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Yusuf Wahbi’s play The Air Raid Siren opened. Cinema Olympia screened the film Dananir, starring Umm Kulthum; Cinema Misr showed Mary Queenie’s A Rebellious Girl; and Cinema Cosmo was playing One Million Years B.C., which starred the new actor Victor Mature and which Camilla saw with Rushdi and saw in Rushdi’s eyes the same sadness as in Victor Mature’s. The Commandant of the Traffic Police, Muhammad Shukri Bey, issued an order requiring all cab drivers to wear a uniform as they did in European countries, a khaki coat over their clothes. In Alexandria the Israelite Sports Union had a gala party to benefit victims of the air raids, which was attended by Salvatore Cicurel and many other notables. Marshal Wavell’s reputation spread. In disbelief, people watched the sweeping British offensive on Libya and the defeats raining down on Italy.
But Magd al-Din believed, for he saw the weapons being shipped by train to the heart of the desert every day, weapons that only red demons could make and only devils and giants could use. Hamza expressed amazement as he saw the young Italian prisoners of war, barefoot and heads shaved, shipped in open and closed freight trains, looking more like homeless children, and sleeping without a care. Some of them even smiled at the workers or waved to them. Commenting on their great numbers, Hamza sang, “If time deals you a bad hand, son of noble ones, bow your head, but follow not the ignoble ones.” His co-workers, who could not see the co
“Aren’t they the ones who were fighting?” Dimyan asked him.
“My heart tells me these are good-hearted men who don’t know how to fight in Egypt or Greece. It’s all the devil Mussolini’s fault,” was Hamza’s reply.
Roosevelt delivered a speech in which he said that America was going to be “the great arsenal of democracy.” The licensed prostitutes of Alexandria complained about the dwindling number of patrons after the great emigration from the city. They requested that they be used to entertain the English soldiers in their camps in return for a fixed income, since Commonwealth soldiers who went to the brothels went there drunk and did not pay. Besides, the local customers, knowing that they had become a rare commodity, were no longer going to the poor brothels in Farahda and Kom Bakir, but to the posh ones in Hamamil, and were paving there what they used to pay in the poor ones. The newspapers a
Churchill gave a speech in which he praised Anglo-American cooperation, saying that they were in the sentinel tower guarding history. The air raids against Alexandria since Italy entered the war numbered one hundred, the most vicious of which was the six-hour raid and the two of the previous November. But the Italians had not come to drink Nile water; rather, they came as prisoners of war, as lost souls walking hundreds of miles on foot from Libya to Marsa Matruh. Many of them died on the road in the sun, the rain, and the desert winds. From Marsa Matruh, they were shipped by train or boat to Alexandria. The newspapers also reported on the trial of those accused in the case of the defective helmets supplied to the Egyptian and the British armies. It was a cause célèbre, widely covered in the papers and talked about everywhere, especially in cafés and bars. The Royal British Army and the Royal Egyptian Army had, at the begi
“We have received from the Reverend Boulos Roman, from Asyut, a description of this animal. He said that it resembled a rabbit, that it chewed its cud but that it did not divide the cloven hoof, that it was one of the beasts that God ordered the Israelites not to eat, since they were unclean. He added that it was sometimes known as “the sheep of Israel,” that it lived in the rocks, and therefore was known for its wisdom. Solomon mentioned it in ‘Proverbs,’ saying, ‘There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the coneys are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locust have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.’ When the prophet David enumerated God’s mercy toward man, beast, and bird, he said that He created the rocks as shelter for the coneys. In some translations, the word ‘rabbits’ has been used, and even though they resemble each other, each was mentioned separately in the Bible, first the coney, then the rabbit. The fact that it was mentioned in the Bible tells us that it is found in abundance in Palestine.”