“Where do you live?” she asked him.

“Not far from you. You live in Ghayt al-Aynab. I followed behind you once all the way to your door.”

She looked very surprised as he continued, “I live halfway between Karmuz and Kafr Ashri bridges. There’s housing for railroad workers there. It’s an isolated, quiet place in front of Mahmudiya Canal and a big, empty stretch of land — completely safe.”

“I know the place well,” she said. “It’s a really beautiful place, and the most beautiful thing about it is that no one can spot it or get to it easily.”

He stopped and looked at her very closely, holding her shoulders without fear or shame. “Listen to you, you’re saying beautiful things.”

She laughed and started to walk again after gently removing his hands from her shoulders. “I’ve gone there with mother many times to buy fish from the salt works,” she said. “There’s a long, dark tunnel you go through, and then you find yourself right smack at the salt works.”

“Exactly.”

She did not want to tell him that she had gone several times to that very housing compound with her father, mother, and Yvonne to visit their relative Usta Ghibriyal, whom Rushdi surely knew and who surely was his father’s boss.

“A man who lives in our house works for the railroad,” she said.

“I don’t know him. He doesn’t live in our house,” he said, and they laughed. She felt regret for her indiscretion but soon overcame it, for she had not mentioned the name of their tenant or that of Ghibriyal in any case.

Camilla went home that day like a free sparrow flying in a magnificent space. But as soon as she sat down, a gloom that she could not shake descended upon her. Her mother could not figure it out, nor could anyone else except Yvonne, who realized that her sister was at it again. Every night now Camilla would decide to break it off with Rushdi for good, and in the morning would wait for the afternoon when he came. He was very considerate. He asked her to let him follow her four days a week, and two days a week go out with him to some place far from home.

The priest, with his ruddy complexion, black beard, and black cassock, appeared at the house, and Zahra saw him for the first time, even though he had been to the house many times before. Zahra started hearing long speeches that she did not understand, and prayers and chants that she did not understand either. Every time the priest came, silence descended on the house, and Sitt Maryam closed the door of their room without looking at anyone who might be there, even when Khawaga Dimitri was present. An hour or more later the priest would come out, and Zahra would hear loud voices bidding him farewell, “Good-bye, father, may the Virgin protect you!” She also heard sobbing, but she could not tell whether it came from Camilla or Yvonne. She also rarely saw Camilla and Yvonne now, as they no longer sat out with their mother but stayed in the inner rooms after returning from school.

That continued to be the case until one day the air-raid siren sounded ominously, heralding imminent danger. True, the siren sounded intermittently with every raid, every day, and it sounded the same, whether the raid was big or small, but somehow, people had developed a sense, a sort of intuitive feeling about particularly bad raids by hearing the sound of the siren. Did that sound actually change, or did the war unite people and sensitize them in such a way that they were able to prophesy, like prophets or mystics? The feast at the end of Ramadan had ended ten days earlier with a big raid that lasted from six o’clock in the evening to ten, but it was scattered over various neighborhoods, so it did not leave a large number of casualties concentrated in one place. Today, however, people in Karmuz, Ghayt al-Aynab, Raghib, Masr Station, and Attarin felt that they, the very heart and pulse of Alexandria, were the targets.

That day Zahra had asked Magd al-Din several times about the priest and his visits, which occurred sometimes more than twice in one week and about the silence, the crying, and the mumbling, but Magd al-Din told her, “Leave creation to the Creator, and take care of what’s in your womb.”

When the siren sounded, she clung to him, and her daughter Shawqiya cried, as she sensed that the intermittent siren was bad from the way people around her panicked. She had also figured out that the long, uninterrupted all-clear was good and would clap her little hands when she heard it. Zahra hurriedly put a shawl around her shoulders, for the shelter was cold and humid, and went downstairs, followed by Magd al-Din, who carried Shawqiya. Zahra saw Sitt Maryam, the two girls, and Khawaga Dimitri going downstairs in silence. Zahra’s fear did not prevent her from seeing how Camilla was withering away like an ear of grain left in the sun too long. They all went into Bahi’s room, which was always open since no one had rented it, or Lula’s room, which was also open since the migration of people from Alexandria left behind many vacant apartments and rooms. As soon as they got into the room Sitt Maryam said, “Turn off the light, Dimitri.”

It seemed to Zahra that the woman said this because she did not wish anyone to see her daughter in her bad condition, rather than because of the raid, even though civil defense instructions clearly specified that all lights be turned off. It was the second half of the lunar month of Shawwal, and the moon had waned almost to a crescent, but its light was enough. Magd al-Din opened the window of the room to hear people’s comments and to see them. Then he suggested to Dimitri that they go out on the street and join the men. Dimitri thought it was a good idea and they went out.

Magd al-Din saw the searchlights from the harbor and Kom al-Shuqafa filling the sky. Then he heard the loud droning noise of approaching planes, and as they flew within range, the anti-aircraft artillery in Alexandria let loose a barrage of red missiles from all the highest points in Alexandria. The sounds of the guns reverberated intensely from all directions. Boys and young men on the streets cheered as they saw some planes catch on fire, but the sounds of explosions were soon heard, and smoke could be seen in various quarters of the city in the west, east, and north. Then the explosions were concentrated in the downtown area. Children could be heard crying loudly in many houses, and various people began to recite loudly verses from the Quran. Ghaffara’s voice boomed from behind his fez-mask, “That son of a bitch Graziani doesn’t like us. What really kills me is, how come the planes come over from Italy to hit us? Why don’t they go to England? Isn’t England closer?”

The voice of a young man was heard to reply, “The planes come from Libya, idiot.”

Suddenly Dimyan appeared. It looked as though he had just come from a strenuous race. His voice shook as he spoke.

“I didn’t come here to hide, Sheikh Magd. The piazza, Karmuz, and Bab Sidra are all on fire, sky-high, worse than the six-hour raid. We’ve got to run and help our brothers.”

Magd al-Din was silent, thinking how he had failed to heed the call before, that it would not be right to do that again. Then he heard Ghaffara say to the youth gathered there, “It’s a black night, young men. Come on — let’s go to Karmuz. Houses have fallen down, and people have died.”

It was a night beyond the limits of the human mind. In the dark, frantic feet trotted like horses, and eyes hung on every explosion that filled the sky with fire and showering missiles. When they approached the Mahmudiya canal, they saw only pitch dark over the water and a few barges on which sailors stood watching the battle raging in the sky. In record time they covered the distance on Karmuz Street and entered the piazza by the clock tower. Magd al-Din saw fires the likes of which he had never seen, a huge mass of red, higher than the tallest buildings and houses. He stood helplessly reflecting, “God, most merciful!”