Текст книги "No One Sleeps in Alexandria"

Автор книги: Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

“And your land?”

“My sisters and their husbands will take care of it.”

“Then you might as well kiss it good-bye.”

Hearing faint moans coming from Zahra’s direction, Bahi asked her, “What’s the matter, Zahra? Why are you crying?”

Magd al-Din had no choice but to tell him the whole story. They all fell silent. Bahi’s silence was the most profound. Had he been such a curse on his family? To this day? What did fate want from him? He had suffered more than enough all these years. Should he have killed himself early on? And all because he was born attractive to women? He had let himself walk anywhere, at any time, but none of the Talibs had killed him. He went through all the horrors of the last war, but fate had not given him a chance to die. He had left his village and wandered through the markets of neighboring villages. A woman selling ghee and butter from Shubra al-Namla picked him up. His reputation had preceded him to all the villages, and he still had those killer eyes that radiated allure. The ghee vendor picked him up while Bahiva was still stalking him, following him to the other villages. In these villages, too, the children no longer chased her – they had gotten tired of it. Bahiya followed him like his shadow. At night she disappeared in the fields, and he hid from her, thinking that she would never find him. In the morning, he would discover she was following him again.

“Don’t follow me in the streets, Bahiya.”

She would smile and run her hands over his chest with a distant look in her eyes. He would see her tears and turn his back on her, almost in tears himself. More than once he thought of grabbing her and standing with her in front of the train. But he could never bring himself to do that; he was too weak to commit suicide, He could see the lines of old age beginning to appear prematurely on her face, and a few thin hairs on her chin. When the ghee vendor picked him up, he let himself go, unafraid of anything. The fiendish thought that he might become the cause of another woman’s madness even occurred to him; he wished he would become the cause of all women’s madness, in all the villages. If only all the women all over the countryside would follow him, thoroughly besotted! It was as if Bahiya knew. She disappeared suddenly. The ghee vendor brazenly invited him to her house, and he went with her without fear, hoping to become the cause of her madness. He watched her introduce him to her father as a big merchant from Tanta who wanted to buy all their butter and ghee, all year long. He saw in her mother’s eyes slyness and greed and doubts about his story. He thought of turning her into a madwoman too. They prepared a room for him to sleep in, and he asked them to collect all the ghee, butter, and eggs from the village. He learned from the beautiful, rather buxom woman that she was a widow, whose husband had been run over by a car in Tanta. She came to his room every evening. He had no doubt that her parents knew. He realized what was being planned for him. But he was not made for marriage and family life. On the dawn of the seventh day he sneaked out. The whole village, with its black houses, was enveloped in fog. It was a sight he would not forget: black houses made gray by the white vapor that stretched to the edge of the universe. Could hell be any different from what he was seeing? The houses appeared to him like mythical beasts writhing in torment, in utter blindness. When his feet hit the railroad tracks, he headed for Tanta, not to his village. When he came to an underpass, he sat down to drink tea from a shack that served it. He wanted to wait until the fog lifted so he could see things more clearly.

When it did lift, he saw in front of him a group of border guards on camelback dragging a group of peasants bound with a long rope. He had no chance to escape. One of the guards got down from his camel, grabbed his arm, and calmly bound him with the others. He did not object, question, or scream. They marched him with the others to the governorate headquarters in Tanta and from there to the army camps in Cairo. The ‘Authority’ had kidnapped him to serve and fight, against his will, as corvée in the armies of England, which had declared Egypt a protectorate.

5

…feeling through the hot pavements the rhythms of

Alexandria transmitted upwards into bodies which could

only interpret them as famished kisses, or endearments

uttered in voices hoarse with wonder.

Lawrence Durrell

It seemed that everything was ready to accommodate Magd al-Din and Zahra. At night Bahi told them that the landlord, Khawaga Dimitri, was a good man who lived on the second floor in two rooms, next to which was a separate room that he could rent to them. They found out from him that a woman by the name of Lula lived with her husband in the room across the hall from his own. Bahi told them also that he would let them sleep in his room that night and that he would go out and sleep in the entryway of the house, where it was cooler and where he would be more likely to wake up early. Magd al-Din had to agree with him, even though he was surprised at his brother’s talk of getting up early. Then he told him to wake him up early too, so he could go out to look for work.

They spent most of the night talking about the neighborhood and its inhabitants. Nothing said that night stuck in Magd al-Din’s mind, for he knew it already. Zahra, though, was surprised to hear about the tensions between Christians and Muslims and how they had subsided now, and that the real tensions now were between northern and southern Egyptians. Bahi said that the northerners from Rosetta and Damietta and elsewhere were always peaceable, but that the southerners from the Jafar and Juhayna clans stopped them in the street and insulted them. There was always a conflict between the two southern clans, but they united in their opposition to the northerners. He said he was working for a day when he would lead the northerners to rout the southerners, and that day was going to be very soon.

Zahra found herself breaking in, “What do you do in Alexandria, Bahi?”

He looked at her for a moment and smiled. “Ask Sheikh Magd.” He left them, took a blanket and a pillow, and went out to sleep in the entryway. Zahra was amazed that she slept without a single dream. She placed her head on the pillow in Bahi’s bed and took her baby in her arms and slept. She did not even notice that Magd al-Din was stretched out on the floor next to the narrow bed. He had told her to sleep on the bed. As a peasant wife, she should have refused and let him take the bed, but she found herself, without thinking about it, getting into the bed and going to sleep, as if another woman was doing it. In the morning she sat, ashamed, in front of him and kept herself busy making tea for him and Bahi.

Magd al-Din went out without delay to look for work, and Bahi left after him, no one knew where. As he was having tea with Magd al-Din and Zahra, he told them, “Khawaga Dimitri passed by early, and I told him how you want to rent the room next to his apartment, and he agreed. He even went upstairs and told his wife to expect Zahra today. You can go up in an hour or so, Zahra.”

Around ten o’clock, Zahra found herself alone in Bahi’s room, so she decided to go upstairs. As she stepped out of the room, she saw before her a beautiful, blonde woman wearing a see-through nightgown with bare shoulders and arms. She was washing up at the tap in the hallway. She was startled, and Zahra said awkwardly, “Good morning.”

“Bahi’s sister?” asked the woman as she turned from the tap.

“Sister-in-law.”

The woman looked her up and down. “Where’s his brother?”

“He went out to look for work, and Bahi went out with him.”

Zahra gathered her courage and looked the woman up and down, then went upstairs.

Zahra sat in silence between Sitt Maryam and her two beautiful daughters, Camilla and Yvonne. Sitt Maryam was about forty years old. She had a white, round face and short chestnut-colored hair that she left untied and uncovered. Her daughters also wore their hair untied but long, hanging down their backs. The girls had their mother’s chestnut hair and amber eyes and round face, though a little narrower at the chin. Camilla had two attractive dimples in her cheeks that were quite pleasing to look at.

Zahra was wearing the same long black peasant dress that she had worn the day before, a dress with a wide square neck that made it easier for her to nurse her baby. On her head she had a black shawl that hung down both sides of her chest to cover whatever might be revealed by the loose-fitting bodice of her dress. Under the shawl was a tight head wrap that covered all her black hair. Camilla and Yvonne kept looking closely at Zahra, as though she were from a different planet. It was Zahra’s silence that surprised them, as well as her neatly trimmed eyebrows and her dark, almond-shaped eyes. Zahra was silently studying the icons hanging on the opposite wall. She knew them well. She had seen them many times in the home of Ata, the village grocer, whose wife, Firyal, was a seamstress. Zahra noticed that Sitt Maryam had a pedal-operated sewing machine in a corner of the room. Firyal’s sewing machine was small and hand-operated, and Firyal had it on a low table and worked on it all night long.

Sitt Maryam’s room was smaller than Firyal’s house, but it wasn’t made of mud. Besides, it was painted sky blue, so it seemed sunny, and the window opening onto the street bathed it in light, as did the door open to the hall. Zahra could see another door inside the room and figured that it led to another room for storage. Zahra sat on a sofa next to Sitt Maryam. Camilla and Yvonne sat on another sofa. The two sofas were covered with two clean kilims with geometric patterns of red, green, and blue circles and lines. On the floor was a kilim without any patterns. In the ceiling there was a small, idle fan next to which wires extended to a lamp below the fan. The fan most likely was never turned on, as it would have cut the lamp wire. The ceiling was made with wooden boards resting on strong beams and painted white. On the wall was an old photograph of Sitt Maryam at twenty, in a wedding gown, standing next to Dimitri. In the picture Dimitri looked slightly balding with black hair. She wondered what he looked like now. Zahra had not seen him yet. Under the photograph was a small wall clock, and under the clock was a glass china cabinet with closed drawers in its bottom half. On top of the cabinet was a wooden, broad-based semicircular Telefunken radio with two big buttons near the base. In the corner, next to the sewing machine, was a small, old table on top of which were several pieces of new fabric and unfinished new clothes.

The clothes and fabrics in Sitt Maryam’s house were more than she had seen in Firyal’s house in the village. People here like to dress up, she said to herself. This is the real Virgin Mary, and this is her son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, may peace be upon him. The face of the Virgin Mary is pleasant, snow-white, and full, and her chin is curved a little like Yvonne and Camilla’s faces. Jesus’ face is happy, but his face in the other icon, once he became a prophet, seems sad, in spite of the halo around his head. Did Bahi really have a halo of light? Yes, it went with him everywhere, but Bahi’s face is not like the face of the Messiah. Lord have mercy, it actually looks a little like him! I ask your forgiveness, Lord Almighty!

The day before, Bahi had told them that Bahiya was also in Alexandria. She had appeared a year earlier. He had noticed her come into the café, look at him, and then go out and stand on the opposite sidewalk to watch him. He did not realize it was Bahiya until she had left in the evening. He froze in place. She still came during the day to observe him from a distance, then disappeared at night.

He said that one night he was taking a walk along the bank of the Mahmudiya canal when he heard a voice calling his name. He thought it was the mythical seductress, the siren of the village, but he could never forget her voice. After he had overcome his surprise he moved closer to the bank and found her standing in front of a hut made of old tin cans, holding a small kerosene lamp that she sheltered from the wind with her other hand. She made way for him at the door, and he entered the hut fearfully: a very harsh life. She slept on sackcloth and had a lot of bread, mostly spoiled, that people had given her. She had apples and bananas. She gave him an apple and sat watching him in silence. He took the apple home with him, debating whether to eat it or toss it away. He placed it near him in his bed and slept. It stayed on the bed until it became rotten, so he threw it out the window. He fell silent for a long time, then said to Magd al-Din “If I die, bury me in the village.”

“How old are you, Zahra?” Sitt Maryam asked.

“Twenty,” replied Zahra.

Camilla, Yvonne, and their mother all asked at once, “Is this the first time you’ve seen Alexandria?” “Yes.”

“And your husband, why didn’t he rest today after the trip?” was Sitt Maryam’s next question.

“He’s like that. He doesn’t like to be lazy.”

“God be with him. Nobody finds a job easily these days.”

“God will provide.”

Zahra paid 160 piasters, two months rent, for the room. She went in and found it to be a big room, but its window opened onto an air shaft rather than the street. “That’s fine,” she told herself. She felt close to this lady and her daughters. Sitt Maryam asked her if she had more money to furnish the room and she said yes. So Sitt Maryam asked her if she would like to do it that day. Zahra thought a little then said to herself, “Why not? It wouldn’t be bad if Magd al-Din came back and saw the new room with furniture.” She agreed, and Sitt Maryam got up and went into the inner room to put on her street clothes. Zahra, casting a quick glance at the inner room, saw a brass bed with high posts surrounded by a white mosquito net, exactly like her bed in the village, except that the posts of her bed had been discolored in spots. She would buy another one like it today.

Sitt Maryam closed the door quickly. The two girls were once again staring at Zahra. This time she felt embarrassed, so she lowered her head and stared down at the plain kilim on the floor, looking for lines and colors that she did not see. Camilla got up quickly and opened the little cabinet under the radio and took out a magazine, then sat next to Zahra and opened it to a particular page and asked Zahra, “Do you know Asmahan?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like her voice?”

“When I hear it.”

The girls burst out laughing. Camilla offered the magazine to Zahra. “This is her picture.”

Zahra looked at Asmahan’s splendid face, which she had never seen before. As she studied her beautiful eyes and the beauty mark on her face, she wondered, “Is she really that beautiful?”

Camilla had more questions. “Do you have a radio in the village?”

“We have three – one in the mayor’s house, one in the coffeehouse, and one in our house.”

A look of pain appeared on her face and everyone was quiet. Zahra wiped a tear before it formed in her eye. Camilla turned another page in the magazine to show a bright-faced woman, with brown lipstick on her full lips, wearing a tight dress that showed her curves in reckless playfulness. “This is Esther Williams,” she said. “Do you have a cinema in the village?”

Sitt Maryam came out just then, laughing and saying to Zahra, who had begun to feel overwhelmed, “Camilla’s mischievous, Zahra.”

Zahra did not comment. Her attention was drawn to the black dress that did not reach Sitt Maryam’s feet and the semi-transparent veil with the gold pin that draped across her nose. Zahra laid Shawqiya down on the sofa and said, “This is the first time I’ve ever left Shawqiya.”

“We’ll be back soon, before lunch. Camilla will look after her, Would you like to have lunch with us, or don’t you like the food of the Copts?”

Zahra felt slightly at a loss. It surprised her that she had never eaten or drunk anything at the house of Firyal, the village seamstress. She had heard, as a young girl, women talking about the bad smell of Coptic food. “You are good. Your food must also be good,” she murmured.

Sitt Maryam took her gently by the hand, and they went out,

Sitt Maryam walked confidently along the sidewalk, but Zahra could not take her eyes off the unpaved ground. That was why she was two or three steps behind. It was hard to walk on the street covered with little white stones; the sidewalk, also unpaved, was higher than the street and lined with rectangular basalt blocks that were covered with sand and small stones in preparation for tiles to be installed. “Watch out, there’s hole for a drain,” or “There’s a water main,” Sitt Maryam said from time to time. Zahra would stop for a moment and cautiously step around what Sitt Maryam warned her about.

“This is the streetcar. Have you seen it, Zahra?”

“Last night.”

“Let’s get on it. Remember the number – it’s eight. It goes to Abu Warda.”

On the streetcar Sitt Maryam led her to the women’s compartment. “Who’s Abu Warda?” asked Zahra.

Sitt Maryam smiled. “It’s a street in Bahari.”

Zahra noticed that there were three women who had gotten on the streetcar before them who sat silently, their faces veiled.

“We’ll get off at Attarin,” Sitt Maryam told her. “This streetcar goes around in a circle, from here to Attarin, then Abd al-Munim Street, then Istanbul Street, and Safiya Zaghloul and the Chamber of Commerce, then Manshiya and Bahari from Tatwig street, and comes all the way back with the same ticket – something of a joy ride.”

Zahra did not say anything. She could not understand how anyone could spend all that time on the streetcar. It seemed to her that women here had no work to do. She smiled. The streetcar moved and she was taken aback for a moment, her heart beating fast. How could she have left the house without her husband’s permission? How could she have left her baby daughter with people she had just met for the first time? Was it enough that Bahi said they were good people? And since when did Bahi say anything useful? But she could not go back. The vast white space captivated her eyes, and she gave in to it. Where was this city taking her?

She let herself study the two– and three-story homes, with their narrow doors opening onto silent courtyards. The old facades had balconies on which a few items of wash hung haphazardly to dry. A few stores had opened their doors. She noticed that Sitt Maryam paid the conductor a half-piaster coin and took back a millieme and two tickets. Sitt Maryam saw her looking at the broad window of a store where the streetcar had stopped, a window displaying pots and pans and beautiful china and glassware. She told her these were Ahmad Ibrahim’s stores, the most popular stores in Karmuz and Raghib, and that they could buy whatever Zahra needed on their way back from getting the furniture.

Zahra found herself adjusting to the slow flow of movement around her in the street, and to passengers getting on and off the streetcar. Suddenly, though, she was overcome by a strange smell, and they were in the middle of a street crowded with butcher shops, with carts piled high with cow, water buffalo, and sheep feet and heads and organs, lined with stores displaying small slaughtered sheep with clear red stamps, and filled with a crowd of women wearing black body wraps.

“Let’s get off here. This is Bab Umar Pasha. We’ll cross Khedive Street and go into Attarin.

They got off. Zahra’s eyes could not settle on any one thing for long. A refreshing breeze in Khedive Street began to soothe her. She noticed that the first floors of the houses were predominantly dull. The stores in Attarin were now all open and showed long, deep interiors that looked like manufacturing shops. Zahra looked up several times at the balconies.

The houses here were huge, taller than any she had seen so far. The doors were wide and the spaces inside enormous, filled with cardboard boxes and other things she did not recognize. The balconies were beautiful, resting on supports shaped like animals – little lions, tigers, and rams. The balconies had railings of shiny, black and green wrought iron. A few women stood on the balconies hanging out laundry, while a few others sat in the sun. Many of them were old, with loose gray or henna-colored hair and flabby white arms that could be seen, bare, through the railings. Zahra smelled the water sprayed on the ground in front of the stores. In more than one small alley she saw small cafés in which one or two patrons sat smoking narghiles or reading the papers.

All at once, groups of beautiful young women appeared, laughing. They wore colorful tight pants and tight tops, and their faces were made up and their hair donc à la garçon. Zahra was astonished that women would cut their hair in this boyish style. Sitt Maryam noticed Zahra’s reaction and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

From inside one of the stores, Zahra heard someone comment, “Well, well, well! When are we going to become English?” Then she heard the young women laughing boisterously. One of them shot back, “When hell freezes over, buster! Not even if you became French!”

Zahra smelled the strong odor of tobacco smoke and saw in front of her a store with a red facade and big black lettering, with a scale on the counter, behind which a man sat smoking a narghile. On the shelves were small boxes and many cigarette packs. She saw several of these stores with red facades, apparently characteristic of tobacco shops. Sitt Maryam pointed to a street from which came a strong smell of ghee, coconut, and sugar.

“This is the piazza of the Syrians. They are all pastry makers,” she said. “This is al-Laythi Street, the most famous street for antiques in Alexandria. Here they sell French objets d’art, Belgian chandeliers, Swiss watches, Italian chairs, and expensive things from all over the world.” Zahra was reminded of the strong, European-looking face of the man that she had seen smoking the narghile in the tobacco shop.

A woman in a white nightgown came rushing out of a side alley, holding a man by the scruff of his neck. After giving him a smack on the back of his neck, she pushed him into the street, then stood for a moment looking around. She was barefoot, her hair disheveled, with sparks flying from her tired eyes. Then she went back into the little alley, and three scantily clad women, who had stood by the entrance and watched as she kicked the man out, followed her inside. A young coffeehouse boy carrying a tray with a coffee cup, a small coffee pot, and a glass of water almost ran into the man who had just been beaten. But he skillfully stepped aside, laughing, “In this place, it’s sweet to be smacked on the back of the head.” The man staggered toward Zahra, who was scared and hid behind Sitt Maryam. Sitt Maryam quickly bent down, took off her slipper, and waved it in the face of the man, who stepped back, giving her a military-style salute as the vendors in their stores laughed.

Sitt Maryam and Zahra went on through al-Laythi Street, where the antiques caught her eye, as did the men and women who moved slowly and gracefully among the wares, looking at and examining them. There was a strong smell of wood varnishes, paint, and alcohol.

“We’ve made it to the Arab street. You’ll find all kinds of furniture here.”

Zahra noticed that one alley was filled entirely with shoes of every style and color, on high tables and low tables and on the sidewalks. She saw another long alley filled with displays of used clothing, and shirts, jackets, and overcoats hung in the store entrances, giving off a faint smell. Then they entered a short street, neither wide nor narrow. In front of the shop doors were living-room sets and all kinds of chairs – wooden, upholstered, bamboo. Little boys were dusting them with feather dusters.

“Good morning, Blessed William.”

“Good morning, Sitt Maryam.”

He knows her by name, Zahra thought to herself. She realized that here she could sit down for a little while. She needed that, after having nearly screamed to leave the whole neighborhood.

Blessed William was about fifty, short with a strong build, wearing a clean gallabiya and a fez on his head.

“It’s been a while,” he said, offering two chairs to Sitt Maryam and Zahra, who sat down at once. The the smell of the concrete floor recently doused with water reached her nostrils, and the smell of frankincense burning deep inside the dark store soothed her nerves. A little boy appeared and the man said to him, “Quick, get a pitcher of carob drink.”

Blessed William went to different points on the wall and lit up the big, long store, revealing shiny armoires, beds, tables, chairs, and other pieces of furniture.

“How are things, Blessed William?” Sitt Maryam asked.

“Things are bad. The war has broken out, and everything is going sky high.”

“The war broke out only yesterday, Blessed William.”

“We’ve been living in fear for the last few months. The drunken English have chased the customers away. I swear by God, I considered selling the store to a Moroccan or a Greek. Only last night, some hoodlums caught three drunken Englishmen and beat them and stole their money. A police force from Kom al-Dikka came and dragged everyone to the governorate headquarters and beat them on the back of the neck until they almost went blind.” He laughed and added, “I was there – I went to the governorate because they’d arrested one of my workers. There was this Indian soldier there who really upset me – he stood there saying ‘Again, again,’ as the the secret police were beating the men. Can you imagine that? An Indian! I wanted to tell him that Gandhi was starving himself to death so that people like him would become real human beings, not lackeys to the English.”

“And then?”

“They let the people go, of course. The hoodlums were long gone.”

“Everyone’s turn will come,” remarked Zahra.

Blessed William took a long look at her and said, “You are good-hearted.”

An old woman with heavy make-up and bright yellow dyed hair passed in front of the store. She was carrying a cheap red leather handbag and wearing a short skirt and a pair of sheer red stockings, through which the green veins of her legs showed. Zahra recoiled and Blessed William said, “One day the land will be cleansed.”

Sitt Maryam could not tell Zahra that in that neighborhood, at the end of the street where they had walked and in the narrow alleys, many women were prostitutes. Zahra must have figured that out for herself, but she had begun to feel a little pain in her breasts, and drops of milk were leaking from her nipples and staining her gallabiya. She had to buy what she needed quickly so that she could hurry back to her baby daughter.

“On our way back we’ll buy the fabric and cotton for the mattress and pillows,” Sitt Maryam told her. “Tomorrow you’ll have the furniture of a bride, God bless it.”

But Zahra, desperate for anything that would give her happiness, still felt ill at ease and afraid of the city.