Yusuf Wahbi’s play The Air Raid Siren opened. Cinema Olympia screened the film Dananir, starring Umm Kulthum; Cinema Misr showed Mary Queenie’s A Rebellious Girl; and Cinema Cosmo was playing One Million Years B.C., which starred the new actor Victor Mature and which Camilla saw with Rushdi and saw in Rushdi’s eyes the same sadness as in Victor Mature’s. The Commandant of the Traffic Police, Muhammad Shukri Bey, issued an order requiring all cab drivers to wear a uniform as they did in European countries, a khaki coat over their clothes. In Alexandria the Israelite Sports Union had a gala party to benefit victims of the air raids, which was attended by Salvatore Cicurel and many other notables. Marshal Wavell’s reputation spread. In disbelief, people watched the sweeping British offensive on Libya and the defeats raining down on Italy.

But Magd al-Din believed, for he saw the weapons being shipped by train to the heart of the desert every day, weapons that only red demons could make and only devils and giants could use. Hamza expressed amazement as he saw the young Italian prisoners of war, barefoot and heads shaved, shipped in open and closed freight trains, looking more like homeless children, and sleeping without a care. Some of them even smiled at the workers or waved to them. Commenting on their great numbers, Hamza sang, “If time deals you a bad hand, son of noble ones, bow your head, but follow not the ignoble ones.” His co-workers, who could not see the connection between what he said and what was happening, laughed.

“Aren’t they the ones who were fighting?” Dimyan asked him.

“My heart tells me these are good-hearted men who don’t know how to fight in Egypt or Greece. It’s all the devil Mussolini’s fault,” was Hamza’s reply.

Roosevelt delivered a speech in which he said that America was going to be “the great arsenal of democracy.” The licensed prostitutes of Alexandria complained about the dwindling number of patrons after the great emigration from the city. They requested that they be used to entertain the English soldiers in their camps in return for a fixed income, since Commonwealth soldiers who went to the brothels went there drunk and did not pay. Besides, the local customers, knowing that they had become a rare commodity, were no longer going to the poor brothels in Farahda and Kom Bakir, but to the posh ones in Hamamil, and were paving there what they used to pay in the poor ones. The newspapers announced that mentally retarded persons in Germany and countries under German occupation would be executed: “In Germany alone, one hundred thousand wretched creatures, idiots, and incurably insane creatures will be executed in the next few days.” The workers laughed when Hamza said that only today he did not wish the Italians to enter Egypt because that meant that “the Germans would enter too, and execute all railroad workers like us.” When he saw Ghibriyal’s fox-like glance, he immediately added,”Except foremen,” and everyone laughed even more. Dimyan began to feel a spiritual affinity with Hamza, and Magd al-Din forgot his previous insult to him,

Churchill gave a speech in which he praised Anglo-American cooperation, saying that they were in the sentinel tower guarding history. The air raids against Alexandria since Italy entered the war numbered one hundred, the most vicious of which was the six-hour raid and the two of the previous November. But the Italians had not come to drink Nile water; rather, they came as prisoners of war, as lost souls walking hundreds of miles on foot from Libya to Marsa Matruh. Many of them died on the road in the sun, the rain, and the desert winds. From Marsa Matruh, they were shipped by train or boat to Alexandria. The newspapers also reported on the trial of those accused in the case of the defective helmets supplied to the Egyptian and the British armies. It was a cause célèbre, widely covered in the papers and talked about everywhere, especially in cafés and bars. The Royal British Army and the Royal Egyptian Army had, at the beginning of the war, announced an invitation to bid on supplying fifty thousand helmets for Commonwealth soldiers and twenty thousand for Egyptian soldiers. The bid was won by a team of Egyptian and Greek contractors, who delivered the helmets on time. It turned out afterwards, however, that the helmets were fake, that they were all made of tin rather than steel, as was customary. In trying to excuse himself, one of the defendants said, “What good would a helmet, tin or steel, do against bombs from the air or against the big guns? Would a helmet protect a soldier or prevent his death if God had already decreed his death?” The case, and news of it, proved to be a welcome diversion for the Egyptians during the war. The trial was continued, as the defendants and the Egyptians had hoped. Kassala fell to the English, and Ethiopian troops and the Italians retreated to Eritrea, and Emperor Haile Selassie prepared to enter Ethiopia at the head of his national army. Al-Azhar celebrated the new year of the Islamic calendar. Ghaffara still put the anti-airraid fez on his face; he no longer traded in sawdust, as most lumber yards had closed down after the cessation of maritime trade with Europe. His customers, mostly shop owners, had also dwindled as a result of the great emigration. So Ghaffara removed the wooden box from his cart, leaving only one side panel, on which he wrote, “Capacity: ten tons. Ready to move migrants to the station with luggage or without.” He started to salute people in the manner of Goebbels, as he said, by raising his arm and saying “Heil Hitler” to everyone. At the end of January, Muhammad Mahmud Pasha, the former prime minister of Egypt known as “the Iron Fist,” died in Cairo. The soulful singer Malak opened in Butterfly in Brentania theater on Imad al-Din Street. In Greece, the great Greek leader General Metaxas died, and mourning was declared in the Greek Consulate in Alexandria and all Greek clubs. An order prohibiting bicycle riding in some streets in the capital was issued. Italians retreated to Benghazi and Churchill spoke in the House of Commons, saying that Egypt and Suez were saved. Cinema Misr screened the film Salarna’s All Right. The English began advancing on Tripoli. Italian tanks and armored cars were burned, Italian casualties and prisoners of war since the beginning of the British offensive totaled 150,000. Grief and muffled resentment of its mighty leader gripped Italy. Decorations went up everywhere in Egypt on the occasion of His Majesty’s birthday; music played in public squares, gala parties were held in Zaafarana palace, police-officers’ clubs, and the patriarchate. Restaurants were opened for the poor, and school children sang for our happy king. The dreams of Graziani to rule Egypt as a viceroy were shattered. A sublime royal directive announcing the campaign to combat bare feet was issued: “Barefootcdness is not a cause but a consequence. It is better for the citizen to buy, with his own money, shoes that would protect his feet. Giving him shoes out of charity takes away from his dignity and increases his humiliation.” At the same time the king donated the wild coney that he had caught to the Giza zoo. The newspaper ai-Ahram published an article to explain what a “coney” was:

“We have received from the Reverend Boulos Roman, from Asyut, a description of this animal. He said that it resembled a rabbit, that it chewed its cud but that it did not divide the cloven hoof, that it was one of the beasts that God ordered the Israelites not to eat, since they were unclean. He added that it was sometimes known as “the sheep of Israel,” that it lived in the rocks, and therefore was known for its wisdom. Solomon mentioned it in ‘Proverbs,’ saying, ‘There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the coneys are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locust have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.’ When the prophet David enumerated God’s mercy toward man, beast, and bird, he said that He created the rocks as shelter for the coneys. In some translations, the word ‘rabbits’ has been used, and even though they resemble each other, each was mentioned separately in the Bible, first the coney, then the rabbit. The fact that it was mentioned in the Bible tells us that it is found in abundance in Palestine.”