“Congratulations! You can read, Dimyan,” Magd al-Din told him.

“What do you think of that, Sheikh Magd?” asked Dimyan after a second.

“What do you mean?” “I mean, how useful is it?”

“To tell you the truth, Dimyan,” said Magd al-Din with a smile, “I was puzzled too when you read it to me.”

“Is this why I learned to read — for these newspapers?”

Magd al-Din laughed silently and Dimyan said, as if to himself, “What stupid newspapers! Why should I care about a maharaja, well-off or broke?”

Dimyan threw the newspaper out of Magd al-Din’s window and left without bending to pick it up. Churchill gave a speech in which he announced Britain’s options: victory or death. Nothing new was learned about Hamza. Shahin no longer spoke about his son to Magd al-Din. The verdict was announced in the case of the defective helmets, which was declared to be a case of commercial fraud rather than high treason, so the defendants got off with light sentences and everyone was happy. As of April 20, the sale of liquor in Alexandria was restricted to those with permits issued by the military. This was due to the many accidents resulting from drunkenness, and also because alcoholic beverages were used to make explosives. In their new raids on Alexandria, the German planes started dropping small incendiary bombs, and the people were instructed on how to handle them if they had not exploded. The military courts in Alexandria also heard seventy cases against Italians living in the city who had not heeded a previous military order to surrender their radios to the police. The radios were confiscated, but no spies were uncovered. It was announced that on the last Monday of the month, Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator would be screened in several cinemas in the capital and in Cinema Royal in Alexandria. When it was shown, record crowds in wartime were observed in front of the cinemas. It now seemed that Dimyan had never expressed a strong desire to watch a Charlie Chaplin film; he found out about the film but did nothing about it — he did not even allow himself to think of it. Ghaffara met Magd al-Din on the street and reproached him for taking his wife to the station without asking him to give them a ride on his cart. Magd al-Din smiled and thanked him, telling him that that they left in the late morning, when Ghaffara was nowhere to be found on the street. Then he told him about his trip to al-Alamein the following day and asked him if it would be possible to pick him up at five in the morning to take him with his friend Dimyan and their luggage to the station. Ghaffara said he would then asked him where al-Alamein was, and Magd al-Din told him.

The night was long. His life passed in front of his mind’s eye. He felt as if a whole lifetime had passed since Zahra left. Had Dimitri not come to visit him and sat with him a long time, the night would not have passed. Dimitri asked him if he would come to Alexandria during vacations, and Magd al-Din said that he would not, that if he got a vacation he would go to the village. He said that with great emphasis, which baffled Dimitri. Then Magd al-Din told him that he would give him three months rent, and would send him the rent every month after that with Dimyan, who would surely come to Alexandria to see his family. Dimitri asked him who Dimyan was. Magd al-Din was surprised, and after a pause started to remind Dimitri of him but the man, who could not remember, said, “Oh yes, I remember him,” but he was not telling the truth. This perplexed Magd al-Din, who began to wonder what might have happened to his landlord’s mind. They spoke a lot about people, the country, and the war. Dimitri suddenly asked him if he had found out anything new about Rushdi, and Magd al-Din told him the truth, namely that his father no longer spoke about his son in front of him. Dimitri said with regret that he hoped the young man realized the gravity of the situation and would let it pass peacefully, that he personally would not have liked to stand in the way of his daughter’s wish but that it was a difficult wish. He was sure time would heal all wounds. Magd al-Din thanked Dimitri for the time he had spent in his house and told him that both he and Dimyan had applied to the railroad authority for housing if a vacancy should occur, and that he was hopeful. Dimitri reassured him about his furniture in the room-”exactly as if you are here, Sheikh Magd”—and shook his hand warmly, then went upstairs and left Magd al-Din, who wished to get some sleep that night. He began to recite silently some of the short chapters of the Quran to calm his nerves.

The previous day’s newspapers had announced that the country was ready for Hollywood’s new masterpiece, produced by David Selznick, starring the famous actors Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Leslie Howard, as well as more than thirty-five hundred new actors and actresses. That masterpiece was based on the famous novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind. The papers also published the name of the German officer commanding the Axis forces in Libya. It was Erwin Rommel, who came from the French front and who had shown great skill in desert warfare. The public health office in the governorate also announced that births in Alexandria that week numbered four hundred locals and twenty foreigners. As for deaths, they numbered 120 locals. The causes of death given were old age, a variety of fevers, malaria, tuberculosis, dysentery, whooping cough, tetanus, and air raids. Deaths among foreigners numbered ten. Causes given were drunkenness, insanity, and suicide.

21

The Maryut coast — or the Libyan coast, as the ancient Carthaginians called it — extending from Alexandria to Sallum, before it enters Libya, is the forgotten coast in Egypt. It is where Magd al-Din and Dimyan were going this morning. Off the coast lies the Mediterranean, bluer than in Alexandria, with clear water that reveals rocks and sand, enticing you to hold out your hands and scoop up water to drink, and forget that the water is salty. The coast, for whoever hears of or sees it, is the desert itself. It is a barren coast, beyond which the desert extends endlessly, with a horizon in every direction and a mirage on every horizon. On this deserted coast many large armies have marched. The Libyan Shishak I was the first to use it to invade Egypt in 945 B.C. At that time, pharaonic glories had reached the high heavens: the pharaohs sat on the gods’ throne, and one dynasty followed another, twenty-one of them, until the inevitable decline set in. Eventually, though, it was the Egyptians’ turn to march on the coast, this time to Libya. That was in the reign of Aprieus, the fourth king of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. He set out to Cyrene to rid it of Greek rule, but failed to do so. Ptolemy I, however, was able to reach Cyrene and annex Libya, from which the worship of Isis spread west. The Libyans built a temple for her. It is still standing today in Cyrenaica, as is the bath of Cleopatra VIII (Selene) — daughter of Cleopatra VII, who ruled Egypt — just like her mother’s bath in Marsa Matruh. Both baths are carved out of the rocks in the sea. Were the two of them daughters of Poseidon, god of the sea, or were they both goddesses of the sea?

The road was not completely deserted then. Alexander took it to Marsa Matruh before turning into the desert to head for the temple of Amun in Siwa. The Arab tribes of Bani Salim and Bani Hílal took the same road a thousand years later, migrating from Najd to Morocco, then came back bearing the name “the Fatimids.” The Fatimids were the last to take that road before troops from England and the Commonwealth, from India, Australia, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, and Cape Town marched on it, as did troops from southern Italy and Germany, in the opposite direction. The northern coast has been a road of war and death. In times of peace, the Christians took it to escape Roman persecution, and they built small monasteries in the farthest depressions in the desert. They reached all the way to al-Wadi al-Jadid and built churches and monasteries in Bagawat and near Alexandria in Bahig, Ikingi Maryut, and Burg al-Arab. During times of peace, the road was taken by the Bedouin tribes of Ali al-Abyad and Ah al-Ahmar of the Awlad Ali of the Saadi Arabs, and the sedentary Murabitin tribes of Jamayat, Qawabis, and Samalush, who were usually charged with guard duties and took up their positions among the settlements of the different tribes to provide them protection when the Saadi Arabs were busy fighting.