Ibrahim Meguid - No One Sleeps in Alexandria

The raids were so intense that in one of them, eight hundred planes attacked at the same time. Hitler announced that he was going to wipe Britain off the face of the earth. Now the fate of Britain was truly in the hands of its valiant pilots, of whom Churchill said in a speech in the House of Commons, “Never in the history of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few, as we all do to our pilots.”

Zahra’s mother came from the village and brought her daughter ghee, butter, cheese, and bread. She tried to persuade her several times to leave Magd al-Din behind and go back with her to the village since even people who had no villages to go back to were leaving, so how could she hesitate? Zahra said she would never leave Magd al-Din, but if Magd al-Din were to return she would return with him. Her mother said that the mayor had sworn that if Magd al-Din returned, he would kill him, that he could do that without any fear of retribution during the war. Zahra said that, now that he had his new job, her husband would not go back. Then she asked her mother whether the mayor had really expelled them on account of Bahi. The mother said that the mayor wanted Magd al-Dm’s first wife, the one who had died before giving him any children. But Zahra was not comfortable with that explanation, since that wife had died only one year after she had married Magd al-Din, and no one remembered her. Bahi was the only plausible reason. The mother told Zahra that Hadya, Magd al-Din’s mother, almost died when she got news of Bahi’s death and the fact that Magd al-Din could no longer return. Zahra asked her mother to tell Magd al-Din only good or ordinary news, even though Magd al-Din would not really believe anything good.

The mother’s visit did much to alleviate Zahra’s loneliness. She cried a lot the day her mother left. Sitt Maryam, Camilla, and Yvonne took her with them to Shatbi beach to watch the bathers — who were not many, mostly women and girls. Camilla and Yvonne took off their dresses and stood before Zahra in shorts and low-cut cotton blouses that revealed most of their backs. A small number of girls went into the water and so did a few women, still wearing their gallabiyas. Sitt Maryam said that she did not like to get in the water and so did Zahra, who added that she really could not. She kept watching the two girls, who ran on the beach and played in the water. Early in the afternoon Zahra asked to go home when she saw at the end of the beach a foreign-looking young woman being kissed by a foreign-looking young man, both of them almost naked.

The number of foreign soldiers in the city was on the rise. Some went to the desert and others to the beach for rest and recreation. The Italian school in Shatbi was set aside for Italian prisoners of war. As their numbers increased, they were held in a camp outside the city and in several camps outside Cairo. The land war had begun on the borders. The Allied forces began to wage offensive raids against the Italian forces in Libya, in addition to air raids. On June 14, four days after Italy declared war, the British and Commonwealth forces began to attack the Italian troops in Fort Capuzzo and Maddalena and took more than two hundred prisoners. On August 13, the Italian forces began their march against Egypt under instructions from II Duce himself. Intensive shelling began on the borders near Sallum, and when the dust settled and the smoke cleared, the Italian forces appeared, beautifully arrayed: in front were motorcyclists in formation, followed by light tanks and armored cars. The British changed their plan, and instead of retreating before the Italians, they poured cannon fire on them and caused so many casualties that Graziani had to change his frontal attack plan and instead tried to encircle the British and their allies, who retreated. The Italians could not go beyond Siddi Barraní, sixty miles behind the Egyptian border, and stayed there for a long time at the mercy of sporadic British land and air raids. In three months, Italian casualties numbered thirty-five hundred, and seven hundred were taken prisoner. The big question everyone in Alexandria was asking was, why were the Italians, normally such a peaceful people, fighting? Even their planes could be distinguished from German planes in the sky: the Italian planes did not stay over the city for a long time — they dumped their bombs haphazardly and returned to base — whereas German pilots seemed to know their targets and went straight for them. Many Italian planes were shot down quickly; German planes took evasive action in the sky. It seemed to people that the Italians really did not want the war, that they had been pushed into it, especially when people heard about the number of prisoners taken on land and who arrived in the city every day. The people were reassured that the Italians could not occupy the city. But Germany had to be defeated in order for them to be really reassured. A large segment of the population, however, wished for the defeat of the British forces in the desert and for Italy or Germany to enter Alexandria. What they wanted most was for the English to leave.

Early one morning, Zahra saw Camilla and Yvonne standing in the hallway in their beautiful school uniforms. Summer vacation was over, and the girls looked like two merry butterflies in gray skirts, white shirts, and blue neckties, lending a childlike innocence to their sweetness.

Magd al-Din had left for work a little earlier. He was the first to leave and, during those weeks that Khawaga Dimitri worked days, he would leave with him.

“Is school so wonderful, girls?”

“Of course, Zahra. Especially the first day, it’s like a holiday. We meet our classmates and teachers, and we talk about the vacation and the summer. The most beautiful thing in the world is the first day back to school, Zahra. After that, school is bad.”

They laughed like two little doves. And since Zahra could not go back in time and go to school and live in the city, she hoped to see Shawqiya, one day, as happy as they were. Yvonne had turned the radio on to the Voice of London, which was playing beautiful music that Zahra had never heard before, music that made you want to fly or swim in the air like an angel. How was it that she had never heard music without lyrics before? Can such music be so beautiful?

The girls left for school. The cool morning breeze gave Zahra a feeling of heavenly happiness. She was not going back to sleep. She lay down next to her daughter on the bed, and looked up at the white wooden ceiling. Could Alexandria be so beautiful without her realizing it? Yesterday she had gone to Anfushi again with Sitt Maryam, for the first time in a long time. On the streetcar, people were looking healthier and happier than they had the last time she had gone, in spite of the ceaseless air raids. When she saw the statue of Muhammad Ali Pasha, she did not think of complaining to him. She was afraid that the air raids would demolish the statue and laughed at the idea that he might run away on his horse. She was truly surprised by the awesome apartment buildings with decorative balconies on both sides of Manshiya Square. Why had they not looked so majestic to her before? When the streetcar approached the end of Lisan Bahari on the coast, she began to hear the peaceful melody of the waves and smell the refreshing smell of the sea. When the streetcar emerged from the long cold street into the open air, Zahra saw the endless blue sea as its froth-capped waves gently caressed the beach. Along the coast, brown nets were stretched over a long distance with pieces of heavy, silvery lead holding them in place. Next to them were boats with furled sails and little rowboats, stopped or neglected on the sand. In the distance were huge gray ships with long and short cannons and masts and flags casting shadows on the breaking waters. On land Zahra could see crowds of lively women surrounding fish vendors. She had come-here before but had not seen what she was seeing now. That was during the feast days after Ramadan. Summer here was really quite different from winter, and there she was, seeing things with new eyes, imbued with an energy she had gotten from the city whose own sons and daughters were deserting but in which she was now living and loving. True, it was crowded, but in a cheerful way. There were women swathed in long wraps that they let fall off their heads and shoulders and held under their arms, revealing rosy shoulders and soft arms, their hair showing under their head covers with red, yellow, or black edges. They got into long conversations with the vendors, and laughed spontaneously as the vendors raised their voices, and happiness showed in their eyes and faces. Many of the women were moving in a deliberate manner. One would let the body wrap slide off her head, revealing her bare shoulder. Then she would lift the wrap deliberately, raising her white, enticing arms as far up as she could so the vendor would see her armpit, plucked only the day before, silky smooth, and wake unmentionable desires in the hungry vendor. Many women, accompanied by little girls with rosy cheeks that they wanted to remain rosy forever, drank the blood of tirsa, which the vendors sold in cups.