17

There was a lot of work the last few days of winter, as cold air seared the faces in the early morning. The wind grew worse, especially after Magd al-Din and Dimyan went beyond the wall to the wide open space above the railroad tracks. There the month of Amshir had a chance to show itself in its true colors, as eddies whirled the dust suddenly, letting loose the cold wind, after which crazy rain poured down from a cloud that had raced in from some distant place. On their usual morning route, Magd al-Din and Dimyan no longer felt provoked by the silent operator of the Raven, who still stared at them. Dimyan noticed that the man had grown a beard and now was rarely ever seated, but instead was constantly walking back and forth. Dimyan asked Magd al-Din whether the man had actually gone crazy. Magd al-Din gave him his usual, vexing response, “Leave the creation to the Creator, Dimyan.”

The workers had the task of completing a two-kilometer extension of the rail line, as the present lines could not accommodate all the trains waiting to enter the harbor. The two direct long-distance lines to and from the desert also had to be clear of all other trains.

The open area extending behind Alexandria, from Muharram Bey to Qabbari and passing by Ghayt al-Aynab and Kafr Ashri, was crowded with hundreds of cars and dozens of black steam engines that never stopped moving. They carried weapons from the harbor to the desert, or weapons and soldiers coming from Suez, or those that had been on furlough in Alexandria, as well as prisoners of war. Several trains arrived from the Cairo warehouses with dozens of flatbed cars carrying crossties, rails, and thousands of huge screws and nails, as well as the square steel plates placed between the cross ties and the rails. Trains coming from the Western Desert brought huge amounts of ballast. The area was suddenly filled with railroad policemen in their distinctive yellow uniforms, stationed near and around the equipment unloaded by the workers and the winches moving on rails. The workers, numbering over a hundred, gathered from all the posts to take part in this giant task that had to be finished in record time, even if they had to work day and night.

Despite their woolen outfits, the cold assailed the workers at the neck, sleeves, and hems of their pants. The heat of working was no longer enough to give them warmth, as the wind and the open space gave them no shelter. No one was allowed to take a lunch break, now reduced to one hour, at home. The workers accepted all this hardship, bothered only by the intermittent downpours. The rain forced them to run and take shelter next to or under the nearest car, but as soon as they returned to work, it came down again. On several occasions they made light of it and stayed at their work posts, but it would surprise them by coming down longer and harder. They found themselves obstinately matching wits with the rain.

They divided themselves — actually, their foremen, who were traditional experts at that kind of work, divided them into teams. One team was assigned to level the ground. Their tools were pickaxes and shovels. Another team poured and leveled the ballast in the spots where the crossties would be placed. Their tools were baskets and shovels. A third team was charged with arranging the ties. Their tools were their shoulders, on which they carried the tics. Another team had to carry the rails and place them on top of the crossties and the plates. One team was to fasten the rails to the crossties, using the spikes, which went through the steel plates under the rails and into the crossties, and which secured the two sides of the rail from the bottom. The last team tamped the ballast under the ties. The foremen’s task was to measure precisely the gaps between the rails horizontally and the bends to make sure that the exact number of millimeters was left between sections of the same rail, so that when the rails stretched in the summer or shrank in the winter, they would not buckle. And, like all workers in the world, it was impossible to endure the hardship of long, arduous work without singing rhythmically, “Haila hop haila, haila hop haila.” This was especially true of those who carried the rails, each of which was eight meters long. Each of these was carried by ten men, who sang as they carried it, then gently lowered it to their feet, and then, all at once, let go of it on top of the plates and the crossties. Then they moved back, leaving the place to the fastening team, which placed the huge screws that went through the crossties, using a long key in the shape of a tube, at the bottom of which was a square cavity the size of the screw head. All the while they sang to the saints about the pain in their backs, about their children, and about the English, who abducted the women. Then they would laugh as Hamza watched.

Hamza was always among the rail carriers, despite his being shorter than his colleagues. As Hamza watched the fasteners spread around the rails, they seemed to him like desert hornets, as they hovered close together and moved their arms all the time. He sometimes imagined that they had sprouted wings and flew in the sky, holding the rail then riding it as if it were a magic carpet. Then he would laugh. From time to time, Dimyan would stop tamping the ballast under the crossties and look at Hamza in the middle of the line of men carrying the rail. He would realize, in surprise and admiration, that his short colleague was very smart, that he did not carry anything since the rail supported on the shoulders of his tall colleagues barely touched his shoulders. Hamza must have realized the meaning of Dimyan’s occasional glances at him, so he would sing:

I am a hardy camel,

my only trouble is the camel driver,

A grouchy man who’s not up to his task.

Or:

An orphan whose family is lost

Is lost in this country.

Or less loudly but with more feeling:

A prisoner of war in time

Can he sold to the nobility

But the people of a free country

Employed him as a servant.

“Bravo, Hamza. May God inspire you,” the workers would say, only to be silenced by the downpour and run to take shelter in the cars.

The workers did not have fixed duties, but changed them every two days. Usta Ghibriyal was of the opinion that they should change every day, as that was more restful for the body and did not tax the workers’ abilities. But Usta al-Bayya, foreman of Post Number Two, said the change would be better every two days. Al-Bayya was an old foreman, and his recklessness was so widely known that the workers nicknamed him ‘the crazy one.’ So no one could argue with him. Al-Bayya said, “Two days is better for the workers — they are as strong as donkeys.” When he spoke, al-Bayya sprayed, a fact that made anyone speaking with him end the conversation as quickly as he could. In reality, all the jobs were equally hard, despite the apparent differences. Dimyan was of the opinion that all the jobs were so horrible that he prayed silently to Mari Girgis, the Martyr, who had given him that job, to fill the sky with black clouds so the rain would never stop, and the rails would come undone, and the trains would overturn, and the Allies would stop fighting the Axis. Then he would find time to learn reading and writing, subjects in which he had not made much progress, even though he had to take a test in a few weeks, otherwise he would not get a raise the following year. He would say to himself, “Lord, Most Holy, who created us and put us in heaven, but we disobeyed you by the counsel of the serpent and fell from life everlasting. But you did not abandon us but sent us saints and prophets to look after us. Then one day you appeared to us, who sat in the dark, with your only son, our savior Jesus Christ, who died that we may live. Make us worthy, Lord, to partake of your holiness to purify our souls and our bodies. Have mercy on us, God the Father, Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison.”