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At dawn, Hamidu the shoeshine man appeared. He stood in the middle of the street, a barefoot giant shouting at the faraway planes, “You sons of bitches!” Then he called on the young people to go with him to Karmuz to rescue people. He ran down the street followed by dozens of young people, as well as Ghaffara, who could not catch up with them but did not stop nonetheless, and had to hold up the fez with his left hand so that he would not lose it. Magd al-Din thought of going with them, but he was afraid to leave Zahra alone. What would happen if he were to die there or she here? He saw Dimyan, his face pale and his eyes unfocused, coming toward him. As soon as Dimyan saw him, he sat down on the sidewalk, placed his head between his palms, and started weeping.
“Don’t cry, Dimyan. This is God’s will.”
“Thousands of people will leave Alexandria tomorrow. Where would I go, Sheikh Magd?”
“Stay with me. I am not leaving.”
“You’ll stay?”
“Can I leave a job like the one we’ve got, Dimyan? Besides, death is in the hands of the Creator, my friend. Where’s your family?”
“In the church. They opened the door, and lots of people went in. The Sidi Karim mosque, too. The bombs fell just a few steps behind us in the Mahmudiya canal.”
“Say: ‘Nothing will befall us except that which God has decreed for us,’ Dimyan. Ask God for mercy.”
“Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison.”
13
If a window or a house is filled with light,
be certain that only the sun is illuminating it.
The whole city was busy worrying and talking about the six-hour air raid. The morning saw corpses on Rahma Street, lined up peacefully as if someone had arranged them lovingly on the ground during the night. Fires continued to burn in Bab Sidra for a whole day, despite the efforts of the fire fighters and rescue workers who converged on the site, but it took too long to extricate the bodies from the rubble. Karmuz Street and the side streets filled with people from all over the city who came to help with the rescue or to see for themselves what could happen again or what could happen to them. Massive migration out of the city began. The king and princes donated money to the victims, hospital space was set aside for the wounded, and Don Bosco School was opened to those recently made homeless. Gloom descended upon the city, as neither daytime nor nighttime air raids stopped. Little by little the city grew accustomed to the new realities. New stories began to fly in the alleys and among the men who stayed up at home or in the few cafes that still opened in the evenings. Teenagers talked about love stories in the public shelters or about women surprised by the air raids in the bathroom or in the arms of their men, wearing nothing at all or, at best, nightgowns. Men talked about Ali Mahir Pasha forming the new cabinet, how to drink iced tea with limes or milk or just straight in this heat, and how Britain recognized General De Gaulle as a representative of free French people throughout the world. The women and girls talked about volunteering for the Red Crescent and moving out of the city. After that six-hour air raid, the summer was never the same. In the commercial district of Ghurbal a fishmonger lusted for the wife of a southern Egyptian merchant. She was a white-ski
The raids were so intense that in one of them, eight hundred planes attacked at the same time. Hitler a
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 Yvo