retreated to Eritrea, and Emperor Haile Selassie prepared to enter Ethiopia at the head of his national army. Al-Azhar celebrated the new year of the Islamic calendar. Ghaffara still put the anti-airraid fez on his face; he no longer traded in sawdust, as most lumber yards had closed down after the cessation of maritime trade with Europe. His customers, mostly shop owners, had also dwindled as a result of the great emigration. So Ghaffara removed the wooden box from his cart, leaving only one side panel, on which he wrote, “Capacity: ten tons. Ready to move migrants to the station with luggage or without.” He started to salute people in the manner of Goebbels, as he said, by raising his arm and saying “Heil Hitler” to everyone. At the end of January, Muhammad Mahmud Pasha, the former prime minister of Egypt known as “the Iron Fist,” died in Cairo. The soulful singer Malak opened in Butterfly in Brentania theater on Imad al-Din Street. In Greece, the great Greek leader General Metaxas died, and mourning was declared in the Greek Consulate in Alexandria and all Greek clubs. An order prohibiting bicycle riding in some streets in the capital was issued. Italians retreated to Benghazi and Churchill spoke in the House of Commons, saying that Egypt and Suez were saved. Cinema Misr screened the film Salarna’s All Right. The English began advancing on Tripoli. Italian tanks and armored cars were burned, Italian casualties and prisoners of war since the beginning of the British offensive totaled 150,000. Grief and muffled resentment of its mighty leader gripped Italy. Decorations went up everywhere in Egypt on the occasion of His Majesty’s birthday; music played in public squares, gala parties were held in Zaafarana palace, police-officers’ clubs, and the patriarchate. Restaurants were opened for the poor, and school children sang for our happy king. The dreams of Graziani to rule Egypt as a viceroy were shattered. A sublime royal directive announcing the campaign to combat bare feet was issued: “Barefootcdness is not a cause but a consequence. It is better for the citizen to buy, with his own money, shoes that would protect his feet. Giving him shoes out of charity takes away from his dignity and increases his humiliation.” At the same time the king donated the wild coney that he had caught to the Giza zoo. The newspaper ai-Ahram published an article to explain what a “coney” was:

  “We have received from the Reverend Boulos Roman, from Asyut, a description of this animal. He said that it resembled a rabbit, that it chewed its cud but that it did not divide the cloven hoof, that it was one of the beasts that God ordered the Israelites not to eat, since they were unclean. He added that it was sometimes known as “the sheep of Israel,” that it lived in the rocks, and therefore was known for its wisdom. Solomon mentioned it in ‘Proverbs,’ saying, ‘There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the coneys are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locust have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.’ When the prophet David enumerated God’s mercy toward man, beast, and bird, he said that He created the rocks as shelter for the coneys. In some translations, the word ‘rabbits’ has been used, and even though they resemble each other, each was mentioned separately in the Bible, first the coney, then the rabbit. The fact that it was mentioned in the Bible tells us that it is found in abundance in Palestine.”

  Humans, no matter how numerous, who among them

  knows anything about himself?

  Babylonian saying

  17

&nb
sp; There was a lot of work the last few days of winter, as cold air seared the faces in the early morning. The wind grew worse, especially after Magd al-Din and Dimyan went beyond the wall to the wide open space above the railroad tracks. There the month of Amshir had a chance to show itself in its true colors, as eddies whirled the dust suddenly, letting loose the cold wind, after which crazy rain poured down from a cloud that had raced in from some distant place. On their usual morning route, Magd al-Din and Dimyan no longer felt provoked by the silent operator of the Raven, who still stared at them. Dimyan noticed that the man had grown a beard and now was rarely ever seated, but instead was constantly walking back and forth. Dimyan asked Magd al-Din whether the man had actually gone crazy. Magd al-Din gave him his usual, vexing response, “Leave the creation to the Creator, Dimyan.”

  The workers had the task of completing a two-kilometer extension of the rail line, as the present lines could not accommodate all the trains waiting to enter the harbor. The two direct long-distance lines to and from the desert also had to be clear of all other trains.

  The open area extending behind Alexandria, from Muharram Bey to Qabbari and passing by Ghayt al-Aynab and Kafr Ashri, was crowded with hundreds of cars and dozens of black steam engines that never stopped moving. They carried weapons from the harbor to the desert, or weapons and soldiers coming from Suez, or those that had been on furlough in Alexandria, as well as prisoners of war. Several trains arrived from the Cairo warehouses with dozens of flatbed cars carrying crossties, rails, and thousands of huge screws and nails, as well as the square steel plates placed between the cross ties and the rails. Trains coming from the Western Desert brought huge amounts of ballast. The area was suddenly filled with railroad policemen in their distinctive yellow uniforms, stationed near and around the equipment unloaded by the workers and the winches moving on rails. The workers, numbering over a hundred, gathered from all the posts to take part in this giant task that had to be finished in record time, even if they had to work day and night.

  Despite their woolen outfits, the cold assailed the workers at the neck, sleeves, and hems of their pants. The heat of working was no longer enough to give them warmth, as the wind and the open space gave them no shelter. No one was allowed to take a lunch break, now reduced to one hour, at home. The workers accepted all this hardship, bothered only by the intermittent downpours. The rain forced them to run and take shelter next to or under the nearest car, but as soon as they returned to work, it came down again. On several occasions they made light of it and stayed at their work posts, but it would surprise them by coming down longer and harder. They found themselves obstinately matching wits with the rain.

  They divided themselves—actually, their foremen, who were traditional experts at that kind of work, divided them into teams. One team was assigned to level the ground. Their tools were pickaxes and shovels. Another team poured and leveled the ballast in the spots where the crossties would be placed. Their tools were baskets and shovels. A third team was charged with arranging the ties. Their tools were their shoulders, on which they carried the tics. Another team had to carry the rails and place them on top of the crossties and the plates. One team was to fasten the rails to the crossties, using the spikes, which went through the steel plates under the rails and into the crossties, and which secured the two sides of the rail from the bottom. The last team tamped the ballast under the ties. The foremen’s task was to measure precisely the gaps between the rails horizontally and the bends to make sure that the exact number of millimeters was left between sections of the same rail, so that when the rails stretched in the summer or shrank in the winter, they would not buckle. And, like all workers in the world, it was impossible to endure the hardship of long, arduous work without singing rhythmically, “Haila hop haila, haila hop haila.” This was especially true of those who carried the rails, each of which was eight meters long. Each of these was carried by ten men, who sang as they carried it, then gently lowered it to their feet, and then, all at once, let go of it on top of the plates and the crossties. Then they moved back, leaving the place to the fastening team, which placed the huge screws that went through the crossties, using a long key in the shape of a tube, at the bottom of which was a square cavity the size of the screw head. All the while they sang to the saints about the pain in their backs, about their children, and about the English, who abducted the women. Then they would laugh as Hamza watched.

  Hamza was always among the rail carriers, despite his being shorter than his colleagues. As Hamza watched the fasteners spread around the rails, they seemed to him like desert hornets, as they hovered close together and moved their arms all the time. He sometimes imagined that they had sprouted wings and flew in the sky, holding the rail then riding it as if it were a magic carpet. Then he would laugh. From time to time, Dimyan would stop tamping the ballast under the crossties and look at Hamza in the middle of the line of men carrying the rail. He would realize, in surprise and admiration, that his short colleague was very smart, that he did not carry anything since the rail supported on the shoulders of his tall colleagues barely touched his shoulders. Hamza must have realized the meaning of Dimyan’s occasional glances at him, so he would sing:

  I am a hardy camel,

  my only trouble is the camel driver,

  A grouchy man who’s not up to his task.

  Or:

  An orphan whose family is lost

  Is lost in this country.

  Or less loudly but with more feeling:

  A prisoner of war in time

  Can he sold to the nobility

  But the people of a free country

  Employed him as a servant.

  “Bravo, Hamza. May God inspire you,” the workers would say, only to be silenced by the downpour and run to take shelter in the cars.

  The workers did not have fixed duties, but changed them every two days. Usta Ghibriyal was of the opinion that they should change every day, as that was more restful for the body and did not tax the workers’ abilities. But Usta al-Bayya, foreman of Post Number Two, said the change would be better every two days. Al-Bayya was an old foreman, and his recklessness was so widely known that the workers nicknamed him ‘the crazy one.’ So no one could argue with him. Al-Bayya said, “Two days is better for the workers—they are as strong as donkeys.” When he spoke, al-Bayya sprayed, a fact that made anyone speaking with him end the conversation as quickly as he could. In reality, all the jobs were equally hard, despite the apparent differences. Dimyan was of the opinion that all the jobs were so horrible that he prayed silently to Mari Girgis, the Martyr, who had given him that job, to fill the sky with black clouds so the rain would never stop, and the rails would come undone, and the trains would overturn, and the Allies would stop fighting the Axis. Then he would find time to learn reading and writing, subjects in which he had not made much progress, even though he had to take a test in a few weeks, otherwise he would not get a raise the following year. He would say to himself, “Lord, Most Holy, who created us and put us in heaven, but we disobeyed you by the counsel of the serpent and fell from life everlasting. But you did not abandon us but sent us saints and prophets to look after us. Then one day you appeared to us, who sat in the dark, with your only son, our savior Jesus Christ, who died that we may live. Make us worthy, Lord, to partake of your holiness to purify our souls and our bodies. Have mercy on us, God the Father, Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison.”

  Other workers were quite content with the area, which resembled paradise in its expansivcness and seclusion. No matter how tiring the work was, all it took was a few moments of rest, in which they would stretch out and take in the mysterious expanse, for them to forget everything: the world beyond, which might actually be better, or their homes and families. The passing trains loaded with soldiers and weapons and other things looked as if they had descended from the sky and were going back there. The moments of excitement and talk about soldiers and receiving their gifts soon gave way, vanishing into another imperceptible world a
nd time, far more mysterious than either. All their thoughts of the world were centered on the vast open space, which gave them an exhilarating sense of eternal contentment.

  The black clouds, low and heavy like German planes when they attacked the city at night, approached. The weary sun moved and hid behind the massive black clouds, promising rain. One moment later the downpour began, and everyone left everything and hurried to the cars. Merely seeking shelter beside one of the cars would do no good, for the rain did not come from any one direction, so groups of workers looked for empty, closed cars. Dimyan said to himself, “Have I really become that close with Mari Girgis?” His eyes welled up with tears as he felt serenity flowing into his soul. Did the Lord really love him that much? Dimyan got into a nearby caboose, where he found al-Bayya, Hamza, Usta Ghibriyal, Magd al-Din, and a number of other workers. Ghibriyal immediately sat down on a side seat, took out his notebook and indelible pencil from his upper pocket, and began writing in his elegant manner, without taking off his beret. Al-Bayya, on the other hand, removed the scarf around his neck and took off his skullcap, revealing a totally bald head that was as red as his face, probably from running for cover. The sound of a distant train was getting nearer, as was the sound of English soldiers singing and Scottish bagpipes. It was impossible for any of the workers to leave the cars where they had taken cover, as the rain was coming down in buckets, soaking the dusty ground in a few seconds. They looked from the doors and windows of the cars at the soldiers, some of whom were also looking at them through the train windows. “They’re getting drunk on the train, I swear,” Hamza said, laughing in amazement. But no one paid any attention to what he was saying as the sky suddenly darkened, then lightning was followed by incessant thunder, and it seemed that the seven heavens were going to come crashing down on the bare ground. The men were afraid and fell silent for a few moments, until al-Bayya said, “It seems the English are planning something, Usta Ghibriyal.”