“No, I don’t understand.”
Camilla laughed and said, “John is Yahya, son of Zakariya. Every day I hear Uncle Magd al-Din say when he recites the Quran, “O Zakariya, we bring you the good news of a son whose name is Yahya.”
Zahra appeared shocked by this girl, who had eavesdropped on Magd al-Din, as he recited the Quran in the evening in a very soft voice — but apparently they could hear it clearly.
“Let’s stick to sugar cane,” Lula said with a laugh. “We don’t understand anything.”
Khawaga Dimitri was working the night shift at the city garage. The Feast of the Sacrifice was approaching. Lula said with joy in her voice, “May God make every day a holiday!” The rain began to let up, and the black clouds stayed away. Yusuf Bey Wahbi’s play The Murderer ended its run at Brentania Theater in Cairo. A big counterfeiting ring was apprehended with thirty thousand one-pound notes. Cosmos Cinema screened a new film featuring the singer Malak, Back to the Countryside. The Egyptian government sent the victims of the earthquake in Turkey twenty-four hundred wool blankets and vaccines for fifty thousand people. Dimyan said to Magd al-Din, “Do we have to have an earthquake here to get some blankets?” Then he smiled and said, “Dying of cold is better than dying in an earthquake, in any case.” Construction of the chest hospital in Abbasiya, Cairo, was completed. It was announced that the Czechoslovakian army was formed in France. The Feast of the Sacrifice passed, and no one from the village came to visit Magd al-Din. It had started the day after Epiphany, and there were some murmurs among the Muslims: the rains, a blessing for the Christians on Epiphany, would, if they continued, not be a blessing for the Muslims on their feast days. People were surprised to see the feast start on a clear day, on which the sun rose early, and the earth drank up the water that had been pouring down until the previous midnight. After wishing Magd al-Din a happy feast, Khawaga Dimitri told him, “God has bestowed his mercy equally among the people, Sheikh Magd.”
Magd al-Din was confused by this remark, especially because Dimitri had called him ‘Sheikh Magd.’ Dimitri explained that he was referring to how the rain had been pouring down non-stop for the last two days, Epiphany and the day before it, and it could have ruined the celebration of the Muslims’ feast — they would have had to stay home and not go out to pray and visit. But God saved the day.
“God be praised,” Magd al-Din assented. “Everything that comes from God is good.”
“I was kidding you,” Dimitri laughed. “I know you’re a good man and that you don’t treat Copts any differently from Muslims. This country. Sheikh Magd, has a slogan that goes back to the days of Saad Pasha Zaghloul: ‘Religion belongs to God, and the country belongs to everyone,’ but there are some bastards who like to kindle the fires of discord, especially in poor neighborhoods like ours.”
Magd al-Din fell silent. He remembered Bahi, who had told him that the strife between the Muslims and the Christians had greatly diminished.
“There’s always strife between different communities,” he finally said to Dimitri. “Somebody must have given our country the evil eye, Khawaga Dimitri. Thank God the war is keeping everybody preoccupied.”
The Feast of the Sacrifice was over. The Piaster Project Committee was still collecting donations for the Egyptian national industry in Cairo and the provinces. A new and unfamiliar type of mosquito descended upon Alexandria from the environs of Lake Maryut. The laboratory at the city’s Center for Epidemiology studied it, and concluded that it was not a mosquito but some kind of feeble fly that the cold weather would take care of, and that it did not pose any threat. And indeed the remaining days of the Coptic month of Tuba wiped it out. The Muwasa Society conducted its annual lottery. The Opera House dedicated its shows to the Commonwealth troops. Queen Farida and Queen Nazli were keen on attending these shows. News came that Charlie Chaplin had finished The Great Dictator. Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab’s film Happy Day was shown in Alexandria, and Camilla and Yvonne attended its last screening and told Zahra about penniless Abd al-Wahhab and the charming new child actress, Fatin Hamama. In the newspapers, Mrs. Aziza Amir thanked the Egyptian people for making her film The Workshop such a success and gave special thanks to the army and the art critics. Joint Egyptian-British maneuvers were conducted in the east at the eightieth kilometer on the Suez Road. Rita Hayworth was crowned Miss Hollywood for the year 1940. A new tomb dating back to 4500 B.C. was unearthed near Saqqara. King Farouk donated a movie projector for the entertainment of the troops and the people of Marsa Matruh. Three bodies were found in the Mahmudiya canal in the month of March. Among them was the body of the boy who spoke with a twang. The police apprehended the perpetrator, his own father, who had gone crazy. He also admitted to killing the mother. Magd al-Din stayed in his room for three days, blaming himself for the murder of the idiot boy, because he had not believed him the day he cried and said his father had killed his mother. Dimyan had advised him not to go to the police, saying that if there was a crime, it would be discovered. And it was, but it claimed the poor boy as its victim.
Dimyan saved Magd al-Din from his sorrow by taking him one evening to a faraway café on Mahmudiya Canal between the Raghib and Karmuz bridges, where lupino bean vendors lived in the houses scattered along the street parallel to the canal. They would place the lupino beans in sacks, which they secured firmly and left in the running water of the canal for a few days until the bitterness was gone. They would then pull the sacks to the bank of the canal and load the beans onto pushcarts and start selling them in the early morning in the neighborhoods of Raghib, Karmuz, Mahattat Masr, and Muharram Bey to the east and Qabbari and Kafr Ashri to the west. In the evening they would return exhausted and leave their pushcarts safely on the bank of the canal. In the morning they began their rounds again. A few of them sat in the remote café, in the empty area that was a good place for murder and love, as well as prayer and devotion.
Magd al-Din and Dimyan sat every evening in the very small café on the bank of the canal, which was really no more than a few wooden tables and straw chairs outside a small tin-sheet kiosk in which the coffee and tea were made. A pleasant breeze blew from Mahmudiya, laden with white mist, as if winter wanted to breathe its last breath there. In front of them passed boats with their sails unfurled, pulled from the bank by strong men with ropes tied between the masts and their chests. Around the big boats were small, colorful feluccas, in which young people were singing and making merry. The boats came from all over, ended their route at Nuzha, then went back.
Magd al-Din felt that everything around him was free except him, who had been shackled to Alexandria indefinitely. He was doomed to stay in the very Alexandria where yesterday he had seen Ghaffara, the sawdust vendor, stand in front of his cart and donkey and exclaim, “Please God, let Italy get together with Germany so Alexandria might be lit up with foreigners and sexy dames!” Everyone laughed — the passers-by as well as the store owners who bought sawdust from him to strew on the floor before sweeping their stores at the end of the day.
Ghaffara had a wooden cart with a wooden box about one meter high extending the length of the cart, about two meters, The cart was drawn by an old donkey that always looked exhausted. On both sides of the cart Ghaffara had written “Capacity: four tons; nationwide transportation; will take telephone orders and deliver sawdust.” People would read the sign and laugh, as the whole cart — the wood, the donkey, sawdust, and Ghaffara himself — could not weigh a quarter of a ton. Ghaffara had appeared the day before with a fez on his face. He had removed the tassel of the fez and attached a rubber band that secured it behind his head. He had attached a round water filter to what had been the top of the fez and cut two small holes, into which he fixed two pieces of glass that stuck up to protect his eyes. He told everyone that he had heard an educated man reading from the newspaper about a proposal submitted by a doctor to the ministry of health to use fezzes as gas masks, since there were no gas masks in the market. Since the face and head had the same circumference, the fez could be secured to the face by means of a rubber band and a person could then make mica eyes for the fez. Ghaffara did not know where one could buy mica, so he used glass instead. The doctor suggested placing an air filter through which to breathe. In the stores in Attarin, Ghaffara could find no air filters, so he bought a small water filter. But there were no gases, or even raids against Cairo, or Alexandria, or anywhere else in Egypt. Ghaffara knew that and countered that the air in general was dirty and full of poisonous gases. One did not have to wait for the raids to get the gas.