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.”

Magd al-Din, honestly wishing to learn, asked, “Is it necessary for a person to be baptized young?”

“It’s more proper. But, no. A person can be baptized any time. Baptism is very simple: the priest holds the child and plunges him into a marble basin filled with water. Of course there’s also music and hallelujahs and hosannas — it’s a real party!”

“Well, your grandfather should’ve been baptized again.”

“He adamantly refused,” Dimyan laughed. “He insisted that he’d already been baptized and would not submit to those machinations. Deep down he was sad. He went to sleep and hasn’t awakened to this day.”

“There’s no power or strength save in God!” exclaimed Magd al-Din.

“Anyway. My father and his brothers came to hate the village, They divvied up the land and left the village. My father went into business until his money was gone; he left my mother, myself, and two daughters, and another son who died later of typhoid. My sisters have married and are living with their husbands in Suhag. My mother is living with me, hardly ever moving except to sleep. So this was how a big family was ruined because of a little lie. But thank God nobody said that the reverend was rendered incapable of baptizing my grandfather, or that the water in the baptismal basin had dried up when he was about to baptize my grandfather. That would’ve meant big sins, an old curse in the family. Yes, sometimes as the reverend baptized a child, he would be surprised to see that the water had suddenly dried up or that the child clung to his hand and couldn’t be wrenched away.”

Magd al-Din did not know how to comment on this story of his good-hearted friend.

“You’re a pious man, Dimyan,” he said as he looked him in the eye.

“It only seems that way,” Dimyan laughed. “I haven’t been to church for many years. The church of Mari Girgis is only two steps away from my house, and your house too, but I haven’t been to it on Sundays or during the holidays. You know why?”

Magd al-Din was not sure what to think, so he ventured a guess, “Because of what happened to your grandfather?”

“No. I just forget. I always forget. Sometimes I say to myself, Dimyan, you’re unemployed — why don’t you go to Georgius the Martyr, that’s Mari Girgis, he might find you a permanent job. Then I forget, even though I know about Mari Girgis’s many miracles. Muslims sometimes come to him on his anniversary and ask him for help. Mari Girgis is a big saint. You know the saints, of course. You know that the Alexandria city council once tried to demolish the mosque of Abu al-Darda to make way for the streetcar line, but anyone who raised a pickax against the building was paralyzed. So they left it in its place, and now the streetcars go around it. And, as the song tells us, I know that al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi used to liberate the Muslim captives from the enemies. You’re from Tanta, so you know the story better than I do. Besides, brother, I’m confused: Mari Girgis has performed miracles and al-Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi and Abu al-Darda all have made miracles. They’re all right. So why the distinction between Copts and Muslims?”