Ghaffara began to stay away from Ghayt al-Aynab and Karmuz after most houses there had become vacant. He started working in the neighborhoods of Ghurbal, Paulino, and Muharram Bey every day in the early morning, but would return in the middle of the night, desperate and tired since he had earned hardly enough to feed his donkey. One of the pieces of glass that he used as an eyepiece had fallen off his fez and he did not replace it.
As for Zahra, she had grown big; her seventh month was almost ending, and sitting with Umm Hamidu was no longer a welcome distraction. How could a pregnant woman sit at the entrance of a house on the pavement? Therefore she was deprived of her stories at a time that she needed them most, for now Sitt Maryam’s door was only opened to let someone in or out. It seemed the whole family wished to avoid speaking to anyone. The priest’s visits increased— they became almost a daily occurrence. Zahra would always hear mumbling, muffled quarrels and groans, and sometimes silent weeping. She did not know what to do for the good family that suddenly seemed not to want to talk with anyone.
Umm Hamidu also needed Zahra more those days since Hamidu, her only son, had been arrested and moved to Sinai together with criminals who threatened the security and safety of the country during wartime. The few inhabitants still left in the street were depressed. When a man or a woman would come to buy fruit or vegetables, they would come in silence and leave in silence, their eyes fixed on the ground, as if carrying a mountain of shame. It was feeling the emptiness surrounding everything and expecting death at any time during an air raid that made people so fragile. The only one left for Umm Hamidu to talk with was the vegetable wholesaler each dawn on his cart drawn by a strong horse. As for the Territorial Army soldier who sang and proposed to her, he had been transferred to Damanhur. Zahra told Magd al-Din, “The priest is coming everyday now. I don’t see either of the girls. I don’t know when they leave in the morning. Apparently they sneak out quietly so I won’t see them. Sitt Maryam doesn’t open her door during the day.”
She was surprised when Magd al-Din told her, “And I’ve met Dimitri more than once on the stairs, and he hasn’t stopped to speak to me — he just says hello and goes on. Today he politely asked me if I could move down to Bahi’s room. But I felt he wanted to tell me to move out of the house altogether.”
Right away Zahra said, “There are so many vacant houses, and thousands who want to rent rooms.”
“No. We won’t leave the house. We’ll go downstairs. Dirmtri’s in a tight spot. Today he doesn’t want us to know anything, but tomorrow he might need us.”
Dimyan helped him move the few articles of furniture to Bahi’s room. As soon as Zahra walked in and opened the window looking out on the street and saw Umm Hamidu in the entrance of the opposite house, she felt relief. Here she was not going to suffer the silence that seemed to have taken root on the second floor. She would hear people and children coming and going and talking. After they moved the furniture, Dimyan took Magd al-Din to the café far away on the Mahmudiya canal near the lupino bean vendors. They had not been here in a very long time.
“Why did you bring me here, Dimyan?” Magd al-Din asked him. “We’d almost forgotten this place.”
“Well, first, I’ve made great progress in reading and writing. In a few days, I’ll be able to read the newspaper.”
“Praise the Lord!”
“Second, I wanted to tell you that Khawaga Dimitri is going through a big crisis.”
“I know that, but I don’t know what kind of crisis, and he doesn’t talk to me.”
“I think it’s a crisis that one doesn’t talk about,” said Dimyan after a pause. “It’s also preoccupying the priest at the church. I’ve heard a few things in church about the subject, but I’m not sure whether they were talking about Dimitri or somebody else.” They both fell silent for a long time. Magd al-Din was not the inquisitive kind and never made an effort to know what people were doing. Even secrets that came his way, he did not divulge. He hated scandal-mongering and gossip of all kinds.
“There’s talk about a Christian girl’s love for a Muslim boy,” Dimyan finally said.
Magd al-Din’s eyes opened wide in surprise. That was the first time he had heard about that.
“This is something that happens rarely, Sheikh Magd,” Dimyan continued, “and it always fails, but only after causing crises at home and in the church. Eor you in Islam, there’s no problem. In our case, there is.”
Magd al-Din made no reply. “Of course, I don’t know whether this has anything to do with Dimitri’s family or not. But in any case, Dimitri has a problem that only time will reveal.”
Magd al-Din returned home dejected. Zahra asked him why he was down, and he could find no excuse but Hamza to get him out of the sticky situation. He said Hamza had not vet returned— and that was true. She said he had already told her that. He told her there was much talk about his possibly being a prisoner of war, held by the Germans. She could not imagine how he knew that. He also did not know how and why he said that. Hamza’s disappearance a few days before had caused him and his colleagues a great deal of worry. Usta Ghibriyal notified the railroad administration, which notified the Alexandria police department, which informed them that it in turn had notified the military command of the Eighth Army in Marsa Matruh and was waiting for news. Hamza’s wife and his three young daughters never stopped crying at their home in the railroad housing compound. Hamza’s relatives came from Rosetta. They turned out to be well-off and quite respectable. It also turned out that one of his cousins was a notable who held an important position in the Wafd party and that he was pulling all the strings he could to get news about poor Hamza.
Ordinarily when Hamza’s colleagues spoke in disapproval and surprise about what had happened to him, a silent sadness would fall over them. But the matter was not without its humorous aspects. One of them would say that Hamza would suffer most from silence because he would not understand English or Indian, and the few words that he knew would not really help him. He would not get a chance to say that he had seen what the soldiers said they had seen or that it had happened to him before it happened to them. Neither Bayram’s poetry, nor anyone else’s, would do him any good. But in the end they would express total disbelief. Who would have thought that this had been preordained for Hamza?
Now they were more careful when they approached the troop trains; they did not come too close to them any more. In many instances, they no longer spoke to the soldiers or cared to get what canned foods they used to get. They realized that those things were worthless compared to the disappearance of their colleague, abducted in the dark. Yesterday Dimyan sobbed. He and Magd al-Din felt the loss the most once his disappearance was confirmed the day after his abduction. Dimyan felt sorry because he had always argued with him and was happy to expose his delightful little lies. Magd al-Din felt sorry because he had insulted him once and because he himself had thought about the possibility of being abducted, of being pulled up by the hand to the train and taken to the front, as had happened to his brother Bahi in the previous war. Had he known Hamza’s fate beforehand, but was not aware of it, or was he the cause of it, with this crazy thinking of his?
Hamza had been pleasant with Dimyan and gentle with Magd al-Din; he was kind to children and loved everyone. He was worthy both of pity and love, and that was how everyone felt, especially Shahin, the tallest and strongest among them. He was very muscular and could carry a crosstie with one hand, and usually during work he carried two on his arms. He was the most dejected, but in reality it was for another reason-when Magd al-Din went to tell him that Hamza was smart and would know how to come back, he was surprised to see Shahin’s eyes well up with tears as he said in a soft voice, “You’re a good man, Sheikh Magd. You know God’s Quran by heart. Please come with me to cure my son with the Quran, or show him the right path.”