Текст книги "No One Sleeps in Alexandria"

Автор книги: Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

26

You won’t find a new country or a new sea.

The city will pursue you

You will walk the same streets.

There is no ship for you, there is no road.

Constantine Cavafy

Dimyan arrived in Alexandria on the second of April. On that same day the Jewish Agency and the General Council for the Jews of Palestine issued an appeal. It called on Jewish men and women to volunteer in the Jewish units working with the British army in the Middle East, since there was a dire need for a large number of volunteers of both sexes to serve in the auxiliary regional force. The appeal stated that the first step was to recruit childless unmarried persons between twenty and thirty years of age. “Let the response of the Jews of Palestine be worthy of our great task and the gravity of the situation,” read the statement issued by the council. At the same time, Dr. Ali Ibrahim, chairman of the Society to Save Homeless Children, was issuing an appeal to the country to come to the aid of its children. The newspapers were filled with stories about Hitler’s connection with the month of April. He was born on the twentieth of April, 1889. On the seventh of April, 1939, he allowed Mussolini to invade Albania. On the twenty-eighth of the same month and year, Hitler delivered his famous speech in which he denounced the Anglo-German naval treaty of 1935. On the ninth of April, 1940, Hitler’s armed forces invaded Denmark, and on the sixteenth of April, 1941, he attacked Yugoslavia and Greece. The newspapers wondered what Hitler was planning for April of this year. Was he going to cross the Caucasus to Iran and Iraq or penetrate Turkey to Iraq and the Levant?

On the fifth of April, the Cathedral of Saint Mark celebrated Easter by holding an elaborate mass that began with a prayer imploring God to bestow his mercy on the world. In al-Alamein, prayer services were held and some priests appeared among the troops during the day, but at night there were parties at which beautiful ATS women sang and danced with the soldiers. Two days earlier, Alexandria had been subjected to a heavy air raid, and rescue operations were still going on. The government hospital was filled with casualties. Dimyan’s family moved out of the house to live in the church courtyard. It was there that Dimyan met Khawaga Dimitri, who looked miserable and oblivious. He silently shook his hand. As usual, many pashas visited Alexandria in the company of the governor to comfort the victims. The casualties of that air raid were fifty-two dead and eighty wounded, each of whom was given two Egyptian pounds in temporary aid. On the seventh of April, Alexandria suffered an even worse air raid. The prime minister, Nahhas Pasha, visited Alexandria after delivering a speech on the Egyptian Broadcasting Service in which he said, “Dear Alexandrians, I address you with a heavy heart for what you have suffered. Alexandrians, I am fully confident that you will withstand this ordeal with the patience I have known you to have. You have given the whole of Egypt the most splendid example and proved yourselves most capable of withstanding catastrophes. It is no wonder that your city has become the object of admiration, appreciation, and respect.”

Meanwhile the prime minister signed a decree abolishing prostitution, except in capitals of provinces and governorates as of May, and banning the establishment of new brothels immediately. Nahhas Pasha played host to about three hundred convalescing soldiers from Pakistan, New Zealand, and South Africa, who spent the day enjoying pleasure cruises and recreation in the parks. The air raids on Alexandria continued to intensify, so the civil defense distributed leaflets advising the public to remain calm during the raids, to go to the nearest shelter, not to look at the sky or watch the anti-aircraft artillery, to avoid crowding, to stop running, because no matter how fast, no human can outrun a plane. It said it was best to prostrate oneself on the ground if one could not find a nearby place with a roof, and to move away from glass surfaces and if in a car, to leave the vehicle, turn off its lights, and park it on the side of the road. Dimyan kept one of the leaflets and memorized it. He thought whoever wrote it was mocking him and people like him. He began to run during the raids to see if he was faster than airplanes or bombs and reached a conclusion that was at variance with the instructions, as he generally was able to move from one side of the street to the other before a bomb hit the ground. In reality bombs never hit the ground, because they usually fell somewhere else, and he could only hear their impact after he had reached the sidewalk. Whenever there was a raid, Dimyan would leave his family at the church, which he had served longer than he had pledged, and go out to watch the people to see for himself whether they really headed for the shelters and the entrances of houses as they used to, before he was transplanted to al-Alamein, or whether they no longer bothered to do anything. He saw that they did not care any more. Those who had stayed in the city no longer feared for their lives.

Dimyan started walking aimlessly from Ghayt al-Aynab to Karmuz to Khedive Street to the Alexandria station. Sometimes he would walk on Muharram Bey Street and at other times he would go to Rami Station, crossing Nabi Danyal Street and from there, on the coastal road, to Ras al-Tin palace. Then he would go back, oblivious to Alexandria’s breeze, the clear light of the day, or the blue sea and faraway sky. There was more emptiness around him than at any other time. He did not venture out late at night and so did not run into the drunkards. He must have seen foreign soldiers, but he was not aware of their presence. The cafés of Manshiya were still filled with merchants, brokers, and strangers, but he saw nothing and did not know why he went on these mysterious walks. He realized that he only made a point of doing this after each raid, and there were many raids. He became like a madman who could see only the destroyed houses and not the houses that had been spared, craters where the bombs had fallen and not the smooth pavement, smell only the smoke of burned flesh and wood and not the fresh breeze coming from the sea. He thought to himself, this was not the city that he knew; it was more like a movie reel. For quite some time he had not been to the cinema and had not seen any new Charlie Chaplin films. He discovered that he was barefoot once again, as he used to be. He did not wear shoes at the church and would go around there all day serving those who had taken refuge in it, offering them food and water, cleaning the walks, the alabaster columns, and the mirrors, and adoringly dusting the huge icon of Mari Girgis. He remembered seeing him from the middle of the fire but did not believe it. He remembered Magd al-Din, who did not believe his vision either. He wanted to go back to his friend, but he also wanted to stay in the city, which had become so large now that so many of its inhabitants had left, and so old now that so many of its buildings had been destroyed. There were still big crowds around the railway station, and fear began to find its way to his heart. Could the day come when there would be no one but him in this city that he no longer recognized?

He did not have any desire for his wife. Every time he looked at her he thought, how could she live after him? He would realize that this meant he would die and, shaking, he would think how wretched the world would be without him. Could people really continue to live after he had died? Kyrie eleison. How he needed Magd al-Din to give him confidence in longevity!

Some Junkers bombers were shot down over the city. Hamidu was released from detention with several others, and he wrote on the wall of the house, “Either take me for good or let me be forever.” The few passers-by knew what he meant and laughed. The city was showered with charitable donations from Salvatore Cicurel and Their Royal Highnesses the Princesses and Queen Nazli. Karmuz remained the target for German air raids, but the neighborhood of the martyrs insisted on remaining in its historic location. Even German Junkers and Heinkel and Italian Savoia bombers were being shot down over it. The spring holiday of Shamm al-Nasim, however, was observed in a normal manner. People went out to Nuzha and the waterfall gardens. The Mahmudiya canal was filled with colorful feluccas adorned with flags, on which boys and girls danced and sang. Alexandrians went out to the beaches unconcerned by the raids. It was a mild day, and the sea, with its blue and white water, was calm. Many people from Karmuz converged on the Anfushi beach, the women carrying trays filled with fish. They went down into the sea with all their clothes on. The boys and girls engaged in horseplay as usual. In Manshiya, however, the children could not go into the sea, as the eastern harbor was now filled with British battleships. In Rami Station people sat around the statue of Saad Zaghloul on the grass of the small garden and began calmly to eat their fisikh, the traditional salted mullet and sardines, without a thought in the world. That day, fifty carloads arrived from Cairo to spend the day on the beaches of Stanley, Glymenopoulo, and Miami. The English ATS women and their friends went into the sea in their bathing suits at the Mustafa Kamil beach. Many people spent the day at the zoo and were very generous in feeding the animals. In the evening, they all went back home exhausted, filling the streetcars, horse-drawn carriages, and carts of all kinds. There was silence everywhere, as their voices had grown hoarse from shouting and singing all day long. When the air-raid siren sounded, no one bothered to move. The cars stopped, but most people were fast asleep. The raid did not last for a long time. One plane was shot down over the city.

A few days after Shamm al-Nasim, a royal decree was issued appointing Abd al-Khaliq Hassuna Bey governor of Alexandria, He succeeded Muhammad Husayn Pasha, who had requested to retire. Another royal decree was issued placing the beautiful Ras al-Tin palace at the disposal of the British embassy to use as a military hospital for the duration of the war. One of the most important initiatives undertaken by the new governor was putting an end to the use of adulterated flour in bread. The archaeological discovery of the temple of the god Apis in Kom al-Shuqafa was deemed auspicious for the new governor. Dimyan was walking in front of Pompey’s Pillar when he saw a crowd of notables and learned the story of the archaeological find and was amazed at the mysteries of this land. The month of April ended with a heavy air raid that killed sixty persons and wounded more than a hundred. Four Axis bombers were shot down. As usual, the wounded were taken to the area hospitals, and those who had lost their homes were taken to shelters in Damanhur and Kafr al-Dawwan, since Alexandria could not provide shelter any more. In this raid the Jewish synagogue on Nabi Danyal Street was destroyed. It had been built in 1870, and renovated only ten years before to accommodate five hundred people. It was said that the synagogue had cost ten thousand Egyptian pounds, at a time when one Egyptian pound could buy two feddans of land. There was a rumor that the German planes had been looking for the synagogue for quite some time, and when they found it they destroyed it, and that explained why the raids stopped for a week afterwards. But when they resumed after a week, they went even deeper into the Lower Egyptian provinces, a fact that resulted in food supplies, especially wheat, being cut off from Alexandria. But the new governor soon solved the problem. It was said that the people were eating more because of anxiety and fear. An order was issued by the commander in chief of the British army in Cairo, General Sir Claude Auchinleck, to all senior officers in the general Middle East command, that there was a real danger that the name ‘Rommel’ had become a bogeyman dreaded by the forces, that his name had become the subject of many endless discussions, and that no matter how capable and efficient he was, he was not a supernatural man. “Even if that were true, it is not proper for our forces to describe him as such. Therefore,” the commander in chief added, “you should do your utmost to erase this idea of Rommel. He is no more than an ordinary German commander. Therefore his name should not be used when referring to the enemy in the Western Desert. Instead, we should say ‘the Germans’ or ‘the Axis forces’ or ‘the enemy,’ and not ‘Rommel.’ I ask of you that you make sure that this order is carried out and that junior officers are instructed to do the same. The matter is of the utmost psychological importance.”

Charitable donations for Alexandria continued, and several new donors joined the effort. They included Prince Umar Tusun, Prince Yusuf Kamal, Princess Samiha Hasan, and Salim and Samaan Sidnawi. Once again people complained about adulterated flour and were told that solving the problem required more time. Civil defense distributed helmets to volunteers, and Ghaffara got one since he had joined the volunteers, using his cart to transport the wounded. He was late with some wounded who were bleeding, so they died, and he was relieved of that duty. His cart was now set aside for transporting the dead. So he wrote on one side, ‘The Chariot of Divine Mercy.* On the other side-panel, which he had attached to it, he wrote in a very clear hand verses from the Quran and sayings about death such as, “The living should take precedence over the dead,” and also “God might give you a reprieve, but he never forgets you.”

On the fifth of May, Coronation Day was celebrated, as it was every year throughout the country. Mass was given in the churches and prayers performed in mosques, literary festivals were held, music played in the streets, and free restaurants opened for the people. Cinema Olympia showed I Love Sin, starring Tahiya Kariyuka and Husayn Sidqi. Local communities began to combat barefootedness by distributing twenty-five thousand pairs of shoes. The ministry of social affairs distributed eight thousand pairs of shoes to the peasants in the villages, which they sold in the nearest town for twenty-five piasters a pair. The British military governor banned all lights at night, even in celebration of Coronation Day. Army and police bands toured the streets and the parks playing music. Alexandria was appalled by a horrendous murder that took place after a fierce air raid in which thirty persons were killed. Used to air raids by now, people forgot about the raid and talked about the murder: the body of a woman was discovered in a garbage bin next to the fence of Nuzha Gardens. The corpse was identified as that of Fathiya Gab Allah, about twenty years old. People stopped going to Nuzha, especially in the late afternoon and at sunset. The romantic lovers stopped going during the day, as did the pleasure seekers who used to go at night, to take advantage of the pitch dark on the tree-lined road adjacent to the garden. Everyone knew that plainclothes policemen were now all over the place. For some reason, Dimyan got up early in the morning, walked to Ban Street, crossed it and the two streets south of it, and arrived at the railroad wall. From the spot where the wall had given way the first day he went to work, he crossed it, as he always did, and walked over to the post. When he did not find the man who used to sit at the Raven, he felt apprehensive but kept on walking. As soon as he went into the post, his co-workers, who were drinking tea, leapt to their feet in disbelief, and one after another embraced him. Usta Ghibriyal shook his hand with a broader smile this time. He sat down with them. Not finding Hamza there, he realized that the man had not come back. He did not see Shahin either, so he asked about him and was told that his son Rushdi had left Alexandria to walk all the way to Upper Egypt in search of his beloved, Camilla, and that the man was sick at home, waiting for his son to return. Dimyan went afterwards to Shahin. The man’s eyes were bloodshot from crying. He sat a long time with Dimyan, who told him that he had learned at the church that Camilla had entered the convent – that there she would be all right and would forget. If it did happen that Rushdi met her, he would recover from his love for her, because he would find that she had recovered.

On the twenty-eighth of May, Ibrahim Ata, who had killed the woman found in the garbage bin at Nuzha – who turned out to have been a dancer – was arrested. Romantic and ‘practical’ lovers started going back to Nuzha in the daytime and by night. Ration cards were distributed to the people to counter merchants’ price-gouging. A new offensive by the Axis forces began after Rommel received massive reinforcements. It became clear that a major battle was in the offing. Major General Ritchie sent a message to the Eighth Army to raise its morale, reminding the troops that they were defending freedom and democracy. Auchinleck sent a similar message. A major battle took place in Bir Hakim in which the French acquitted themselves valiantly. German prisoners of war began to arrive in Alexandria. But the Germans were able to capture Bir Hakim, from which the Allies and the Free French, who fought with unparalleled courage, withdrew. Communists in Europe clamored for opening another front against Germany to alleviate the situation in the Soviet Union, and an agreement to that effect was reached by Russia, England, and the United States: it would be a front not in Europe but here in the Western Desert. That was Churchill’s vision: to expel the Axis armies from Africa, then invade Italy from the south and get rid of Mussolini, leaving Hitler isolated. From there, the French front would be breached and the English Channel crossed. But the Germans were advancing in the desert and deploying millions in Russia.

The French left Bir Hakim after twenty-six days of fighting, their morale still high. The troops of the Eighth Army withdrew from Adm and Sidi Rizq. The fighting moved to the south and west of Tobruk. Rommel bypassed Tobruk, leaving it behind, and made a dash for the Egyptian border.

By June first, the British Grant, Crusader, and Stuart tanks stood here and there on the hot sand. General Ritchie also stood, powerless, not knowing where Rommel would strike. Rommel’s winning card was the eighty-eight-millimeter anti-tank guns, which he used by baiting the British tanks to a killing field, then letting those mighty guns loose on them from every direction, blowing them up. Then the Panzer tanks finished off the rest.

At dawn on the twentieth of June, the German bombers attacked Tobruk so intensely that the barbed wire was blown to smithereens and the Indian division’s post was leveled. Waves of planes bombed the defensive posts continuously. Then the German armored offensive began, with the Twenty-First Panzer Division preceded by the artillery. Another division overran the harbor, and a third one crushed the British naval forces there.

Forty thousand men stayed in the garrison to fight. German engineers built a bridge over the deep anti-tank trenches, and after the bombers had softened up the defenses, Panzer convoys headed for the garrison, supported by mechanized infantry units.

It was 8:30 in the morning as Rommel followed the battle, taking delighted pride in his men. The German engineers opened several breaches in the minefields. Another wave of German planes came, and British resistance in the front lines was crushed. The big surrender had begun, and the world shook, and Alexandria shook even more. Everyone realized that Rommel was coming to the Delta. At the end of the battle Rommel himself led a light mobile armored group. He personally took part in removing ‘Satan’s eggs,’ or landmines, from the anti-tank trenches.

The British head of the garrison sent a cable to Cairo that it was no use, then he and thirty-three thousand soldiers surrendered and were shipped to Italy. A thousand armored vehicles, four hundred guns, and other British equipment were added to Rommel’s arsenal. Rommel gave a speech thanking his men and asking them to move toward the ultimate goal, Egypt. Hikmat Fahmi performed the Tobruk dance at the Kit Kat nightclub, where the patrons were singing a song popular in Europe at the time, “The sun had a date with the moon, but the moon hasn’t shown up.” To the delight of Johannes Eppler and his colleague Sandy, news of the fall of Tobruk broke. The Egyptians requested that Hikmat Fahmi do the Tobruk dance, not knowing that she was a spy for the Germans.

Thus Rommel reached the peak of his glory. He wrote to his wife, “Dear Lu, it was a magnificent battle. Tobruk! I must sleep after all this effort. I think about you a lot. The fall of Tobruk is the crowning point of our victories in the desert.” At the same time the reputation of the British army was greatly diminished, since Singapore also fell to the Japanese, and a force, eighty thousand strong, also surrendered. Churchill was in America visiting Roosevelt, who showed tactfulness by asking Churchill what the United States could do. So he requested large numbers of the new Sherman tanks. Immediately ships carrying three hundred tanks were dispatched to the Suez canal.

Dimyan stayed a long time in Alexandria. He loved to serve the church and those who had taken refuge from the raids and the difficulties of life in it. Stories were told about the young saint performing miracles in Asyut, how a girl who had entered the convent only a few months earlier was now healing people of all satanic diseases by a touch of the cross or her hand on the head. She was often seen in the convent talking to herself or to beings that no one could see and always praying and fasting, but the light never left her face. People began to come from the neighboring villages to see her, bringing their children who suffered from smallpox or intestinal or chest problems. They themselves would also come, and she would cure them of asthma, fever, heart disease, and epilepsy. Barren village wives also went to her. There were lines around the convent. The young saint went out two hours in mid-morning and two hours in the afternoon, and people fought each other to get near her. Rushdi was still walking against the current of the river, eating whatever vegetable he came across in the fields – eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers or whatever people who had pity on him would give him. It became known that there was a crazy young man walking against the current and whenever he saw a corpse in the water he screamed to summon the people of the village, not stopping until they had taken the body out of the water. Every time that happened, his eyes would grow wider and he could not stay still until he had found out all he could about the dead person’s particulars of age, sex, and shape. He never came across Camilla, so he continued his journey to the south. His journey had started four months earlier, and he was getting very close to Asyut. He was starting to hear about the young woman who had entered the convent a year earlier, and had already become a saint, performing miracles that surpassed those of Saint Theresa. His eyes grew wider and his tears flowed when he heard the name Camilla. That also happened to Dimyan when news of the saint reached Alexandria. He kept looking for Khawaga Dimitri but could not find him at the church and learned that he too had fled with his family to Asyut. Dimyan thought to himself, could he have become a saint? His love story with Brika had ended in failure, and Mari Girgis had saved him from certain death more than once. He was loving the church and working in it, and serving its people and visitors, and choosing the most menial jobs and doing them with joy. But his love story with Brika was nothing but the whim of a man over forty, as Magd al-Din said. Why did that whim not happen with a Christian woman? Why was the woman in question a Muslim? It must be that Mari Girgis did not want him to commit any sin. A Muslim woman meant that it was a hopeless case. That protected him from sinning, but it also meant that he had to crush his heart, his mind, and all his senses. What injustice!

Rushdi walked fast. He knew that she saw him, whether she was asleep or awake. She liked to clean the room in the convent in which the Virgin Mary had stayed with her child. The ancient Egyptians had hollowed out the cavern, a hundred meters above the fields, to take refuge in at the time of the flood. The Virgin and her son and Joseph the carpenter had stayed there during their flight into Egypt. The cavern became a church of the Virgin and a convent visited by people. Houses for nuns were built around it. Camilla liked to clean the Virgin’s room. One night she saw the light, the light that no one could imagine, a light that had the color of honey, that was as pleasant as a cool breeze on a scorchingly hot day, and had the taste of the purest water. She saw it emanating in the room, small as a candle at first, then growing, its brilliance increasing, lighting the whole room, then spilling out to light the whole cavern, which, despite its thin candles, looked as though it were bathed in sunlight. Then one corner’s gleaming stood out. It was the Virgin Mary appearing in the form of light everywhere. Camilla saw her pass in front of her, smiling her ever-present smile, and felt her anointing her hair with a sweet fragrance. She told Father Mikhail that the Virgin had appeared to her and now she was seeing her all the time. She had received the blessing of eternal holiness. She saw Rushdi walking exactly as magicians used to see what was happening in a magic crystal ball. She was never afraid for him. She was certain that he would reach her safely. She was just waiting for him and praying to the Virgin to preserve him from any harm. It was he who had imparted this tenderness in her, awakened her transparent soul, and brought out this angelic nature in her. He deserved her prayers to the Virgin to preserve him. She knew he would arrive. He kept walking. The young saint was his beloved, his heart told him that with every beat. She had not been killed. She was not dead. His own spirit grew stronger, his languid eyes lit up, and his feet carried him down to the river to bathe more than once. He would not meet Camilla in his present condition, barefoot, with tattered clothes and a dusty face and hair. He realized that he had seen in the countryside a world more brilliant and verdant than the one he had left behind. The land was green, the sun kind, and the people meek and sweet, walking peacefully, the children playing in the streams. True, the peasants looked poor and neglected, with pale faces and emaciated bodies, but they appeared content. People in the fields, next to the waterwheels, under the old acacia, oak, and sycamore trees appeared happy and serene. The birds flew freely in the sky, then calmly came down to feed on grains or insects, then soared back up, unfettered by anything. He tried working in the fields. People knew that he stayed in a village no more than a day or two then disappeared without warning. People were mystified about him but said he was a blessed young man. He worked in silence and ate and drank in silence, but in reality he was in a trance, like that which prophets experience at the time of revelation. The spring of poetry in him had welled up, and he found himself reciting his own poetry mixed with that of French poets and others whose poetry he loved. The joy and élan of creation appeared in his eyes. What beautiful pain had awakened the poet from his deep sleep? He was certain that he had been saved for a mission. He would carry the burden of knowledge off the people’s shoulders and would give them joy with his chants. Those intoxicating pains! But he also saw the peasants humiliated and spurned, beaten by the masters of the land. He saw them sharing the animals’ sleeping quarters, eating the lowliest of food and drinking, like animals, directly from irrigation canals. But they praised the Lord, in any case. He realized the Egyptians’ secret power: they left the unjust ruler to the Just Ruler, who never failed them no matter how long they had to endure. How the Egyptians have survived from the ancient past to this day! What a miracle this people represent, enduring injustice more than rebelling against it. As he walked further he got closer to Asyut, his joy increasing, and he felt his body shaking with a mysterious ecstasy. Was it the poetry or the promised meeting with her? It did not make any difference; both poetry and the meeting represented a new birth of the spirit. He would only see her, then go back, now that she, like him, had penetrated the unseen, had become as tender as he and had not died, just as he was alive. He was a poet and she, a saint. Both had attained prophethood.

He saved the price of clean clothes and a pair of shoes from his occasional jobs. The first thing he did in Asyut was to go to an inexpensive hotel to bathe and sleep after shaving his beard. He slept for a long time, and when he got up he looked at himself in the mirror. What a beautiful face and what anguish were reflected! He started crying for what he had done to himself and for what love had done to him. He thought of going back, his heart having been reassured that she was alive, But he also needed to see her. He walked leisurely in Asyut’s hot streets, then went back and slept. He had decided to go in the morning to the convent, which he had located that day.

On the way he thought of going back and contenting himself with the changes they had both undergone. But he was strong enough to go and see her without suffering a relapse or coming unraveled. He told himself that she too must have become strong. Both were somewhere between the divine and the human: he was a poet; she, a saint.