Zahra was even more surprised that she was so fascinated by what Umm Hamidu had to say. Zahra told her only one story, about the raid that took place the previous month and how her husband Magd al-Din and his friend Dimyan, when they ran to Karmuz to help with the rescue, found Lula in the rubble suffering from a severe injury. Umm Hamidu, who looked genuinely sorry, said that Lula was a poor woman who had not run away with her lover, but that her husband, the accordion player, was a pimp, that she had heard about her fame the last few months in the mansions of the pashas and hoped to see her, but God’s will was done. She said that she herself had worked for some time with the troupe of Naima al-Saghir in Bahari. “A dancer?” Zahra asked in surprise. Umm Hamidu realized why she was so surprised, for who has ever heard of a fat dancer who cannot get up off the ground all day? She said no, that she was a dresser, and explained to her how she used to dress Sitt Naima al-Saghir for singing and dancing, and for the pashas’ parties. Sitt Naima, she told her, had a short fuse. Every time she met a movie producer, she asked him to find her a role in a movie, and he would promise, but not deliver. So Sitt Naima took it out on her helpers, and Umm Hamidu left her service.

She talked to Zahra about the world of the awalim, the singing and dancing women. She told her that the piazza where Lula died was their headquarters in Alexandria. There were the artists’ cafés, the houses of impresarios and leaders of the troupes, and the ‘workshops for teaching singing and dancing girls. Any girl who in away went to the piazza, for dancing was more honorable than prostitution, and, “as the proverb says, ‘Every bean finds her measurer.’ But the awalim say, ‘Every dancer finds her drummer. The dancer always marries a drummer or a tambourine player, seldom an accordionist or some other instrument — those love the singers. Each leader of a troupe has her own girls and her turf. So Naima al-Saghir, for instance, cannot enter Karmuz — Bata al-Salamuni would kill her — and so on. And now, after the movies, each dancer wants to be another Hikmat Fahmi, and every dancer who used to dream to dance in the corniche nightclubs is now dreaming to dance in front of the king. King Farouk is a handsome man whose face is as beautiful as the full moon; all the dancers are in love with him and women hunger for him! “

Then Umm Hamidu takes her spiel in a different direction. “Alexandria is a happy city, and its earth is saffron, as people say. They say that Alexandria was built by a crazy man named Alexander who filled it with wineries, and people danced and sang all day and night and cavorted with women. To this day they still find relics of Alexander and ancient Alexandria, just like they find treasures under collapsed houses after the air raids. After every raid the rescue workers find a lot of money and gold and jewelry under the rubble. They once found a clay vessel filled with gold coins stamped with the name of the Greek queen Naisa, who ruled Alexandria a long time ago. Yes, that’s why they call the area Mount Naisa, because the queen lived there. They say she was a mighty queen, so the folks who live in Mount Naisa are mighty drug dealers and robbers that the government can’t do anything about. In front of Mount Naisa on one side is the piazza, and on the other side Pompey’s Pillar. The piazza is a very old neighborhood, and Pompey’s Pillar is even older. It’s surrounded by Kom al-Shuqafa, which has catacombs underground where the Nubians and Sudanese live. These Nubians and Sudanese spend their days selling seeds and peanuts, and at night they sleep in the caves like bats. The caves are full of relics known only to those blacks and to the gypsies. The gypsies also live there, but since the war started, nobody sees them on the streets any more. Where did they go? God only knows!”

Thus, after having seen the sea and the big squares with Sitt Maryam, Zahra entered Alexandria’s magic world. Umm Hamidu’s stories have given the city, whose inhabitants were leaving, a warm soul in a winter that now appeared truly frosty. But after the rain fell, warmth prevailed, spaces grew wider, and the sky moved higher, bluer, happier. Alexandria has always been a happy city, despite the apparent malaise because of the migration. Umm Hamidu’s stories made it twice as happy. The rain, which had not stopped in days, would surely let up with the beginning of the new year, when the Christian and Muslim holidays would coincide for the first time in many years: the Orthodox Christmas would be on the same day as the Feast of the Sacrifice. If the rain did not stop, however, it would fall on Muslims and Christians alike, and there would be joy for all and rain for all, and even Epiphany, which Yvonne had said the previous year was an ancient Egyptian feast, would be for all.

Orders were given throughout the country that the new year be celebrated, but without lighting up the streets, and people were warned about the possibility of surprise air raids. For even though the combatants in Europe had announced a cease-fire on the last day of the year, no one could guarantee the actions of Hitler and Mussolini, especially since “our country has no interest in the European celebrations of the birth of Christ, it being an innovation that came with the occupation.” At any rate, the raids had stopped in Europe on the penultimate day of December, in view of bad weather conditions, so people in Europe enjoyed two days in a row without raids. That was a particularly welcome respite for the British, whose cities Hitler had vowed to wipe out. The night of the thirtieth of December, however, witnessed intensive British air raids on the Gazala and Tobruk airports in Libya. Italian airplanes in turn attacked the British bases in Malta.

The world was still following the surprising advances of the Greeks in Albania, at the Italians’ expense and amid the confusion of the Albanians themselves, who had not yet settled on one occupier of their land. The Führer addressed a message to the German army in which he enumerated Germany’s triumphs during the past year and promised final victory in the new year. “The German Army of National Socialism has achieved brilliant victories in the year 1940. This army, on the threshold of a new year, has prepared itself with armaments hitherto unknown to humanity.”

In Cairo, Biba Izz al-Din announced that she would open her new program at the Majestic Theater with the play Who Are You Kidding? which would include singing monologues by Muhammad Abd al-Muttalib, Fathiya Mahmud, Thurayya Hilmi, and Sayyid Fawzi. The Shatbi Casino announced it would open its doors for new year’s celebrations. Celebrants, mostly Commonwealth soldiers, danced to love serenades at the Monsignor in dim lights that did not show outside because of the tinted glass and heavy curtains. Neither Magd al-Din nor Zahra understood, for the second time, why people threw their old things from the windows at year’s end, even though it was a small number of people who did, as most had left in the great emigration.

In Cairo, King Farouk attended a new year’s party at the opera house for the entertainment of the English soldiers in the Middle East. The Wafd Party submitted to him a statement of opinion on internal and external affairs in Egypt, criticizing both. The Royal Air Force in the Middle East resumed its bombing of Gazala and Bardiya in Libya. The month of December had witnessed a ferocious surprise attack by the suntanned British and Allied armored forces on Sidi Barrani, where they captured “Italian officers who filled five feddans and soldiers who filled two hundred feddans.” People once again wondered, as they saw the prisoner-of-war trains coming from the desert, whether the Italians were really fighting, or whether II Duce and Graziani were doing the fighting alone. By the middle of the month, the Italians had been thrown out of Egypt, and the Allied forces chased them to Bardiya, which had been penetrated by the Australian soldiers in their long heavy coats. They captured five thousand Italians. Air raids started again with the new year in Europe. The Germans used a new type of incendiary bomb on London that started infernal fires everywhere and left behind, after each raid, three to four thousand casualties or more. One bomb fell on the House of Commons and caused serious damage, though there were no politicians in it. The German city of Bremen was totally destroyed by British air raids. In Libya, the Australians, together with the English, had invaded and routed Tobruk, and thirty thousand Italians were taken prisoner, bringing the number of Italian prisoners of war to one hundred thousand. Thus the huge army collapsed and became a negligible military force. The Allied forces spread along the coast from Sallum to Buqbuq.