Dimyan looked at Magd al-Din, saying to himself, “Hamza’s back to his old ways!”
“And in Rommel’s room, I saw a Bedouin man standing next to Rommel, who was sitting down. I told them my story from the beginning and heard the Bedouin translating it into German as Rommel smiled in surprise, his face looking like that of a little child, I swear. He said one sentence, which the Bedouin translated for me. He said that I would stay with them while they chased the English and the Eighth Army, until they reached Alexandria, where I would guide them through its streets, and then they would let me go. At that time I prayed to God that they reach Alexandria quickly. I wondered how the Bedouin knew German and said to myself he must be a spy, dressed like a Bedouin.”
“Okay, Hamza. That’s enough for today. Go to sleep.”
“Wait, Dimyan, the story is about to end. I’m sure you don’t believe me.”
“No, Hamza. It looks like you’ve suffered even more than what you just told us.”
“Afterwards, the Germans advanced to Marsa Matruh. I was at the rear with the supply crews. They assigned me to a jeep driven by a crazy driver who broke my bones by speeding over potholes, and whenever he saw me in pain, he laughed and said ‘Aegypter!’ which means Egyptian in German. I kept saying to myself, ‘Dear God, let it end well.” I was afraid of the landmines. In Marsa Matruh I saw the big battle. I saw the tanks firing, and I saw the tanks blowing up, and I saw the big guns recoiling as they were fired and the planes going and coming from the sea, and at night I heard the moans of the dying and the groans of the wounded. The whole world became a big dusty mass, all black and red. At night I sat in the dark, shrinking in on myself in fear and saying, ‘Please, God, take me now. I’ve had enough.’ But the Germans won and they entered Marsa Matruh and Daba afterwards until they came here. Alexandria was near and no one paid any attention to me. I said to myself that it did not make any sense that Rommel needed someone like me to guide him through the streets of Alexandria. I sat at night singing sad songs:
Time has given me catastrophes that aggravated my ill health.
I was so frightened I did not know what to do.
My heart told me my time was so contrary.
I sat down and wept, my eyes shed tears of blood.
“All the time I was still the crazy jeep driver’s charge. One night he drove me around for more than half an hour and pointed to the stars in the sky, then got off the car, and I followed suit. He pointed forward with his hand and said ‘Alexandria’ several times and gestured for me to go, so I walked like somebody under a spell. I quickly identified a star in front of me. I knew that the sea was to my left and that the soft steady sound I was hearing was that of the waves that I could not see. I kept walking, but after a little while I didn’t hear the sound of the sea, and the stars all looked alike. Then I remembered that armies usually laid land mines when they retreated, and I figured the English must have done that as they retreated before Rommel, and I knew that my end was near and that I would probably step on a landmine in the dark—or even in the daylight! So I sat down on the ground like a lost child and looked at the faraway sky and I said, ‘God, you can see me, and I can’t see you, you can hear me but I can’t hear you. God, I complain to you about my weakness and my lack of options. If you’re with me, please give me a break. I have suffered enough. Almighty God, all I did was stretch out my hand to get a box of cookies for my children. Do I deserve all this torture, most merciful God? Please give me a helping hand. Why are you abandoning me, once to evil enemies who have tortured and demeaned me, and now to the desert, the landmines, and the wolves? Yes, if a landmine doesn’t blow me up, a wolf will surely eat me. Where is your mercy, which encompasses the whole world? Please forgive me and help me.’ I was so tired, Sheikh Magd, that I slept where I sat. Did I sleep long? In a minute, I saw his radiant face, the face of the Prophet. He was wearing green and sitting with his companions, with radiant faces, wearing white. I greeted him, and he returned the greeting. He asked me who I was, and I said to him, Ί am Hamza, O Messenger of God.’ He smiled at me and made room for me to sit with him and said, ‘Come and sit with my friends Abu Bakr and Umar, Hamza, for your name is very dear to me.’ I sat with them, and then I woke up from my sleep rested, as if I’d slept for a hundred years. I was sure that God would help me. I felt a kind, warm hand holding mine and started to walk confidently as his voice—the Prophet’s—told me to walk to the right, and I did, then to the left, and I did. And whenever my feet sank in the sand I would be frightened, and he would tell me not to fear, and my fright would go away. I walked until morning. It was the first time I had seen the day so beautiful and sweet, and the sun so happy—yes, that’s how I saw it. I said, ‘Please God, bestow your full favor upon me,’ and as soon as I said that, I saw an Indian studier coming from out of nowhere. It was he who took me to the English headquarters, where they wondered how I survived all the minefields. They were suspicious, but I finally remembered all the English words that I had forgotten and I told them the story. They kept me for three days until they were sure I was telling the truth, and then the officer brought me to you, praise the Lord—I’ve missed you so much!”
Then Hamza could speak no more.
O thou the last fulfillment of my life, Death, my death,
come and whisper to me!
Day after day have I kept watch for thee;
for thee have I borne the joys and pangs of life.
Rabindranath Tagore
28
Hamza left them after two days of rest. He started on his way to Alexandria, going on foot until he reached al-Hammam. He refused to get on any train that had soldiers on it.
“It’s forty kilometers to al-Hammam, Hamza.”
“I’ll walk. I’m not riding with any soldiers, ever.” He said that he wanted to take the regular passenger train from al-Hammam.
Hamza walked on the railroad tracks that reached all the way to Alexandria. This was the only way to arrive safely. When Hamza disappeared in the distance, Magd al-Din and Dimyan thought about the big world and all the stories that were taking place in it. How could the world cope with all these painful stories? For several days they spoke only in whispers and said very little to each other. One evening al-Safi al-Naim came and told them that he would not be seeing them again. He had been away for a long time. He told them that a new commander named Montgomery had taken over command of the Eighth Army and that he was very strict with his troops and had devised a rigorous training program. He told them that a new war between Rommel and Monty, as the soldiers nicknamed the new commander, was imminent.
Al-Safi brought them large quantities of cheese, corned beef, tea, and cigarettes and conveyed to them the greetings of the young Indian soldiers. He told them that Bahadur Shand had been killed. Then he smiled, looking at Dimyan and telling him, “Bahadur was intent on killing you upon his return. It seems the Germans love you, Dimyan.”
Dimyan was distressed to learn that Bahadur Shand had died. He knew that it was Mari Girgis who was protecting him, but he wished he had protected him in a different manner this time, like by sending Bahadur back to India, for instance. But he quickly apologized to Mari Girgis and made the sign of the cross and said to himself that it was the war that ate up the soldiers.
Churchill had visited Egypt and met with General Alexander, the new commander in chief of the Middle East, who had replaced Auchinleck, and together they visited the Eighth Army in al-Alamein after meeting General Montgomery at his command post in Burg Al-Arab. Churchill saw for himself the changes that Monty had brought about in the soldiers. He saw a number of soldiers go down into the sea in the morning in dirty underpants. That distressed him and caused him pain, but he did not order new underpants for the soldiers. He wished the war would come to an end, and so end the soldiers’ misery. He returned with Alexander to Cairo and visited the caves at Tura, those caverns hollowed out in the mountains when the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids and which had now become secret recess
es for the repair and hiding of military equipment. Churchill wished the ancient Egyptians had taken larger stones so that the English would have more secret depots for their equipment. He reviewed the preparations for the defense of Cairo if Alexandria fell with Alexander. Foremost among those preparations were the plans to flood the Delta and hinder German advances by opening the barrages and dams. He ordered that British employees all over the country be issued rifles. Then he returned to England.
Alexander promised to send him the word “zip” if fighting broke out. “Zip” was the label of Churchill’s clothes.
It was well known that Rommel would not stop at al-Alamein, and preparations were made to meet him there. Al-Alamcin had to be the last post he would reach and the first step of his retreat westward—the day should never come when plans for the defense of Cairo were implemented. The topography of the place did not leave Rommel with any room for maneuver. There was only one way—he and his armored force had to cross the minefields south of the front, in order to go north to encircle the British forces and their right flank. To do that, Rommel would have to occupy the hills of Alam al-Halfa. Therefore Monthly deployed his troops in such a way as to make the capture of those hills impossible.
There were preparations for attack and preparations for defense around Magd al-Din and Dimyan, who felt increasingly isolated. One afternoon Dimyan saw the door of the telegraph room open, and he entered the room. Aciually the door had been open since Amer had lett, but Dimyan saw it as it for the first time. There was nothing in the room but an old, open wooden cabinet containing dirty yellowish notepads of all sizes and scattered pieces of paper on the shelves and the floor. There was also a dusty, faded table on which sat the transmitter and receiver, which suddenly came to life and began to make successive clicking sounds. Magd al-Din was nearby on the platform, and Dimyan quickly called him over, and he did, just in time to see and hear the last clicks of the machine. Then there was silence.
“I wonder who was sending a telegram?” Dimyan asked as Magd al-Din’s thoughts strayed far away as they walked over to their house. The days were now passing in silence, a silence that enveloped the whole desert, on which a heavy ominous gloom descended, making the very air heavy. The long lines of armored cars moving all day did not succeed in dispelling the silence, nor did the movement of the planes which came out, then went quickly back to the sea and the cast, the English and American planes that apparently were training for the coming battle. The traffic of armament trains driven by Indians increased, and the trains were now going back without soldiers—there were no sick leaves or furloughs. The soldiers milled silently around the trains carrying tanks, guns, and ammunition, taking their equipment to the vast desert that seemed to swallow everything. Silence was now the sensation that wrappeed itself around Magd al-Din and Dimyan and permeated everything around them, living and inanimate. Even the sun began to move farther away, opening up the vast expanse around them to even more silence and devastation. Magd al-Din saw the dusty clock in the stationmaster’s room, which had stopped working. He stopped making the call to prayers. Everything here had grown old, foretelling the end. But, so as not to lose track of the time, he planted a stick near the kiosk at the crossing. It was noon when its shadow disappeared, and midafternoon when a long shadow formed to the cast, and sunset when the length of the shadow doubled. As for the time of the last prayer at night, he did not need to find that out, since he usually prayed late at night, One night, close to dawn after the desert night had set up its tent to cover the whole world without a sound except the indistinct noises of unseen insects, Dimyan, who now realized that he had been harboring a desire not to stay there in the desert, suddenly asked, “What’s happening, Sheikh Magd?”
By that he meant the increased movement of the trains carrying armament and of the planes during the day and sometimes at night. Magd al-Din was reciting the Quran, and now he raised his voice, “We surely shall test you with some fear and some hunger and loss of wealth and lives and crops, hut give glad tidings to the steadfast. Those who, when a calamity befalls them, say ‘To God we truly belong and to him surely we shall return.”’ He stopped to respond to Dimyan, “It must be that the war is about to break out, Dimyan.”
Dimyan sensed a little irritation in Magd al-Din’s tone of voice, an irritation that he had not noticed before. Was that the first time that Magd al-Din realized there was a war going on?
“If the war breaks out while we’re here, we will die, Sheikh Magd,” Dimyan said.
Magd al-Din, quoting the Quran, said, “And when my servants ask you about Me, I am surely near, and I answer the prayers of every supplicant when he calls unto Me ...”
Dimyan fell silent and Magd al-Din continued, “Say, 7 have no power to harm or benefit myself except as God wills. ‘ For every nation there is an appointed time. When its time comes, they can neither put it off for an hour nor hasten it.”
“You’re scaring me tonight, Sheikh Magd. I see Mari Girgis every night saving himself from the fire, and now you’re scaring me too. Besides, why won’t you stop staring at my face? What’s in my face? I’ve looked at it in the mirror several times and saw it was pale and yellow. Am I going to die here? We’ve got to run away. If you don’t run away with me in the morning, I’ll go alone. I came back for your sake, but you’re letting me down. Do you know what the telegraph clicks that we heard mean? That was a message for us to leave this place. It couldn’t have been anything else. If that message didn’t come from the Railroad Authority, it must have been from God. Do you have any other explanation? Why don’t you answer me?”
The answer came from a distance, sounds of successive colossal explosions, as if the whole sky was tumbling down to earth, and a vast flash of red lit up the sky. “Oh my God! What’s that, Sheikh Magd?”
There were sounds of thin sharp lengthy screeching, the sound of missiles flying from the ground and falling from the sky. The ground rose and fell under Magd al-Din and Dimyan, so they got up in a panic and moved away from the house, looking at the fire lighting up the night, as the earth shook under their feet.
Rommel had just finished writing a letter to his wife, “Dear Lu, we have some severe shortages and disadvantages, but I took the risk. If our blow is successful, it will determine the outcome of the whole war.”
General Alexander had sent the word ‘zip’ to Churchill from Cairo. Monty was confident about his defense plan. There were four hundred German tanks, half of which were equipped with the diabolical seventy-five-millimeter guns. Awaiting them were seven hundred British and American tanks. Rommel’s usual tactics were to attack the enemy forces quickly with a small force, encircle them, then try to liquidate them. The German planes began their raids on the forces in front and at the rear simultaneously to confuse and disorient them.
“The shelling is far away, Dimyan. Don’t be afraid.”
Dimyan was busy reciting prayers or incantations, of which Magd al-Din would make out only a few words: ‘Kyrie eleison,’ ‘Georgius,’ ‘Jesus,’ ‘Yuannis,’ ‘Yusab,’ ‘Kirullus,’ and ‘the Virgin.’ Dimyan, shaking, made it back to the house, followed by Magd al-Din. As soon as they were there, Dimyan collapsed and stretched out on the floor with his back against the wall. Magd al-Din stretched out near him and lit a cigarette for himself and one for Dimyan, pretending to be composed.
“There’s a lot of light,” he smiled. “I don’t think the Germans will notice a cigarette in the middle of all this shelling.”
They kept smoking is silence. Magd al-Din noticed that neither he nor Dimyan had taken off their work clothes. They even had their shoes on. They had been returning from the station a short time ago when an ammunition train arrived just before the shelling began.
The formations of Royal Tanks and Royal Scotch were defending the Alam al-Halfa plateau against the German armored offensive. The German planes had stopped for a while, but as daylight approached, they returned with a vengeance and started bombing everywhere again. From the north
and the east, British and American planes came, and an intense air battle ensued and ended soon. The planes of the Allies went back to their posts in Alexandria and the Delta and to the American aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The German and Italian planes went back to their airports in the desert, only to return after a short while in greater numbers, going deep to the rear lines of the Eighth Army, extremely close to the railroad station and the abandoned houses, and to Magd al-Din and Dimyan. A wind swept them off their feet, and they hit the ground hard. A powerful bomb had fallen from the sky, making the air convulse around them and hurling them off their feet. Magd al-Din saw Zahra’s face, which he had almost forgotten, and he heard her scream. He shouted in a hoarse-voice “Dimyan!” but did not hear an answer. Dimyan was some distance away, looking around for Magd al-Din. When Magd al-Din saw him he went over to him.
“Are you all right?” Magd al-Din asked him.
“No.”
“Were you hit?”
“No.”
Magd al-Din understood what Dimyan meant, and he fell silent.
“Does our presence here make any sense any more?” asked Dimyan in despair.
Another shell fell near them, and even though it was not strong enough to knock them off their feet again, Magd al-Dm shouted,
“Come on, Dimyan.”
They found themselves hurrying up near the station between the tracks going cast. From behind they could hear the falling bombs and the airplanes, and they went even faster. When they had moved quite a distance away from the station, they heard a harrowing explosion that shook the air and caused them to lose their balance. They fell on the crossties, and hellish flames lit up the whole world. They realized it was the end. Dimyan remembered his nightmarish vision, and he resigned himself to death. Magd al-Din longed for his son Shawqi, whom he had never even seen. They saw, however, that the flames were far away, and when they were able to see the red sky, they realized that the explosion was at the station. After they regained their balance and could see more clearly, they saw the train that had stopped at the station. All its cars were turning into a river of fire that the German planes kept fueling. They saw the two wooden kiosks—the station-master’s room and the telegraph room— burning and flying in the air and turning into ashes. Everything was turning into ashes. Most merciful God! Eternal, living God, help us! Jesus, Mary, Prophet of God, help us, save us! They started running again.
No One Sleeps in Alexandria Page 37