Amiriya is the closest city to Alexandria on that road, thirty kilometers to the west, and southwest of Lake Maryut, which bounds Alexandria and keeps it pressed to the sea. In the days of Muhammad Ali it was know as Ikingi Uthman, named after the ruler’s majordomo. During Abbas Pasha’s reign it came to be known as Biringi Maryut, that is, “First Maryut,” thus Ikingi Maryut was the second city. Amiriya is a hodgepodge of a market town where the Bedouin of the Bihayra governorate meet with the Bedouin of Maryut and some merchants of Alexandria once a week. Beyond that, nothing much: a few scattered houses, an old railroad station, and a train that carries water once a week to the desert, where the few inhabitants go out to meet it and fill their jerry cans and load them on their donkeys’ backs.
Ikingi Maryut is the more famous of the two. It is dry year-round, both a summer and a winter resort. It seems that God has given it the gift of wondrous, enchanting air. Beautiful windmills can be seen pumping pure water that has stayed underground for millions of years, in order to water fig, almond, and pomegranate trees, grapevines, and the memories of visitors. When you enter Ikingi Maryut, you forget all other towns and you feel your life simplified to serenity. Time and space cease to exist.
Amiriya is different. It seems at all times to be a town without an identity, choked by the dust that gathers from all directions, because it has no gardens and because the sun seems to linger above it always, day and night. This is one of the curious things about Amiriya, for despite being close to Alexandria and the lakes, it is always hot. It is said that it got its name from the ancient Greek city of Marea, which is buried near the sea and which used to be a great spot for wine-making, dance, and love. “Alexandria is Marca, a happy city, and its earth is saffron,” as the saying goes. It is also said that the tribes of Rabia and Hilal ibn Amr settled here for some time before moving westward, thus the town got its name from these tribes. This is more plausible, as you could smell the hair of the Bedouin tents in the air; the few scattered dusty houses in Amiriya look from a distance like tent pegs, sometimes screaming with the desire to move in search of water and grass.
Not far from Amiriya is Burg al-Arab, which used to be no more than a guard post. In 1918, Major Bramly, police inspector in the Western Desert governorate, chose a high hill where he built a big palace in which he collected all kinds of artifacts and surrounded with a beautiful garden and fitted with windmills to raise fresh water. At the foot of the hill, several houses were built to serve the alabaster palace, whose Greek and Roman pillars Bramly had moved from the nearby area of Abu Mina. Abu Mina was a site that held scattered Greek and Roman relics as well as the church of Abumna, built by the emperor Arcadius in 405 C.E. on top of the tomb of Saint Menas, who had fled the persecution of Diocletian. But the latter sent troops that captured and killed the saint. Diocletian did not know that the Lord’s children or disciples would not die; none ever truly died. As always happened, Diocletian died and Saint Menas lived on. Bramly died and his palace was taken over by the overseer of royal possessions. The soldiers who guarded it told the few inhabitants of the area stories about the luminescent alabaster walls, about beautiful singing sounds that filled the palace at night together with the sea wind. They spoke of a state of ecstasy that came over the soldiers every night, making them laugh for no reason, inebriated on a wine they had not drunk. They turned at night into happy children and spent the day surprised at what happened during the night.
Figs in the palace garden had the sweet taste of honey, almonds gave off the scent of apples, and the pomegranates were as cool as ice. Beyond this small settlement of Burg al-Arab, to reach al-Alamein one had to pass by the town of al-Hammam, established on the ruins of the Greek town of Kaminos, famous for its natural baths. It was built around an old market frequented by merchants of the west who went there to meet with merchants of the Delta. Al-Hammam was settled by Moroccans a long time ago and contained the Mosque of Ziyad ibn al-Aghlab, which he built while on his way to conquer North Africa. It is a desert town smelling of camels, goats, and sheep, where people moved fast whether going to it, leaving from it, or staying in it, as if everything suddenly has turned into a mirage. It is difficult to retain the memory of a face you come across in that town, where you pause only to push on, a town created for quick commerce. Leaving it and going west means going to al-Alamein, that deserted spot, a small railroad station with a mere half-meter-high platform topped by two wooden rooms for the stationmaster and the telegraph operator. The platform ends at a primitive barricade consisting of a wooden pole with a rope attached to one end and a weight of stone at the other end. When the operator pulls the rope, the pole is lowered, blocking the way. After the train goes through, he lets go of the rope, and the counterbalance causes the pole to be raised so that nonexistent cars and the few people may cross the tracks. That was before the war; now there were many cars and soldiers. That road across the tracks is the only road in al-Alamein. It starts at the sea and goes through the village, which is no more than two rows of houses built of limestone cut from the mountain of al-Hammam.
The houses stood empty. The same Bedouin who had left their encampments built them, but when the war broke out, they moved away again, leaving behind the limestone houses and going back to their tents and encampments on the edge of the Qattara depression. The distance between Alexandria and al-Alamein is one hundred kilometers, and between the sea and the Qattara depression is twenty-five kilometers, thus making it a bottleneck unsuitable for military maneuvers, but a good last line of defense if the armies had to retreat before the Axis. That area was now a repository for weapons, ammunition, and supplies and a training ground for troops. Al-Alamein is six hundred feet above sea level, and the land slopes southwards to the Qattara depression across an area of sand dunes and perilous salty swamps. On the edges of these dunes and swamps live a few Bedouin, Bani Ahmar and Bani Abyad, Saadis and Murabitin who have been at peace for such a long time that their dialect no longer has words for “war” and “fighting.”
Beyond al-Alamein there were no other inhabited towns worth stopping at except Sidi Abd al-Rahman and Marsa Matruh. The dunes of al-Alamein are characterized by their off-white limestone color that continues to Sidi Abd al-Rahman, a little-noticed summer resort next to a small village that is nothing more than a mosque the Bedouin built to honor Abd al-Rahman, of watermelon fame, who had become a saint.
Abd al-Rahman was a handsome young man who was walking with his ugly friend, a barber who had evil designs on him. They had gone far into the desert when the barber took out a razor he had been hiding in his vest and severed Abd al-Rahman’s head, then left him buried in the sand. A year later the barber took the same route, which he had forgotten. In the desert, the land and the dunes looked alike. He saw a watermelon patch bearing a big ripe watermelon lying on the ground, He could not resist; who could resist a watermelon in the desert? He picked up the watermelon, and on his way back, he thought of giving it as a gift to the chief of the tribe. That was more beneficial than eating it, he thought.
The chief of the tribe was happy with the gift. But as soon as he plunged the knife into it, blood gushed forth. He plunged the knife again, and again the blood gushed forth. The wise old chief looked at the barber, who by now was terrified in front of all those present. He had remembered everything. He asked the chief for an assurance of protection, and the chief gave him that assurance. So he started telling everyone how he had killed his friend on that very spot. The Bedouin built a tomb for Abd al-Rahman on top of the watermelon patch, and they buried the watermelon, which they realized contained Abd al-Rahman’s head. The tomb became a shrine around which the little village came into being.