Текст книги "No One Sleeps in Alexandria"

Автор книги: Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

Did that take a long time? Probably a fraction of a minute, but it felt to Magd al-Din as long as a whole lifetime. The train was now steady, and the terrible noise was over. Everything was smooth and calm after the heavy, turbulent movements. The rattle was over, and it was possible to breathe again. Even the lights of the bombs had now moved away in the distance, and once again the moonlight entered the car, and the winds, which a few moments ago had been buffetting the train, subsided into a breeze. The train was now balanced again, and the sounds of its wheels were once again monotonous. Magd al-Din could stand up again without fear, and so could Dimyan. Dimyan? If it was the last car that was hit, then Dimyan was lost. If it was the one before the last car, then he was also lost. Quickly Magd al-Din left the car, oblivious to whatever harm might come his way. Then he left the next car, then the third and the fourth, and the last car did not seem to be there, just a mass of red flames in the middle of the black night and the silence that now enveloped the world. Nothing else was there but the fire. “Dimyan!” he shouted, but then he saw him rising through the fire with a golden body and a golden face, holding in his golden hand a long golden lance, riding a golden horse and transfixing the heads of the fire-spewing dragons, and he heard the neighing of the golden horse. “Dimyan!” The lance was planted into the head of the dragon, which spewed forth more fire, then into the other head as the fire kept coming. The besieged knight fearlessly pulled his lance from one head after another, striking again as the fire rose and surrounded Dimyan’s pale face and the neighing of the horse continued. “Dimyan!” He saw him rising on horseback to the highest heavens, pursued by the fire, which was rising behind him, almost singeing his feet. Then the neighing stopped, and Dimyan carried on rising radiantly into the vastness. “Dimyan!” The golden flame now diminished into a dot, which finally vanished, then the dark prevailed. The train had gone quite a distance without Magd al-Din noticing it. He sat down on the nearest seat, sweat pouring from his skin as if a fire were burning in his chest. He stretched out on the seat and took off his shoes, leaning against the wall of the train car, realizing for the first time that he had become an orphan. Did he have to come to Alexandria and meet Dimyan? “Dimyan! Dimyan!” He began to shiver. It must be the desert cold coming early, otherwise why was he shivering? But his sweat was still pouring forth. It must be a fever. “Dimyan! Dimyan! Dimyan! The Most Gracious. He has taught the Quran. He has created man. Dimyan! Dimyan! He has taught him speech. The sun and the moon follow their courses punctually. The stars and the trees how in adoration. Dimyan! Dimyan! And the sky He had raised high and He has set the measure. Dimyan! Dimyan!” Magd al-Din’s voice rose suddenly, then subsided, and trembling he said to himself, still reciting from the Quran, “Which of the favors of your Lord will you deny? Everyone on earth will perish and the countenance of your Lord, Almighty and Glorious, shall abide. So which of the favors of your Lord will you deny? Dimyan! Dimyan! All who are in the heavens and the earth entreat Him. Every day He exercises power. So which of the favors of your Lord will you deny? Dimyan! Dimyan! We shall dispose of you, both worlds. So which of the favors of your Lord will you deny? Dimyan! Dimyan!” His tears poured down his cheeks. “Dimyan! Dimyan!” The train came close to Alexandria but did not enter it; it cleared through on its way to Cairo, as heavy raids were still bombarding Alexandria and the battle for Alam al-Halfa was still going on. The train went past Kafr al-Dawwar, leaving Alexandria behind. Magd al-Din sensed that they were in the country again from the total darkness surrounding the villages, the different breeze, and the tall white dovecotes, and he sighed, unable to believe that it was God returning him to his village. Did he have to lose Dimyan to go home again? “Dimyan! Dimyan! When the sky is rent asunder, becoming red like ointment; so which of the favors of your Lord will you deny? But those who fear the time they will stand before their Lord will he granted two gardens. Dimyan! Dimyan! So which of the favors of your Lord will you deny? Of spreading branches; so which of the favors of your Lord will you deny? Dimyan! Dimyan! In them two fountains flow.” His tears continued to flow. “Blessed he the name of your Lord, Almighty and Glorious. Dimyan! Dimyan!” Dimyan did not die; he was not burned. God had lifted him up to heaven, and he had seen him, otherwise who was ascending on the golden horse, moving away into space from the fire of the dragon? “Dimyan! Dimyan!” And he kept reciting that beautiful chapter from the Quran, the only chapter he could still remember, punctuated by the name of his friend, until he was overcome with sleep.

The cold air coming lightly through the windows awakened him. From the window he saw the darkness, deep in a long gap, and realized that the train was crossing the Nile and that the lights were coming from the little houses of Kafr al-Zayyat. He could not mistake the smell of the trees along the river bank, near the villas and small houses. He was now very close to his village, and he had to get up and focus his eyes to jump when he reached the platform. He had no other choice. The train had not stopped in the city of Kafr al-Zayvat – was it going to stop at a small village? The engineer undoubtedly had some contraption giving him orders to proceed fast, to Cairo. The train had moved away beyond the range of the air raids, yet the engineer was still speeding along. Magd al-Din stood near the open door of the car, the cold air drying his sweat. He realized that he was standing barefoot. He had left his shoes near the scat. He did not think of putting them on. He had left the village barefoot, and here was the white platform, approaching fast. Blessed be the name of your Lord, Almighty and Glorious. He stepped forward to get off the train as if he were under the influence of some narcotic drug, and he flew into the air. “Ah!” It came out deep, slow, and faint.

The stationmaster stayed late at his post because of the continuous evacuation of refugees from Alexandria. He heard a hard, heavy thudding sound, a deep, muffled sound. He even saw something hurtling over the platform and landing on the dusty soil a short distance from the platform. It was not the sound of a bomb exploding, anyway. It must be a ghost that he had seen. The groan reverberated. The human sound encouraged the stationmaster to approach, gingerly. The sounds of grasshoppers and frogs came from the canal along the tracks. The stationmaster approached, carrying a lamp shielded with blue, held back by all the rural legacy of fear of ghosts and demons. But the green eyes glowed in the dark. Most merciful God! This is a real human being! He went closer and shone the lamp on the human’s face and exclaimed, “Sheikh Magd al-Din?!”

It was the same old stationmaster, Abd al-Hamid, his classmate in Quran memorization class a quarter century earlier, the very man who stood bidding him farewell when he left the village. Magd al-Din heard his voice and closed his eyes in relief. He was now certain he was not going to die.

29

And be said to me:

What kind of life will you have in this world

After I appear?

al-Niffari

Rommel did not succeed in breaking through the front in al-Alamein. For six days he tried, to no avail. He lost three thousand officers and soldiers, either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, and seven hundred armored vehicles, including fifty tanks. The Allies lost sixteen hundred officers and soldiers, and seventy tanks. Air superiority and short supply lines ensured victory for the Allies. That was Rommel’s first defeat in the desert. Soldiers in the Eighth Army now realized that Rommel was not a legend, but a military commander who could win or lose.

Montgomery took advantage of the situation and continued to train the soldiers and conduct huge maneuvers in the desert from Alexandria to al-Alamein. The raids on Alexandria stopped for some time. Panic continued to prevail in the foreign consulates. Jews carried on lining up at the British consulate to get entry visas for Palestine and South Africa. Magd al-Din, who had been moved by the stationmaster to Tanta hospital on the first car that had arrived on the scene, was still in a cast. His legs and several ribs and other bones had been broken, but he had miraculously survived. The stationmaster brought word back to the village, and Zahra, his sisters and their husbands, and his mother, whose days were numbered, visited Magd al-Din. He was told he had to stay in the cast at the hospital for three months. Meanwhile in Cairo the belly-dancer Hikmat Fahmi and the two spies Eppler and Sandstetter were arrested on charges of spying for Germany. The German armies entered the outskirts of Stalingrad, and cold steel massacres took place. They surrounded the city, which they were determined to capture because it was the military industrial city named after Stalin. The Soviets were very determined to stand their ground because the city was named after Stalin. The Muslim general Timoshenko advanced to the river Don in an attempt to cut off German supply and communication lines. Egypt silently celebrated Queen Farida’s twenty-second birthday, but there were no public decorations or lights marking the occasion in Alexandria, her birthplace. Montgomery was busy establishing a new corps, the Tenth Corps, to counter the German Afrika Korps. American Sherman and Grant tanks and self-propelled 105-millimeter guns poured into the front. British and American bombers continued to pursue German army supplies on land and on sea. Rommel’s blood pressure shot up, and pain in his liver forced him to go back to Germany to seek treatment. General Stumme, who had arrived from the Russian front, replaced him. The month of Ramadan had begun, and the sorrows of Magd al-Din, who lay helpless in bed, increased. True, he had his family around him now, but he could not forget the previous Ramadan in the vast desert with its awesome sunsets, and breaking the fast with Dimyan. Dimyan! Dimyan! How could life go on without Dimyan! Magd al-Din had found out that his sisters had sold his land to themselves in his absence, but he did not even comment on the matter. The mayor sent the village chief to visit Magd al-Din and let him know that the mayor himself was going to visit him soon and that he, the mayor, was sorry for what had happened in the past, but Magd al-Din did not comment on that either. He considered everything preordained by God.

Stumme was six years older than Rommel and, like him, had high blood pressure, which usually afflicted commanders. Egypt had great strategic importance in creating a huge pincer movement from which the German forces, if successful in occupying it, would advance eastwards to meet the forces coming from Europe and the Caucasus. Hitler had promised Rommel to send him the dreaded new Tiger tanks and multi-barrel mortars, but he did not keep his promise. Rommel had felt disappointment after his failure at Alam al-Halfa and decided not to be on the offensive again, but to resort to defensive military tactics for the first time since he took command in the desert. So he set up dense minefields, huge devil’s fields, between his position and those of the Eighth Army. Churchill was under great pressure to open a second front. If Stalin and Roosevelt were convinced that that second front would be the African desert, he had to start. The normal English plan would be to take out the German armored vehicles, then deal with the infantry, but Montgomery suggested the opposite. He had greater confidence in the infantry, especially the Australians and New Zealanders, and expected them to acquit themselves valiantly. The same was true of the Fifty-first Highland battalion, which had been recently re-formed to replace the First Highland battalion, which had been decimated in France in 1940. The Fifty-first was intent on vengeance.

The Eighth Army had to advance through half a million German mines. That required a new high morale among the soldiers, and that was one of Montgomery’s top priorities for the two months between the battle of Alam al-Halfa, which was over, and al-Alamein, which was about to begin.

There were 230,000 Allied troops versus 77,000 Axis troops; 1,400 Allied tanks, including 400 Sherman and Grant tanks, versus 600 Axis; 1,500 Allied anti-aircraft guns versus 1,000 Axis; 900 Allied aircraft versus 400 Axis. More important than that, the Allies had short supply lines, one hundred kilometers from Alexandria, versus long Axis supply lines, one thousand kilometers from Tobruk.

The foreign consulates had finished burning their papers in Alexandria. Emigration from the city slowed, as only a few of its original inhabitants or those who had fled to it from their villages were left. Sometimes it made sense for some to take refuge in fire if it meant a chance to escape death!

The month of Ramadan had come and gone and so had the days of the feast. On the eve of the middle of Shawwal and October 24, with a full moon and a refreshing breeze, everything was portending an imminent explosion. It was inconceivable that the desert could witness such a majestic night at a time full of loathing and madness. At exactly 9:40 p.m., all at once a barrage of shells and missiles was let loose from one thousand guns at the faraway enemy and at the minefields in front of them. At the same time, planes came from Alexandria and the Delta, dropping gigantic bombs on the well-fortified Axis defenses. The Thirtieth and Thirteenth Battalions advanced, followed by two armored brigades from the mighty Tenth Corps. The soldiers marched at a hysterical pace brought about by the sound of bombs and shells exploding in the midst of the minefields, destroying the mines and sending off dazzling flashes of light that danced in the middle of the no man’s land – flashes descending from the sky, and flashes ascending from the earth, flashes coming from the east and flashes coming from the west – a carnival of fire diabolically, unimaginably beautiful. Twenty minutes later, at exactly 10 p.m., was Montgomery’s bedtime. He serenely went to bed, and fell asleep as the whole world staved up waiting for the outcome of the decisive battle. People in Alexandria could hear the guns and see the planes. Cairo shook, and the rest of the country stayed up and watched.

Dressed in their shorts and woolen shirts, infantrymen advanced through the dust and the fire. The cold of the desert night was gone in the midst of the fire. The men carried on their shoulders their rifles with bayonets at the ready and all their possessions: cookies, canned corned beef, and cigarettes. Some carried a light mortar or a submachine gun. They all had hand grenades and empty sacks that they would fill with sand to fortify their positions when they gained ground. Each attack group was commanded by a navigating officer, who carried a small compass and a roll of tape, which he uncoiled behind him to guide those coming after him to the right path through the mines and the dust. Many navigation officers died that night and the following nights. As for the Scottish bagpipers who played on in the midst of those volcanoes, their music was considerably subdued as the landmines blew them away, or the dust choked them, or the guns destroyed them, or the bombs and airplanes drowned out their valiant efforts. Teams of engineers went ahead of everyone, trying to detect anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. They lost many of their men. The Australians were to the right, the New Zealanders to the left, and the bagpipes in the middle, falling. Soldiers were jabbering, their nervous laughter mixed with crying. The offensive turned into near-chaos. Everyone was oblivious to everyone else. The Axis firepower unleashed flames from hell on the Allies. By morning the bagpipe music had been totally silenced. The Thirteenth Battalion had made a large breach in the Axis front. General Stumme had died of a heart attack, an Australian squad having managed to break through the German lines and attack his car.

Montgomery woke up early the following morning. Air Force sorties were still flying. The RAF had flown a thousand sorties during the night in addition to a hundred and fifty sorties flown by the USAF. The Luftwaffe disappeared from the sky, and the Allies had total control of the air. Monty was pleased.

On the third day of the battle, Rommel arrived at the front, cutting short his medical leave. On the fifth day Monty decided to launch his main offensive, which he dubbed ‘Excess Baggage.’ Rommel wrote to his wife, “There’s still a chance today. Perhaps we can still stand fast, but we might not, and that could have dire consequences for the whole war.”

Rommel decided to retreat to Fuka, sixty miles to the west. Monty postponed “Excess Baggage” until the second of November. Hitler issued orders to stay and fight, but it was no use. The Axis army was exhausted, and the whole matter was already out of Rommel’s hands. The Fifth Indian Brigade had launched a lightning attack five miles south of Tall al-Aqaqir, after which the way was open for the armored corps to pursue the Axis in the desert. The jubilant fakir boy soldiers, followers of Ghandi, Nehru, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, were now on top of their armored vehicles pursuing an army that only yesterday had been an invincible legend. It was now an army in disarray scattered in the vast desert, beyond the minefields that the Indians had managed to penetrate. Rommel began his quick and total withdrawal. He did not have sufficient means of transportation, and suffered a fuel shortage. There was chaos in the ranks, and the Germans took their vehicles and ran away, leaving behind six Italian divisions, lost in the desert without food or water, their only option to be taken prisoner. The Allies could have turned the defeat into a major killing field, but the rain was Rommel’s ally. It began falling suddenly, and hard, and the Allies were stalled until Rommel left the Egyptian borders. The desert was now a graveyard for wrecked and burned tanks, cars on fire, cars totally burned out, corpses both complete and disfigured, helmets with heads with open eyes, shoes with feet, arms with no bodies attached, legs, burned uniforms. The smell of burned flesh was all over the desert. Scorpions and snakes came out, and blue flies appeared after the rain. Kites and old vultures flew overhead. The smell of death filled the air.

Rommel wrote his wife, “Our neighbor has simply crushed us. I made an attempt to save part of the army. Will my attempt succeed? At night I lie down, my eyes wide open, racking my brain trying to find a way out of this ordeal for my poor soldiers. we are facing difficult days, the hardest that can happen to anyone. The dead are lucky, it is all over for them.”

Churchill ordered that the church bells in London be rung for the first time since the outbreak of the war, and peals were heard all over London and other English cities, and people took to the streets in jubilation. There was jubilation in Alexandria, too. The streets were lit up for the first time in three years. The lights, which were turned on suddenly before midnight, turned the city into an immeasurable mass of amber. The blue paint covering the tall lamppost fixtures had vanished with the passage of time, and the weather conditions changed, giving the city a new, endless phosphorescent ceiling. Those out on the street shouted in jubilation, and those indoors came out to admire the pearls and diamonds newly studding the night sky. How could it have been possible for Alexandria to remain darkened for so long? Owners of closed stores came out and opened them in the middle of the night. Men went out to coffeehouses that decided to stay open until the morning. Women let loose ululations of joy from the windows of their homes, and children were allowed to play in the streets despite the chill in the air. It seemed everyone had agreed to stay up till morning. Music played on at the Monsignor, the Louvre, and the Windsor nightclubs. Soldiers exchanged kisses with ATS women on the streets. Whiskey and champagne flowed in the posh brothels, now roaring with laughter, and so did rum, brandy, and arak in the poorer brothels, which were suddenly bustling with business again. It was as if everyone, the whores and the pleasure-seekers alike, was just around the corner, waiting for the lights to come back on. Horse-drawn carriages carrying lovers galloped along the corniche, as the sound of the waves became more regular because of the light wind. The destroyers and military ships turned their lights on and started shooting fireworks over the city. Thousands of people went up to the roofs and released balloons into the sky. Cannons started to discharge, and for a moment people were scared, but they soon realized that they were shots of celebration. On the corniche a man who saw the sky lit up with phosphorescent missiles and the surf rising, shouted, “Dance, Alexandria, dance – Hitler had no chance.” Another man heard him and repeated what he had said. The words spread throughout the city, then became a song. People kept talking and telling stories, which everyone knew, about the days of the war, which had ended only the day before. The city administration decided to have decorations everywhere, and the streetcar company decided to give everyone free rides for several days. Celebrations were held at schools. Refugees began to return in droves. Army and police bands played their music in the streets and the squares. The autumn sun rose gently, filling the city with a white glow. Hamidu was released. He had been arrested again, despite what he had written on the walls. As usual his mother celebrated, and he stood there laughing amongst the happy well-wishers. Ghaffara took off his fez, deciding never to wear it again. He was surprised that after losing the glass part, he had also lost the filter, and realized that he had been breathing regular, unfiltered air. He could not figure out how he had not noticed the loss of the heavy filter. Anyway, he laughed and reattached the wooden side panels to his cart, writing on them, “Sawdust cart. Capacity: four tons. Will deliver all over the country,” and got ready to go back to his old job. Khawaga Dimitri reappeared in front of his house with some workers, who immediately started removing the rubble in preparation for rebuilding the house. The Territorial Army soldier who used to buy tangerines from Umm Hamidu reappeared. She saw him standing over her head, laughing, shaking his head and saving, “Oh tangerine vendor, tell me how much for a dozen.”

Umm Hamidu laughed loudly, saying as she shrugged her shoulders, “A dozen tangerines, darling, are free – and then some.”

He danced in front of her and held her hand and told her, “I want that ‘and then some’ in holy matrimony.”

She did not answer but bowed her head and closed her eyes. He fell upon her, embracing her head and kissing her as she sat there. Alarmed, she pushed him away, looking up and down the street.

This time she agreed to marry him. She did not believe that he would come back, and he did not believe that she had agreed. Rushdi realized that if Germany was defeated once, it could be defeated every time. He was certain that the war would soon be over, and that he would go to Paris. The public health office in Alexandria announced that there were only one hundred Egyptian births that week because of the flight of so many of the inhabitants, and only one birth among the foreigners for the same reason. Deaths among the Egyptian Alexandrians totaled fifty because of old age, different types of fever, dysentery, tetanus, and whooping cough; five foreigners died of drunkenness. There were no suicides, but the public health office registered five deaths among Alexandrians because of heart failure during sexual intercourse. The time for Magd al-Din’s discharge from the hospital drew near, and he and Zahra exchanged lengthy glances. He had come back to life, and Zahra’s face glowed like a rose. Each understood the feelings of the other.

“I am not staying in the village,” he said.

“I know.”

“Will you come with me?”

“Of course.”

They both fell silent. She saw that he was dejected, that a touch of sorrow shaded his face. “I don’t know what Alexandria will be like without Dimyan, or how I will be able to go back to work without him.”

He wiped away his tears. She did not want to dissuade him from going back to the city to which she had first gone against her will, and which she later left also against her will when she left him behind. This time she was going to go in contentment and happiness, even if she did not find the people as carefree and cheerful as they had been. The white city with a blue sea and a blue sky would revive the spirits of its people.

“This time we’ll leave early in the morning,” she said.

“Of course. Arriving in a city at night is hard,” he said.

Harbingers of winter had come in a hurry. It rained hard day and night for several days, but no one complained. Life did not come to a standstill, stores were not closed, and coffeehouses did not turn down the volume on their radios. It seemed to everyone that the sky was washing the city. The clouds were high and white, and that was a miracle. Where had all that rain come from? When black clouds settled over the city, the operator of the main power station in Karmuz forgot to turn the current to the street lights off during the day, so the city remained lit up day and night. People had removed the blue paint from the windows, storefronts, and car headlights. Everyone kept the lights on in the houses and in stores all day and all night long. Alexandria became a city of silver with veins of gold.