“Are you the new workers?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Come on in.”

He walked and they followed him to his room. At that moment, another man appeared at the door of the other room and stood there, staring at them. The stationmaster told him that they were the new crossing workers. The man welcomed them. Before they got into the stationmaster’s room, Dimyan said, “Our stuff’s on the platform.”

The stationmaster smiled and said calmly, “Don’t worry. Nothing gets lost here.”

In the stationmaster’s room they all sat, Dimyan and Magd al-Din on a small wooden bench and the stationmaster and his colleague on another one facing them.

“My name is Hilal,” said the stationmaster. “My colleague here is Amer — he’s the telegraph operator. His work is extremely important. Being late sending or receiving a telegram can have serious consequences.” He paused for a moment and looked at Amer as if he needed confirmation for what he had said, then continued, “There may come a time when neither he nor I will be needed. Perhaps only the two of you will remain to handle the army traffic at the crossing. Military trains will not stop, which means your work is very important. Here we are working directly under the British command, supervised by a young English officer who knows a little Arabic. He’s a little arrogant but quite sympathetic. There’s an old housing compound, which is vacant now. Amer and I live in one of the houses. You can take the one next to it. The water train comes only once a week, and if it’s late we get some water from the soldiers. There’s no one in town except a few Bedouin in a settlement to the south. Some of their men sometimes show up when the water train arrives. They fill their jerry cans, but they don’t mix with anyone. They walk fast and they look like camels. Every one of them is so tall you’d expect them to keel over any minute.” He laughed by himself and continued, “They never feel hungry. They live on the fat of their bodies, exactly like camels. And they guard their dignity fiercely. Sometimes a young shepherdess comes with her sheep and her little brother. I hope no one will give her any trouble — but I haven’t had the honor of your names.”

“Magd al-Din.”

Dimyan was a little hesitant to say his name. He had had it with the man’s chatter, but politeness, especially because this was the first meeting, compelled him to listen on. “Dimyan,” he finally said.

Resentment showed on the face of Amer the telegraph operator. Hilal was silent for a few moments, then said as if to rebuke Amer, whose resentment was visible, “In any case, Jesus is a prophet and Muhammad is a prophet, too.”

But Dimyan was still thinking about what the man said in his long talk and was amused by the thought that the stationmaster’s name meant ‘crescent,’ while his face was as round as the full moon.

It was noon. There was a big clock in the stationmaster’s room, and Magd al-Din thanked God for that, otherwise how would he know prayer times when there was no mosque calling the faithful to prayer, for neither he nor Dimyan had a watch. He did not know that he would soon meet Muslim soldiers of the empire on which the sun never set.

The stationmaster got up to show them the house where they would stay. No sooner had they made it to the platform than they saw in front of them the young English officer wearing khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. His knees were dark, which meant that he had spent a long time in the desert unlike new soldiers whose knees looked white and red, with the exception of the Africans, naturally. The officer wore a green cap.

“Hello Mr. Spike,” the stationmaster called out. The officer pretended not to hear him and asked Magd al-Din and Dimyan in English, “Do you speak English?”

They understood the question but did not answer. Magd al-Din was at a loss for words; he thought immediately of Hamza, who knew a little English, actually a lot of English compared to the two of them. Hamza was lost.

Magd al-Din felt his face cloud over and sadness came over him as if ants were crawling all over his hot cheeks. He bowed his head and looked at the floor and almost asked the officer if he knew anything about Hamza. He heard the officer ask the stationmaster in annoyance, “What happened, Hilal?”

Dimyan blurted out, “Yes, sir, afandim?”

The officer stared at him in confusion. Now everyone was confused. Magd al-Din realized the mess that Dimyan’s comment had created. The officer was now muttering audibly, “A pair of stupid Egyptians!”

Then he said to the stationmaster in a mixture of Arabic and English, “What a bunch of jackasses!”

“You know Arabic wonderful, General!” Dimyan said to the officer, smiling and blushing.

The officer, still staring, could not help smiling himself. Hilal, Amer, and Magd al-Din were visibly relieved.

“Give them some blankets, tins of food, and anything else they need,” the officer told Hilal.

Hilal accompanied them to the housing compound, then left them after opening the door of the house where they would live. Magd al-Din had been inside a railroad-authority house the night that Shahin had invited him to see his son Rushdi. Magd al-Din and Dimyan had both applied to get homes in that compound at the earliest opportunity — and now they were getting a house not much different from the ones in Alexandria. But here there were no tiles, and the walls were not painted. The big white stones were now dirty and no longer white. Spiders and little insects were in the cracks. The wooden roof here was old and unpaintcd. Magd al-Din knew that when a human arrived in a place, he became the master of all beings in that place. So he would have to clean the walls and get rid of all the insects, even if he had to apply the flames of the kerosene stove to them. From the soldiers, he could probably get some substance that would get rid of the insects for good. Perhaps Dimyan was having the same thoughts: neither of them would spend the rest of his life here. This was a land of war, a land of death. This horrendous wilderness would swallow everything. Magd al-Din opened the little window of the inner room and saw the stark desert looking him in the face. Dimyan was in the outer hall looking closely at the filthy walls and wondering at the smell rising out of the dry bathroom that had no faucets and no pipes. He went into the room and found Magd al-Din standing, transfixed, in front of the window looking at the endless emptiness.

“What’s the matter, Sheikh Magd? Do you miss Umm Shawqiya?” Dimyan asked.

Magd al-Din took a long, deep breath. “I am a peasant, Dimyan. I’ve never seen the desert before.”

“And I’ve never seen the desert before cither, even though I’m from the city.”

He was silent for a few moments during which Magd al-Din thought about the work arrangement. They would have to split the day at the crossing: if he worked days, Dimyan would work nights and vice versa.

“You think the time can pass here, Dimyan? It seems like the world has come to a standstill.”

Dimyan looked at him in surprise while Magd al-Din was overcome with shame, as he appeared, for the first time, awkward and impatient.

“Leave creation to the Creator, Sheikh Magd,” Dimyan said sheepishly. “God has the power to make a whole lifetime pass in the twinkling of an eye,” Then he laughed boisterously and said, “Do you know what I was thinking just now, Sheikh Magd? I was thinking of the abonne Radwan Express. He doesn’t seem normal.”

“Just because he never leaves the train?”

Dimyan did not answer. He fell silent and so did Magd al-Din. It looked like Dimyan was about to cry.

“I feel like I’m going to die here, Sheikh Magd,” he said suddenly, tears welling up in his eyes.

Quickly Sheikh Magd al-Din assumed his old confident posture and patted his friend on the shoulder.

“People like you don’t die so fast, Dimyan. Yes, it’s only right that the world keep the few good folks it has.”