“Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison,” Dimyan repeated, and Ghaffara exclaimed, “God, have mercy on your servants!”

Magd al-Din had seen many fires before in the countryside in which he could smell burning dung, straw, and firewood. This time however, he was smelling burned flesh, hearing cries from all directions, and watching as women ran through the streets in their nightclothes and men carried children from their homes to stand at a distance. Everyone was crying, the sound of planes droned ceaselessly over the city as the guns chased them and the searchlights raced all over the sky. He could hear the fire trucks coming from Kom al-Dikka and saw some parked in the distance in front of the burning houses, as the fire fighters in their helmets scrambled to the fire hydrants on the sidewalks to which they attached their huge water hose and began to put out the fires.

The bombing had moved to Mina al-Basal, and Magd al-Din could see Dimyan standing helplessly in front of him, and Ghaffara as usual wearing his fez-mask, and Hamidu and the young men running to the collapsed houses to pull out people pinned down or just lying there. There were many musical instruments lying scattered everywhere on the ground — lutes, drums, tambourines, accordions, saxophones, and flutes that looked like snakes and serpents. There were groups of almost-naked women who had been surprised by the raid, the destruction, and the fires. Some women from the houses that were not effected began to hand the others robes and gallabiyas to cover themselves. Curses poured forth against the Germans, the Italians, and the English who were behind it all. The air was filled with the smell of human sweat mixed with dust. They all began to remove the corpses from the debris. Then the all-clear sounded as the planes moved away, but the fires still lit the place, as did the headlights of the fire trucks. There were screams coming from the ruins and sounds of faint moaning as if someone was gasping a last breath. Every time someone alive was brought out, shouts of “God is great!” rang out. Magd al-Din had not expected to meet anyone he knew here, let alone find them in the ruins. He saw three men carrying a women on a stretcher and running; two were carrying it from the front and one from the back, and he heard a voice call out, “Sheikh Magd al-Din.”

They were placing the wounded next to each other on the far pavement so the ambulances could transport them. The person carrying the stretcher from the back was his friend Dimyan, who came back and told him, “We took out a woman from the rubble. She saw you and called out to you. Didn’t you hear her?”

“I heard her and didn’t believe it. I don’t know anyone here.”

“She’s right there with the wounded, anyway, so you can go over to her,”

Dimyan ran off again to help rescue others. Magd al-Din made his way to the wounded. When he drew near, he saw her looking at him with a trace of joy in her eyes. It was none other than Lula. Merciful God! She motioned him to sit next to her, and he did, “Please forgive me, Sheikh Magd, I tried to seduce your brother Bahi, but he wouldn’t give in. Dozens of times I came up to him at night, but he wouldn’t do it.”

“He’s the one to forgive you, Sitt Lula.”

“He did. But I need for you to forgive me also. I’ve thought a lot about you.”

“I ask God Almighty for forgiveness.”

“Then please forgive me.”

“God is the One who can forgive you. I forgive everything, even though I don’t think you’ve done me any wrong.”

“Even my infidelity to my husband?”

“It’s fate, Sitt Lula. Where’s the injury?”

“My legs are broken.”

He noticed that her legs were very swollen under her nightgown — a sure sign of severe internal hemorrhaging. As soon as the ambulance appeared, he lifted the stretcher at one end, and Dimyan saw him and ran over to help. They placed Lula in the ambulance, then carried over three other wounded women, and the ambulance rushed them to Muwasa Hospital. Before the ambulance had arrived, Lula was raving, “I’ve loved no one like King Farouk, nor desired anyone as I desired him. Now I won’t dance in front of him. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to dancing.”

Tears poured down her cheeks, and she held Magd al-Din’s hand and kissed it. He let her do it.

As he went out to wash the next morning, Magd al-Din passed Khawaga Dimitri, who was just finishing up, in the hallway.

“Are you going to work today?” asked Magd al-Din. “I don’t think anybody’s going to work today. I’m going to the café, to meet people and find out what’s happened to the city after that raid. Do you want to come with me?’

Magd al-Din went with him. Ever since he had started working for the railroad, he had not once sat in the café in the morning. In the café, Dimitri told him about Karmuz Street and Rhakotis, which Alexander connected with Pharos, now called Bahari. He told him that Rhakotis was a dangerous area, full of drugs and criminals, but that in the past it had been a place where Christians were tortured. He said that Pompey’s Pillar was built on the hill of Bab Sidra, which in Roman times had temples and stadiums where gladiators fought to the death and where lions were set loose upon converts to the new religion. Dimitri told him that it was an old martyrs’ field; that, in honor of the martyrs, the Coptic calendar began the same year that Diocletian massacred hundreds of thousands of Christians; that it had been a bloody area from time immemorial; and that the blood would not be washed away by Pompey’s Pillar, which the Alexandrians had built to immortalize an oppressive ruler.

16

The year was nearing its end. Rain came down on Alexandria in buckets. It seemed that Alexandria was not going to celebrate the new year, that the lights would not be turned off exactly at midnight — they were already off. Nobody was going to throw empty bottles or old pottery and ceramics from the windows to bid the old year farewell and to hope for a better new year. It seemed that neither the Monsignor, Excelsior, and Louvre nightclubs nor casinos like the Shatbi, the Miramar, the Windsor, the Hollywood, the Kit Kat, or any of the others would celebrate the occasion. It was possible that people would spend the last night of the year in the shelters. The previous month, November, had been really bad. Two big air raids in one week, on the eighteenth and the nineteenth at six o’clock and eight o’clock in the evening respectively. Traffic to the railroad station multiplied; caravans of cars, horse-drawn carriages, and old taxis pushed their way through, carrying people and a few belongings. The platforms of the station filled with people waiting, sitting and lying down, filled with patience, fear, and a profound uncertainty. The smell of human sweat mixed with that of fuel oil and the smoke of the trains; the air became heavy, almost palpable. Few trains were moving; most trains had been set aside to move troops and military equipment. At the station you could also see people scurrying around for a reason, or for no reason at all, as well as people screaming because of the crowding or the hardships of life, and people crying from disease, abject poverty, or fear. All these sounds, the voices of males and females, old and young, mixed with those of vendors of pretzels and cheese, peanuts and oranges. Shells and rinds mixed with the broad bean pods and other litter from various food products. Litter filled the corners and fell into the cracks between the tiles, lay on top of the tiles, around those sitting and under the feet of those walking or scurrying, and around those screaming, jesting, or those in a complete daze. Those were the days of the ‘great emigration,’ an unforgettable event in Alexandria that people would later use as a landmark to date events in their lives.