No One Sleeps in Alexandria

by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

  “Since the withdrawal they no longer come here. They stop at al-Hammam now.”

  “Yes, I took one of them, and at al-Hammam I boarded this train in the rear car. There were no soldiers there—they were on top of the cars and the equipment.”

  “Nothing can stop you, Dimyan! Come on, let’s go home.”

  In truth Magd al-Din wanted to confirm the aura of light around Dimyan’s face and find out if it appeared in the shade indoors, and whether Dimyan knew about it or understood what it meant. Dimyan was unknowingly joining the ranks of the saints.

  On the way Dimyan asked him, “Do you have any information on Brika?”

  “All the Bedouin have left this area for al-Hammam or Amiriya.”

  By nightfall Dimyan had tired of Magd al-Din’s staring at him, but he considered it to be a new phase that his friend was passing through temporarily. Magd al-Din talked about how they had to stay there until they received instructions to leave. Dimyan asked about the kind of work that they could do now. Magd al-Din said they had to switch the train onto the old tracks and spend the night there to accommodate another train that usually arrived at the station during the night. He said it was an important job that they should not neglect, even though the crossing was now useless and the semaphore irrelevant, since the trains no longer went farther than the station. The aura of light grew brighter in the night. They heard footsteps approaching. They were in the inner room, but the outside door was open. The footsteps grew louder and were now at the door, then in the hall, then they saw the two of them standing in front of them. It was the English officer, Mr. Spike, in person, after a long absence. Next to him was a short man with disheveled hair and a long beard that covered his whole face; his face was dusty and looked extremely tired, his khaki shorts and shirt tattered and the legs tanned black. Mr. Spike stood staring at Dimyan and Magd al-Din then said, “This man is Egyptian. We found him in the desert. Please help him.”

  He left the tired man with them and went away. The man stood staring at them, then said in a trembling voice, “Don’t you know me, Sheikh Magd? Don’t you know me, Dimyan?”

  “Who? Hamza!”

  They both shouted and pounced on him, embracing him and lifting him off the ground. In a few moments he was sitting between them crying and laughing and telling his story.

  “Where can I begin, Sheikh Magd? What do I say, Dimyan? This story of mine could be the subject of epics recited by professional storytellers! Yes, I swear! Coming back to Egypt was the farthest thing from my thoughts. Where was Egypt? From the moment that stupid African son-of-a-bitch soldier pulled me up, I lost all hope of ever coming back. May God forgive him—I saw his belly blown up before my very eyes. May God forgive him. He took me away from you, from my children, from my people and my country. You all moved away from me. I saw you running backwards as the dust blinded me, and I couldn’t see anyone any more. I found myself in Marsa Matruh. I spent a whole night in the train, with the soldiers mocking me and making fun of me. They didn’t give me a chance to get near the door. I would have jumped, I swear, even if it meant I’d die. All night they mocked me, Australians, Indians, Africans, and Englishmen, the whole world was mocking me, and I was lost in their midst. They asked me what my name was. ‘What’s your name?’ I said, ‘Hamza,’ and they said ‘hamsa,’ ‘amsa,’ ‘gamza,’ and they laughed and tossed me around from one to another, and I was frightened as a mouse, looking them in the eye and begging them, ‘Please help me, please let me go home.’ But it was no use. I wish I hadn’t known a word of English or had just shut up, but I did know some. I asked and persisted that they let me go. I knew they understood, but they didn’t care and didn’t move. It hurt. If I had been mute or ignorant I would have waited in silence, but I got down on my knees and begged them. ‘Please let me go back, let me go home, please, my home, home.’ And they laughed and said, ‘Home? What’s home? We are homeless. You’re like us, homeless, Hamsa,’ and they laughed, ‘Hamsa is homeless,’ and kept on laughing until a young officer, who apparently liked my helplessness and my fright, patted me on the shoulder to reassure me. Then he talked with the soldiers, and they laughed even more boisterously. I realized that he wasn’t going to help me either, but he pointed to a corner of the train car, and I went and sat there. I put my hand on my cheek and realized I was a goner, no doubt about it. I heard the officer say as he pointed as me, ‘Like a monkey!’ and the soldiers laughed, and I just gave up all hope. I remembered you, Sheikh Magd, and you, Dimyan. But strangely, I was afraid that if I came back and told my story that you, Dimyan, would not believe me, and that made me smile, despite the ordeal, and I said to myself, ‘If only I could go back. I wouldn’t care whether anybody believed me or not.’ Then, like Sheikh Magd, I said to myself, ‘May He who never sleeps take care of me!’ And He did. Praise the Lord, but He really took His time! It must have been a test, surely, but a hard one. ‘Anyway, praise the Lord for everything,’ I said to myself and fell asleep where I was, and when I woke up I found myself in Marsa Matruh in the middle of a heavy raid on the town, the station, and the train. I saw soldiers running in the desert, and sometimes I was ahead of them and at other times behind them. I saw a bomb falling near that stupid African soldier who had abducted me, and I saw him fly more than ten meters in the air, then land with his belly torn wide open, and blood gushing from it. I saw his stomach and his guts. I went close to him and saw that he was still alive but not in pain, but he looked hard at me as if he felt I was gloating over his misfortune and didn’t want to appear weak in front of me. But really, I pitied him. He just turned once and groaned, then gave up the ghost, and I covered him with sand, right there in the middle of the bombing, I swear I did. Anyway the raid ended, and we were back in the middle of the barracks, I stood there, at a loss for what to do. I expected them to let me go, but they pushed me toward the kitchen. I saw the same officer that was on the train and heard him say to a black soldier, ‘Take him to the kitchen. He’s a servant.’ The black soldier with white teeth dragged me over and asked me what my name was, and when I told him, he said, ‘What is Hamsa?’ And I said to myself, ‘My God! Must a man know the meaning of his name?’ And I told him, ‘Jackass,’ but I said it in Arabic, just ‘Humar,’ so he asked me, ‘What’s humar?’ I said ‘Hamza,’ and he looked at me for a time in silence, then said, ‘Very good, Hamsa.’

  “All day and all night I worked in the kitchen, carrying food and washing the dishes and pots and pans and saying to myself, ‘It’s okay, at least I’m being fed, and one might hate something that is good for oneself. In the end, someone is going to find out my true story and will let me go to the station, get on the train, and go back to my children,’ but nobody paid any attention to me. I kept looking around the barracks for a way to escape, but I couldn’t figure out which was east and which was west. There were soldiers of every color and nationality and arms of all types out there in the middle of the desert. I just resigned myself to the will of God and prayed that a German raid would come and level the barracks. I dreamt I was going back by myself. The officer kept looking at me and laughing and talking with the other officers, who laughed too. One day he signaled me to follow him, and my heart sank. I followed him to a large car full of soldiers. There were many cars full of soldiers with their weapons. He told me to jump, and I stood there, at a loss—the car was too high, and I was too short. But a soldier, another black one, extended his hand to me and pulled me up. In a little while the cars began to move, surrounded by tanks and guns. I was very frightened, as frightened as an orphan puppy, so I asked the black soldier, ‘To where we go, soldier?’ Laughing, he said to me, ‘To the war,’ and laughed like a crazy man. I knew already, of course, that it was the war, and that meant the end of me. I was sad, and implored God for one thing, that he defeat the English and the Allies in all their wars against the Germans and the poor Italians and that I end up being a prisoner of the Germans or the Italians, who, if they knew my story, would let me go. The whole way, the officer
was yelling at the soldiers. It turned out he was a vicious son of a bitch. I heard the officers calling him ‘Shakespeare,’ which was his name, apparently. But the soldiers used to call him ‘Macbess.’ It seemed that was his nickname. That’s what I thought. So once I said to him, ‘Mr. Macbess’ and he gave me such a look, I was completely terrified. I knew the soldiers had duped me, and that the word ‘macbess’ must be a bad word, otherwise why would he be so upset? It must be an insult or something. I said to myself, ‘May God take Shakespeare and Macbess the same day!’ After that I found it really hard to serve food to the soldiers at their posts. They gave me a uniform, of course. The battalion I was taking food to was all Indian soldiers. I said to myself that perhaps serving them would be easier, since they were enslaved like us, but serving them was the pits. There was not a single Muslim among them that I could talk with. They were of course all taller than me, wearing turbans that always looked like they were about to fall off their heads. They didn’t bother wearing helmets. All their orders to me were gestures. They treated me like I was a deaf-mute. At night I slept in the kitchen and amused myself with poetry, singing and crying:

  Look at time and what it has done to people:

  One day it smiles at them, the next it frowns.

  The days of joy are gone, had times are upon us,

  The lowest of all now lords it over the noblest.

  “In the first battle with the Italians, I was taken prisoner. The Italians took me with some English, Indian, and Australian soldiers and marched us a distance through a red desert with fine sands that blew in our faces and blinded us, a desert that appeared endless, until we saw a big camp surrounded with barbed wire. To tell you the honest truth, I was gloating, especially because I hadn’t seen the battle before being taken prisoner.”

  “How were you all taken prisoner, then?”

  “We just found, out of the blue, an armored German division in the middle of the camp, surrounded by infantry soldiers that looked like demons. Everybody knew the Germans had arrived, so they surrendered. The fighting was far away from the camp, and since the Germans and the Italians appeared, it meant that the English had been defeated. Later, when Rommel came, he drove the English crazy. He drives them nuts, because as soon as he begins a battle, he leaves the scene, and in the blink of an eye, he’s back behind the English lines, and they surrender right away. But this time, he hadn’t appeared yet. Why do you think they call him ‘Rommel’? The word must mean something like a fox. Yes, Sheikh Magd. I swear by God, Dimyan!”

  “Your story is very long, Hamza!”

  “I’m still at the beginning, Dimyan. I can’t believe it’s over.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t cry, Hamza. Tell us, don’t hold it inside.”

  “I missed you very much, Sheikh Magd.”

  “Okay. What did you do with the Italians?”

  “Yes, Dimyan, they took us to a huge camp filled with prisoners from all over the world and from all religions. We slept outdoors. It was hot during the day but cold at night. And just as I had seen the English treating their prisoners, I saw the Italians doing the same thing. They threw the food to us over the barbed wire fence, and we ran to take it like animals. But, truth be told, after the soldiers picked up the food, they redistributed it among themselves. They were respectable, even though war is hell, and survival is very important. I saw the German and Italian prisoners before that in Marsa Matruh doing the same thing, no one demeaning themselves or losing their dignity. So why had they tried to demean me and take away my dignity? Anyway, every day the Italians took a few prisoners to interrogate, then shipped them to Italy. When it was my turn, I was afraid. I said only one word, ‘Egyptian,’ and one sentence, Ί am Egyptian.’ They looked at each other, the Italian officers, and spoke loudly and as fast as a train, and laughed. Suddenly one of the officers got up and walked around me, looking at me, and said ‘Egyptiano.’ I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t a soldier, that I was an Egyptian railroad worker abducted by the English. But I lost all the English words I had learned all my life, and only the word ‘Egyptian’ was left. I started to cry. They took me back to the camp. I couldn’t believe it. I had seen them ship all the other ones they’d interrogated to Italy. I thanked God and kept pacing next to the high barbed wire fence, wondering why they had let me stay, what they had in store for me. I looked at the distant sky and the wide world in front of me and said to myself that it was unlikely that God would hear my prayers here. Yes, I swear, Sheikh Magd, but God is great, and He heard me.

  “I saw among the soldiers on guard duty a soldier who looked like an Arab. I spoke to him in Arabic, and he responded. It turned out that he was a Libyan who had been conscripted against his will. I told him my story and saw in his eyes a sincere desire to help me. He said to me, ‘Wait a few days. I’ll see what I can do for you.’ I waited. I remembered the raid on Marsa Matruh, with the bombs exploding before my very eyes and the racket of the guns at the border and the shells raining down on the soldiers and cutting them to ribbons. I also remembered the cries of the wounded all night long in the field hospital near the camp. I was always in the rear of the English lines, but I saw hell more than once, because sometimes they pushed me up to the front with the supply team. Yes, what is hell? Isn’t it fire? You know, Sheikh Magd, I think those foreigners are actually from hell. They have hearts of iron, and every day they drop a trainful of bombs on each other. Oh God! Do you think we Egyptians could ever fight like that? We are a kind people, and we cry a lot. If we got into a war and the enemy confronted us with a sad song, we would cry and get out of the way.”

  “Okay, Hamza. Don’t cry. You don’t have to finish the story today. You should rest.”

  “I am rested, now that I’ve seen you again. War is very bad, Sheikh Magd. I’ve seen many soldiers get their heads blown off as they stood behind the guns. I’ve seen guns blown to bits in the air. I’ve seen soldiers suddenly go crazy and run and scream as if possessed by demons and jump up and down. Their comrades would tie them up and give them injections that put them to sleep, then ship them back to their countries. I saw so many crazies that I thought England, Italy, Germany, India, and Africa had all become great madhouses. I saw soldiers look at the sky and scream and others run and fall into the fire, committing suicide. I saw soldiers break down and cry like grieving women. The soldiers are very pitiful, Sheikh Magd. They all cry alike. They are all children that you pity. War is very bad, Dimyan. Anyway, a few days later I found them setting up another camp and a field hospital, and I saw cars carrying hundreds of wounded soldiers and big storms of dust and commotion, like it was Judgment Day. I asked the Libyan soldier, and he told me, ‘It’s your good fortune, Egyptian. The English have defeated Graziani. Wait for them. They must come here.’ And that’s exactly what happened. The English came, and they took me with the other prisoners and shipped us back to the Egyptian borders. See how the Lord works! I found myself once again in Egypt, but as a prisoner this time. But praise the Lord, I was back. They handed me over to a tall Australian corporal, very tall, so tall his legs alone were my height, I swear. He took me to the commanding officer. It was then that I learned that my height made me look suspicious to anyone who saw me—I didn’t look like a soldier, and no officer would be that short, so I must be a spy. That was the whole story, and the reason for my ordeal.

  “The officer asked me who I was and what I did. I told him, Ί am Egyptian, ghalban.’ I didn’t know how to say ‘I’m just a poor little Egyptian’ in English, as my English was still lost. The officer looked at me in annoyance, but I felt stronger than I did before. Now I was on Egyptian soil, anyway. The officer had his suspicions about me, so he locked me up in a wooden room all by myself. An African soldier stood guard, and I would tell when it was night when I looked out through the cracks and couldn’t see his face, only his teeth. You know, Sheikh Magd, I felt very valuable in that locked room. I rejoiced for the first time in a long time and I remembered my wife and my children and my friends. But
I still felt a need to cry. I held back my tears and remembered the sad songs:

  Look at this broken, humiliated peasant

  In the jaws of a crocodile from ancient times

  Tell me your story, friend, and how that came to he.

  “A month later they released me, and I said to myself that they must have investigated and found out I’m just a poor Egyptian, and that they were going to let me go. But it didn’t happen that way. They put me in the kitchen to cook for the soldiers, and again with the Indians—as if they knew what had happened before. I said to myself that it was okay, I had to be patient, and asked God to give me patience and He did, and I waited until I saw, with my very own eyes, the English soldiers come back from the borders, crushed by Rommel. It was the first time we heard of Rommel, who had replaced Graziani. I heard that the big English general Ritchie went crazy. I now felt that my rescue would be at the hands of Rommel. It felt strange. I was in my own country—why should I need a German commander to rescue me? But that’s what happened. I was in the kitchen one day when I saw the smoke coming out of the officers’ rooms. They were burning everything quickly and driving oft in their Jeeps and clearing out. t could hear only one word: ‘Rommel.’ Soon the camp was full of Germans, and everything around us was fire and smoke.

  “The Germans took me to a high-ranking officer. I was inspired to say ‘Rommel.’ They asked me in German, I said ‘Rommel,’ in English, and I still said ‘Rommel.’ I said to myself, there must be one sane person who will get me out of this mess, which has gone on too long, and the only sane person is Rommel.’

  “And they knew that you wanted to see Rommel?”

  “Yes, and I did see him. He’s a strange man with a round face, green sunken eves and thinning hair. He didn’t say much. Three days later they took me to see him—three days of terror.”