No One Sleeps in Alexandria (48 page)

On the road Dimyan ran alongside the cart driven by Ghaffara, who had the fez on his face. On the cart sat Dimyan’s mother, his wife, and his two daughters. Ghaffara had once again removed the walls of the cart so people could easily sit on the long migration route. He no longer transported the dead. He could not stand it. Now he was moving the living to Kafr al-Dawwar, outpaced by the taxis and the horse-drawn carriages and the long carts drawn by healthy mules. But it was all right. The two sickly donkeys did the job, and people were poor, having left their houses with nothing. So he did not charge much. He asked Dimyan to climb up next to him, but Dimyan, who saw how slowly the cart was moving, and how poorly the donkeys were, was content to walk or run alongside the cart. Why did he not see the scene around him as well? That misshapen line of people fleeing in different garb, nakedness, loud voices, crying, too much baggage, too little baggage, clean, dirty, the sun above exposing them, the trains dashing past them, near them and more crowded, everyone looking at everyone else, moments without meaning. Dimyan thought of Brika. Rommel has made it to al-Alamein, and she and all the Bedouin must be gone by now, having fled before the stupid armies. God Almighty! Would Brika appear in the shelter camps? He did not think so. If that happened, he would marry her. She is married. He is married. He would kidnap her. He could not see her again, just let her go. The mere memory of her almost lifted him from the ground. His service at the church and his undertaking the most menial of jobs was not enough to make him forget, even cleaning the toilets and taking a long time doing it was not enough. But the vast, wide open space in which people and vehicles ran said there was no way that Brika would come back to the vast expanse. The Lord had sent her and the Lord had taken her back. Bedouin did not sleep in government houses. Brika was a grain of sand carried by the wind. He must go back to Magd al-Din.

In Kafr al-Dawwar, Queen Nazli’s tents provided temporary shelters for the refugees until real houses were built. Nothing was more beautiful than living in houses built by royalty, even if they
were mere tents! He had to convince himself also that nothing was fancier than being transported by Ghaffara on whose cart he had loaded some belongings and the whole family and which moved ever so slowly on the main road, so crowded with refugees that you could not see ahead or back, and Dimyan was in the middle of it all.

The strange story that surprised the people of Alexandria was the story of the Jewish lady Miss Samhun, who lived in a small villa on Manasha Street with dozens of cats. She came from the famous Samhun family, which was among the first to live on that street in the time of Ismail Pasha. No one knew her name, so they used her family name. No one knew when she was born or the day she had first appeared on the street, but she became well known during the previous world war. She had been in love with a young Jewish man who went to the Eastern front with Lord Allenby and entered Palestine with him and did not come back. He had promised to write her to join him after victory, but he did not. He was killed in the fighting against the Ottoman Turks and their allies. In turn she chose not to go to the land where her beloved was killed. She discovered that she could never leave Egypt. She stayed home alone after the death of her mother and father and after her brothers and sisters married and moved to Saba Pasha. No one remembered her except on Saturdays, when she would go to the synagogue on Nabi Danyal Street. Since the temple was destroyed, she no longer went out on Saturdays. No one knew how she lived. It was said that she had a maid who came from Hadra every day. But the servant was seldom seen, and unlike most servants, she did not speak with anyone. She bought everything from the bazaar in Hadra and brought it in the morning. She rarely bought anything from Manasha Street or from Paulino or Muharram Bey. During an air raid, the Samhun villa received a direct hit, and it fell into rubble like the other houses on the street. Rescue teams came, and crowds gathered around the remnants of the villa. Where had Miss Samhun, the most famous resident on the street, gone? The rescue teams worked, and as they made some progress, small and big cats ran out meowing from the rubble, not believing what had happened to them. Miss Samhun was found on her side in a corner surrounded by strong walls and covered with some pieces of wood
from the ceiling. She was dusty and her eyes were closed and she did not move. There is no power or strength save in God! What an end for a true lover! She was the most beautiful woman, but loneliness brought her an early old age. She must have had heaps of money. People talked and waited for the money to appear. It took three days to remove the rubble, and jobless and poor people from all over Alexandria pitched in. They had come to look for the buried treasure of the Samhun family. No one asked why no one from the family had appeared, except for a few moments, to take the body of their sister, then disappeared. In the end they found a few old utensils and some decayed pieces of furniture and some incense sticks, many colorful bundles of incense sticks, that the beautiful Miss Samhun had kept.

We praise you, Lord

Calamities are generous gifts,

Catastrophes a sign of munificence.

We praise you, no matter how long the ordeal

Nor how overwhelming the pain.

Anonymous

27

Magd al-Din’s heart beat fast as the train approached. “Until when will you lie to me, my feeble heart?” he said to himself. This was happening every day and still no Dimyan, still nothing filled the wilderness around him. Even the great commotion of the armies around him did not fill that emptiness, not the retreat and panic before Rommel, not the long queues of the wounded, transported by trains, not the sorrow in the different-colored eyes of the soldiers, the occasional crying, the silence of the bagpipes, not the dust that filled the air, the planes that came and went, went and did not come back, then returned, nor the devilish bombs. He stayed home for days on end, suffering pangs of hunger since the Indians and al-Safi al-Naim had stopped coming. Hilal the stationmaster fled to join Amer, who had left the telegraph room open, ravaged by the wind. All of that did not succeed in making him forget Dimyan. Was Dimyan the reason he stayed? He would never again find events more compelling than those he had just witnessed to cause him to leave the place. It must be Dimyan. He was waiting for him to return, and he would return. And there he was. He saw him getting off the last car of the train, which was carrying military equipment.

He saw him standing there in the middle of the platform, looking exactly as he had when they first came to that place
together. Dimyan seemed not to believe that he had come back to his friend, and Magd al-Din also looked incredulous. They rushed to embrace each other.

In the stationmaster’s room they talked and talked. Magd al-Din described the soldiers’ miserable retreat before Rommel, and Dimyan talked about Alexandria’s misery, no one staying, no one sleeping. Magd al-Din could not take his eyes off the aura surrounding Dimyan’s face. This was something that Dimyan did not have before.

“Why are you staring at me so much, Sheikh Magd?”

“Nothing, Dimyan. I just missed you. I didn’t believe we’d meet again.”

Dimyan became lost in thought. The priest, Father Ibshawi, had stared at him a lot. He had taken him to the confession booth and sat him down and stared at him. “What’s the matter, Father?” “Don’t leave the church, Dimyan. Don’t stray far.” The deacons and the other priests also stared at him long, then met and talked. Something, he was not sure what, was happening to his face. But why was his family not staring at him? Or those that sought refuge in the church? What made Magd al-Din like Father Ibshawi and the priests and deacons?

“You should have left this place and joined me,” said Dimyan, lying. In the last few days he had felt that he no longer knew Alexandria and that she no longer knew him. He had no life away from Magd al-Din, and now he was feeling that he could not stay here.

“Yes, I should’ve joined you,” agreed Magd al-Din.

“Why didn’t you, Sheikh Magd?”

Magd al-Din did not have an answer. He realized that he had almost lost all sense of time, that the world was larger than al-Alamein. He kept staring at the face of Dimyan, who continued talking about Alexandria. When Magd al-Din learned that Dimitri’s house had been destroyed, he felt depressed and was able to recall the smell of the home, that calm, sweet smell that induced sleep and rest, a house where you did not hear the noise outside. That was Khawaga Dimitri’s house. He remembered Bahi and immediately recalled the aura that had surrounded his face for so long. He wondered if Dimyan was going to meet the same fate as
Bahi. When Magd al-Din recalled the little house, it brought back all the images that he had lost: Lula, Camilla, Yvonne, Sitt Maryam, Ghaffara, Bahi, and Zahra, the love of his soul, who must be withering away in the village grieving over their separation. He felt a sudden jolt of joy that almost lifted him off his feet when he remembered Shawqiya and Shawqi. That meant that he would soon return, a secret magical voice in his heart told him.

“I didn’t know they’d canceled civilian trains,” Dimyan said.

“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.’