Текст книги "No One Sleeps in Alexandria"

Автор книги: Ibrahim Abdel Meguid

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

7

From one town to another I set sail.

Why is the wind so contrary?

Why am I ever a stranger, ever on the move?

Folk song from Egypt

Ban Street was now almost deserted except for the police. A security force with clubs and shields had been dispatched and took up positions on both sides of the street. A big paddy wagon stood there, filled with peasants and southerners alike. The soldiers were still chasing the brawlers in the alleys and bringing some of them back to the paddy wagon. Women were watching through closed windows; men and boys stood in the doorways. The sound of an ambulance came from the direction of Karmuz. A woman collapsed on the ground near Bahi, crying silently. She was barefoot, her black clothes tattered, hair disheveled, eyes blank, but she did not seem insane. There was another woman, a younger one, weeping quietly in the arms of Magd al-Din, who kept patting her on the back, his eyes fixed on his brother’s beautiful face covered with blood, his eyes still open, gazing at Magd al-Din in sorrow and fear for his destiny. There was a look of apology to his younger brother in his eyes.

“Go inside, Zahra.”

It was obvious that the blow had split Bahi’s skull from behind. Nothing could be done. The battle had taken place right in front of the house, as if Bahi had wanted someone to see him fighting. No one had believed his old stories. Only Magd al-Din did, always. Today he no longer had to fight anyone. Magd al-Din stepped forward, then sat down, placing his brother’s head on his thigh. He shook with a pain that no human alive had ever felt.

The paramedics and a young police officer went over to him. The woman who had collapsed near the body and whom Magd al-Din had not noticed until now was frightened by the police officer. She got up and walked away quickly.

“Who’s this woman? Anybody know her?” the officer asked a policeman.

“She’s some crazy woman who was always following the dead man.”

The officer did not understand, but Magd al-Din’s eyes grew wider as he remembered Bahiya.

“You know the victim?” asked the officer,

“He’s my brother.”

“Do you accuse anyone?”

Magd al-Din did not reply.

“After the burial you can make a statement or a charge,” said the officer.

He motioned the paramedics to carry the body. They removed it from the lap of his brother, who could not stand up. He stretched his hand to the man standing next to him.

“Give me a hand, brother.”

It was the gaunt man who had been his lockup companion a short while earlier. The man extended his hand.

“Dimyan. My name is Dimyan. Get a grip on yourself,” the man said as Magd al-Din got up.

A man Dimyan recognized came over to them. It was Khawaga Dimitri Faltaws, Magd al-Din’s landlord and one of the neighborhood’s educated Christians, who worked as a labor supervisor at the municipal garage in Hadra. Dimyan had asked him to get him a job, any job in the city, but the man apologized nicely after a month for not finding him a job.

“Do you know him, Dimyan?” Dimitri asked.

“Yes. He’s my friend,” replied Dimyan, pleased that Dimitri had not forgotten him.

“Then ride in the ambulance with him. I’ll catch up with you at the government hospital in a cab. He’s a stranger in town.”

Magd al-Din listened as his eyes followed the woman who had been sitting near Bahi’s body. It was none other than Bahiya. Now she was at the far end of the street. God have mercy.

The ambulance drove off, with the body laid on a stretcher between two long seats on one of which sat Dimyan and Magd al-Din, while the two paramedics sat on the other. The ambulance was not going fast, and did not blow the siren that would have cleared the way through crowds. The road was not crowded, and the ambulance was carrying a corpse.

The slow movement of the car resembled that of a gentle horse or a boat on calm waters. Magd al-Din was now smiting the sea with his arm since he had no staff, and it parted, and in the middle was a grassy pathway on which the gentle horse moved gracefully. Magd al-Din, vexed, smote the air and it parted, and on each side was a smooth, white, glass wall on which pearl-like snowdrops gathered – white tears, white blood and pain. He walked in the space that the air had deserted and was drenched in sweat. He took off his gallabiya, his vest, and his undershirt, leaving only his underpants, which now stuck to him, becoming part of him. Everything rolled down the walls in front of him. Beautiful women and maidens and stones and monkeys and old women clad in black and a familiar face that he did not remember, a face he had often seen and heard calling out his name, “Come, come, Magd al-Din.” He followed the voice without knowing where. He could not go back and could not break the kind voice’s spell. In front of him rolled all the images he had seen before: his brothers who had been killed, his dead father, his blind mother, his sisters and his cousins, all the Talibs, and the mayor. But they were all children, running and laughing. He wanted to catch one of them, anyone, but could not. The kind voice would not let him go back until he reached the end of the road, the edge, from which white vapors rose and where he could see only tortured arms flailing and hear only groans. He rose up, nearly on the tips of his toes. then he collapsed.

“Don’t cry, friend. You’ll kill yourself.”

The thin Dimyan patted Magd al-Din on the shoulder and put his arms around him. He had been crying in pain. Bahi’s story had ended. Bahi himself had put an end to it.

He had returned after the Great War. The country was gripped by the revolution for years afterwards. Bahi told Magd al-Din “This village of ours does not move at all. It’s like a big beetle that never leaves its hole.” It was he who had to stir it back to life.

His mere appearance on the scene was enough to rekindle the fire. He had come back stronger than he had left, his features scorched by both the sun and the cold. He now had a thick mustache, had become taciturn, and early wrinkles showed under his eyes. His face had also acquired a new pained look.

The family did not believe that he had been in the army all that time. “Where did they take you?” “From the road.” “Why didn’t you tell them who you were and what family you came from? They would’ve let you go.” “I told them, but they didn’t let me go.”

No one believed him except Magd al-Din, who knew that some people have been preordained to endure great pain. Job was one, and now Bahi. That was why Bahi chose to sleep in Magd al-Din’s room. At night he told him a lot about the war, about the boat on which they shipped him with the other soldiers to Europe. He described to him the trenches and the snow in the mountains, the battles at the French-German border, countries that he did not know and cold that he could not bear and beautiful women who came to the soldiers during their rest or to whose villages the soldiers went.

“I was afraid, Magd al-Din, but they dragged me, physically pulled me. Is God going to punish me for the foreign women also? Was it really me who went there? Listen, I know lots of English words and French ones too: bonjour, which means ‘good morning,’ that’s good morning in English, and comment allez yous? meaning ‘how are you?’ and how are you? in English, and à demain and à bientôt, which mean ‘until we meet again,’ and also bye bye and see you, and ça va bien, meaning it’s going well, and fine, which also means all’s well.

“A year later we were taken to Palestine to fight the Turks. May God forgive me, I fought with the English against the Muslim Turks, but it was against my will.”

Bahi’s reappearance was not enough to close the books on the past. It meant that he was still there, which meant that the vendetta would be rekindled. All hell broke loose. Of the two families, only Magd al-Din and Khalaf remained. Bahi never counted, and that was the root cause of his great pain.

Of course, there were the sisters, as well as the mother, after the father died of grief. Bahi and Magd al-Din inherited a large chunk of the family land. Magd al-Din’s share was three feddans. Bahi also got three feddans, but he sold them secretly and disappeared again. The mother’s silent crying caused the light in her eyes to grow dim. She loved him very much without showing it; she had never forgotten the beam of light that had come out of her when he was born. He came back from the war without his halo. It seemed that everything about him had been extinguished. How had the life of that pure child turned into darkness? Magd al-Din was certain that he would come back one day. The mother was about to lose her eyesight completely, when Bahi appeared in the middle of the house. As soon as he got off the train, first the women then the children spread the news. Before Hadya’s daughters could bring their mother down from the second floor, Bahi was on his way up.

“Light of my eyes!” she cried and threw herself in his arms, but he was cold. He kissed her cheeks and hand in silence.

In the evening he told Magd al-Din about the city where he had spent all that time, white Alexandria, where foreigners from all over the world and poor Egyptians from all over the land went. He chose not to give his address to anyone. He said he would visit them from time to time. In the morning they could not find him at home. Hadya entered into a phase of more profound silence. Magd al-Din did his best to give her courage and urge her to preserve whatever light remained in her eyes. Little by little the mother was reassured, for Bahi was making an appearance from time to time, though sometimes at long intervals.

Then the people of the village noticed that a new building was being constructed with red bricks brought over from the kilns of Kafr al-Zayyat. They asked the construction workers about the house and its owners, and they said they knew nothing except that it was a government building. The house was being built outside the village limits on deserted land that no one owned. Then the mayor received an official letter stamped by the Islamic civil court in Tanta, requesting him to render assistance as it was requested of him by the representatives of justice in the new court that would be built in the village. By the end of the year the court had been built, and the mayor eagerly awaited the representatives of justice. When a sign was erected reading “The New Courthouse for Civil Law,” with the emblems of justice – the scales and a hand placed on the Quran – beneath it, the mayor saw that the time had come for him to render assistance to the representatives of justice. The court judge, usher, and clerk came to him, and the clerk presented the mayor with a new letter in which it was requested that the mayor assign two watchmen to guard the court. The mayor gave the representatives of justice an elaborate banquet.

The courthouse was a one-story building. It had three rooms, a hall, and a bathroom. The court began to accept cases. The first complaint came from an extraordinary woman. Khadra, daughter of the deputy mayor, was complaining that her husband had beaten and insulted her.

Khadra was one of the village’s beauties. Her husband was her dreaded cousin. To the amazement of the villagers, the court summoned her husband. That was the first time in their life that they had heard of a woman taking her husband to court. It had never happened once in the history of the village. The husband did not go to court, and he decided that the wife would not come back to his house, even if she were to withdraw her complaint. The court, through the clerk, summoned him again to appear within a week. He did not, and the judge ordered that Khadra be granted a divorce. The village was shaken to its foundations by this unheard-of verdict. The judge disappeared from the courthouse for a week. Bahi appeared in the village streets for a few days, then disappeared again. People saw Khadra’s father, a broken man, walking in the street in shame. How could a woman complain to the government about her husband? What courage! And what heresy!

It was natural after that that men would give their wives strict orders not even to pass in front of the courthouse. A whole year passed without a single complaint or verdict. So people were reassured, especially since Khadra had disappeared from the village and her ex-husband had married an even better wife. The truth was slightly different. It was simply that the story of Khadra and her husband was now past history. Another woman lodged a complaint asking for justice against her husband, who had seized her inheritance. The judge ruled that she be given her inheritance back and granted her a divorce since the husband was not faithful to his legal duty. The village was shaken again.

Then, at intervals over a long period of time, a number of men were surprised to receive summonses to appear before the court. The husband would go, not knowing what awaited him. Before going, he would beat his wife, pressing her to admit that she had lodged a complaint against him. The poor, helpless wife would deny doing anything of the kind. Then the husband would go and be surprised not only that his wife had complained, but that the judge knew intimate details about his personal life as well. Thereupon the husband would fall to pieces and not wait for the verdict, which in a number of cases was simply that he should go back and treat his wife better. He would go back and divorce his wife without any discussion. In three years, twenty women were divorced. Bahi would disappear and then reappear riding a gray horse along the canal or the edges of the fields. The painful story of the vendetta was over and done with. The village’s biggest preoccupation now was the court that had so shaken families and homes and whose activities extended to the neighboring villages, especially in matters of inheritance.

It turned out that dozens of women had lost their rights because of husbands or strong brothers. The court always found in favor of these wronged women. Then came an ominous day when the court summoned the mayor himself.

The mayor went, thinking that at most, the court needed some help carrying out the verdicts. But the judge did not receive him in his chamber, but rather in open court, and did not permit him to sit down. True, he was a mayor, but the court had its own traditions that applied to great and small alike. The shocking question to the mayor was whether he was abusing his wife. It was she herself who had lodged the complaint that he did not treat her well, that he did not take her the way the sharia, the Islamic civil law, ordained, but that he took her from behind.

You can imagine the mayor as he sprang forward, as he attacked the judge and the usher, held back only by the guards who had gone with him. They prevented him from making that mistake. They were in a state of great surprise and fear. The mischievous among them hid their smiles.

The mayor left the courthouse without answering any questions. He rode his horse and raced the wind. Halfway home he stopped. The vast open space and the green fields around him restored his feeling of calm. This village had been calm throughout its history. The calm was broken only by the vendetta between the Khalils and the Talibs, which was over and now remained only as a memory. He did not think that similar events would befall any two families after the tragic end of the Khalils and Talibs. Then came this court, which had shaken the village and unearthed all its heinous deeds. The judge, usher, and clerk must be killed and the courthouse demolished. He must contact the authorities requesting that the court be moved somewhere else. It was Satan’s court. But his wife could not have done that. Or could she have? He had tried more than once to sleep with her in a non-customary manner, but she kicked hard and he never tried it again. He had been an impetuous young man. It was impossible that his wife would remember that now and complain against him.

In a few minutes the mayor reached his house. He stood in front of his wife, shaking with anger, nearly breaking into thousands of little pieces. He would die if he did not do something about it. Those dogs, the guards, would spread the news. But she was his beautiful, rich wife from a great family, and he truly loved her. He broke down in tears before her and said nothing. He slept, asking God for death.

His wife was the daughter of one of the notables in the next village. The news made it there instantly. In the evening, her father and his men came. The father said in an almost inaudible voice, “In the morning, we’ll go to the court. If there is a complaint, we’ll kill our daughter and that’ll be the end of that.”

In the morning there was no one in the courthouse. Its doors were wide open. Even the sign on the door had been taken off and was lying on the ground. By noon, policemen from the governorate were there, and the village was filled with laughter and crying. It was not a real court. It was just a trick invented by a devil to ruin the village. The village went to sleep that night wondering who that devil might be.

The people said, “The government is lame, but it can beat a gazelle.” The police were able to track down the first woman who had gone to court, Khadra – who had disappeared from the village after her divorce. They found her in Tanta living with Bahi, who was now dividing his time between Tanta and the village. She said she had tried many times to prevent him from continuing, but that he was intent on wrecking all the homes in the village. People shunned Magd al-Din’s house and family for some time, but because of Magd al-Din’s Quranic education and piety and Bahi’s past, people eventually were friendly to Magd al-Din again. Bahi became a mere memory in his jail cell in Tanta. No one but Magd al-Din knew that when Bahi finished his sentence, he left for Alexandria. No one ever knew what became of Khadra. “No way could she get away with it. She’s probably already been killed by her father or her brothers,” was the comment anyone who brought up her name would get. Several years passed without Bahi making an appearance in the village; he was now totally forgotten. The mayor, who could have looked for Bahi anywhere in Egypt, remembered him suddenly. When he thought of something to do about it, he kicked Magd al-Din out of the village, and to make sure the people would not remember the unpleasant story, he said the expulsion was related to the vendetta. With him he expelled Khalaf, the last of the Talibs. But the people of the village remembered vividly what Bahi had done to the mayor and secretly laughed. And there was Bahi, laid out helplessly before his brother, now devoid of strength, weakness, or rashness. He had chosen his own death in the city that he had said was white.

8

And deliver us all from high prices, the plague,

earthquakes, drowning, fire, being taken captive

by the barbarians, the stranger’s sword,

and the rising of heretics.

Kyrie eleison.

Coptic prayer

Pompey’s Pillar is the name of the huge column erected by Alexandrians to immortalize the memory of the Roman emperor Diocletian. They dedicated it to him as a gift, in appreciation for the prosperity they had enjoyed under him, forgetting that it was Diocletian who had persecuted them most, and persecuted the Christians in Egypt and Palestine in general.

Pompey’s Pillar is in the middle of Rhakotis, almost in the exact midpoint of Karmuz Street. The pillar is separated from the street by a wall that surrounds the whole archaeological site. To the left of the relics of Kom al-Shuqafa lies the Muslim cemetery, which takes up a large portion of Karmuz Street, extending to Rahma Street. The cemetery is called ‘the pillar tombs,’ in reference to Pompey’s Pillar. The tombs end on the north side at Italian School Street, a quiet, narrow street seldom noticed by pedestrians or cars. For this reason, many lovers go there in the evening, lured by the dark to make out and sometimes, take their love-making farther without fear of being discovered.

Behind Pompey’s Pillar extends the hill of Kom al-Shuqafa, where some Nubian families and gypsy clans live. The Nubians usually sell peanuts and seeds in little paper bags on the street. The gypsies go out on short trips to the city to do their usual things, reading palms and shells, telling fortunes, dancing, and selling cheap costume jewelry.

The streetcar runs up and down Karmuz Street, beginning at the bank of the Mahmudiya canal, halfway between Karmuz Bridge, which leads east to Ghayt al-Aynab, and Kafr Ashri Bridge, which spans the canal near the harbor. In front of the point where the streetcar route begins, on the southern bank of Mahmudiya Canal, lie the houses of workers who work in the railways south of the city. Behind these railroad tracks lies Lake Maryut, which extends farther than Alexandria, reaching as far as Amiriya in the west and Idku in the cast. Magd al-Din will have to discover all these places, but that will be later on.

Every day, Magd al-Din went to the cemetery, where he sat in front of his brother’s tomb and recited the Quran as long as he could. On his way to the cemetery he would see Pompey’s Pillar high above and realize that it was a relic from a bygone era. A strange thought would occur to him. He wished he could go up and sit on top of the pillar, and spend the rest of his life there, without food or drink, ceaselessly clamoring the name of God, exactly as the great Sufi saint al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi did on the roof of a house in Tanta, until he died.

“You can’t go on like this,” Dimyan told him, after following him to the cemetery one day.

“What should I do, Dimyan?”

“Come with me to look for work. I usually get work most days now. Besides, you can’t spend your life sitting in the cemetery. This, God forbid, is an act of godlessness.”

Magd al-Din looked at him for some time and finally said, “You are right, my man.”

Since the day Bahi was killed, a great friendship between the two men had developed in no time at all. Everything at the hospital was over quickly thanks to the presence of Khawaga Dimitri and Dimyan. The following morning the public attorney’s office gave permission to bury the body, and by noon it was interred. As the shroud-wrapped body was lowered into the grave, Magd al-Din realized the great wrong he had done his brother: he had disobeyed his wish that he be buried in the village. That night Bahi had laughed and said that if he died and was buried in the village, he wouldn’t cause anyone any problems. It was impossible for Magd al-Din to change what had happened. He could not go back to the village, and his mother should be kept in the dark, at least for now. God alone knew how helpless he was.

Khawaga Dimitri paid ten pounds for the tomb and the burial expenses and told Magd al-Din in a whisper, “You can return it to me when things are better.” Magd al-Din was sure he could repay it, for his land in the village produced income, and he was sure his sisters would send him his share every season. What puzzled Magd al-Din was the affection show-ered on him and his wife by Khawaga Dimitri and his family even though they had only known each other for a few weeks. Sitt Maryam told Zahra, “Your brother-in-law was a prince.” “Dimitri told Magd al-Din, “Your brother was a good guy.” Magd al-Din surmised that Bahi must have done them some favors when the need arose. He told Zahra to empty Bahi’s room out so Khawaga Dimitri could have it back.

Nothing in Bahi’s room was needed, so the furnishings were sold to the secondhand-goods merchant in the morning. Magd al-Din took Bahi’s clothes and gave them away to the poor at the cemetery. Zahra found an envelope in the armoire containing twenty pounds and cried when she gave the money to Magd al-Din. Bahi was saving from shame before Khawaga Dimitri – Magd al-Din could now return the ten pounds Dimitri had loaned him so magnanimously.

Even though he had not asked about it, Zahra told her husband the story of how Bahi took part in the battle and how he died. She said she heard shouts on the street. At the time she was in Sitt Maryam’s room, and they looked out of the window. She saw Bahi moving as fast and as gracefully as a horse, brandishing his club, and he felled everyone he hit. He was completely different from the Bahi she had known. He was like a supernatural force, throwing men to the ground right and left. There were many peasants on his side, but the southerners were more numerous. Her eyes could only see Bahi. Just as the battle was about to end, after most of the southerners had cleared the street, a group of them appeared from one alley, heading straight for for one man, Bahi. All the clubs came down on his head. At once, she went down to the street screaming, but Bahi was already dead. It seemed that he looked at her as if he were asking her to be a witness to his courage. Magd al-Din asked her if the woman Bahiya had reappeared in the street since then, and Zahra said she had seen her only the day Bahi was killed. She had seen her that day, but did not believe it, and looking at Bahi, who had just been killed, she soon forgot about her.

Magd al-Din continued to go out to the cemetery every afternoon, giving money to the poor, and reciting the Quran. By nightfall, he would go back home and have supper, his only meal since breakfast, then he would recite the Quran until the night’s last prayer, when he would go to bed. He seldom spoke to his wife. He became even more silent when he began to notice one or more women in front of Bahi’s tomb, crying and placing roses and cactus flowers on the tomb. When he went closer, they would move away and leave without a word. He decided to discover the secret of those women, so he went to the undertaker in his shop across the street from the cemetery and asked him. The man smiled and said, “This is the first deceased whose relatives are all women. They come to me and I point out the tomb to them. I didn’t see them the day of the burial, but they haven’t stopped coming yet.” He fell silent for a moment then went on, “It seems he was a decent guy. The women give me money, generously.” Another pause, and then he said, “Strangely enough, a man came to me a few days ago and asked me about the tomb. I took him to it, and he immediately fell upon the woman who had come there just before him and beat her bad, dragged her by the hair, and he swore a sacred oath that he would, God forbid, divorce her.” He asked Magd al-Din if he knew anything about that man, and Magd al-Din left him without a reply.

“The only thing you know about me is that I am Dimyan Abd al-Shahid. But I know that you come from a good family and I too come from a good family. My grandfather used to own slaves – no lie. That’s what they say about him in our village, Dayrut. You’re from northern Egypt and I am from southern Egypt. There are many notables from the north and many from the south. And in both north and south, the poor are of course more numerous. Somebody’s got to take from somebody! Make sense? Do you hear me, Magd al-Din?”

“I hear you,” replied Magd al-Din, as he did every time Dimyan asked him. Dimyan was now passing by every morning to accompany him on their job hunt. On the days without work, which were usually more than the successful days, they would sit at the café by the bridge. Magd al-Din would buy the newspaper and astound Dimyan with news of the German submarines and torpedo boats that blasted the British ships then disappeared like demons into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Dimyan learned a lot about Magd al-Din’s life. The most important thing he learned was that Magd al-Din had been exempted from military service because he had memorized the Quran.

Dimyan was now calling Magd al-Din “Sheikh.” He once told him in jest that there was no law exempting those who memorized the Bible from military service. Then he laughed, “But who could memorize the Bible?”

Every time they met, Dimyan would tell Magd al-Din something about his life until the story was rounded out. He told him that one day, out of the blue, one of the village people announced that Mr. Baskharun was an infidel. Baskharun was Dimyan’s grandfather, not the great-great-grandfather who had owned slaves. Why was Mr. Baskharun an infidel? The accuser said that as a child, he had not been baptized. The truth was that there was a dispute between two families over a piece of land, and one of the adversaries was able to spread that rumor about Mr. Baskharun.

“What is baptism, Dimyan?”

“Baptism means becoming Christian. Without it a man stays in limbo, between heaven and hell.”

“That means nobody holds him accountable?”

“Exactly.”

Magd al-Din smiled and said, “How can that be bad for the person?”

“Of course it can. Don’t ask me how. But it’s a very difficult situation. I don’t know exactly the nature of the difficulty, but I feel it. It’s like falling off a mountain but never landing anywhere. You remain suspended in space, in total emptiness, neither hot nor cold, not even air of any kind. Do you know, Sheikh Magd al-Din, that that happened to me once?”

“You stood between heaven and hell?”

“Yes. I felt it when I rode an elevator. Only one time in my life I rode an elevator in a building in Manshiya. I was cleaning the roof of the building. It was very hard work. The roof was a pigsty. I couldn’t go down the stairs. Can you imagine? I was too exhausted. Anyway, I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button. It went down so fast that I felt I was in a place that had been emptied out completely. I remembered the story about heaven and hell and being stuck between them. If I hadn’t seen through the glass door each floor going by in front of me, I would’ve screamed in fright.”

Magd al-Din looked at him in amazement and admiration, and felt genuine warmth toward him. Dimyan continued his family’s story.

“My grandfather went to the church in Asyut, Dayr al-Muharraq, the largest church in Asyut, and brought back the priest who had baptized him as a child. He was a blind man on crutches. But nobody believed him because the priest himself had committed many sins in his youth before he entered the monastery.”