Then Hamza could speak no more.

28

Hamza left them after two days of rest. He started on his way to Alexandria, going on foot until he reached al-Hammam. He refused to get on any train that had soldiers on it.

“It’s forty kilometers to al-Hammam, Hamza.”

“I’ll walk. I’m not riding with any soldiers, ever.” He said that he wanted to take the regular passenger train from al-Hammam.

Hamza walked on the railroad tracks that reached all the way to Alexandria. This was the only way to arrive safely. When Hamza disappeared in the distance, Magd al-Din and Dimyan thought about the big world and all the stories that were taking place in it. How could the world cope with all these painful stories? For several days they spoke only in whispers and said very little to each other. One evening al-Safi al-Naim came and told them that he would not be seeing them again. He had been away for a long time. He told them that a new commander named Montgomery had taken over command of the Eighth Army and that he was very strict with his troops and had devised a rigorous training program. He told them that a new war between Rommel and Monty, as the soldiers nicknamed the new commander, was imminent.

Al-Safi brought them large quantities of cheese, corned beef, tea, and cigarettes and conveyed to them the greetings of the young Indian soldiers. He told them that Bahadur Shand had been killed. Then he smiled, looking at Dimyan and telling him, “Bahadur was intent on killing you upon his return. It seems the Germans love you, Dimyan.”

Dimyan was distressed to learn that Bahadur Shand had died. He knew that it was Mari Girgis who was protecting him, but he wished he had protected him in a different manner this time, like by sending Bahadur back to India, for instance. But he quickly apologized to Mari Girgis and made the sign of the cross and said to himself that it was the war that ate up the soldiers.

Churchill had visited Egypt and met with General Alexander, the new commander in chief of the Middle East, who had replaced Auchinleck, and together they visited the Eighth Army in al-Alamein after meeting General Montgomery at his command post in Burg Al-Arab. Churchill saw for himself the changes that Monty had brought about in the soldiers. He saw a number of soldiers go down into the sea in the morning in dirty underpants. That distressed him and caused him pain, but he did not order new underpants for the soldiers. He wished the war would come to an end, and so end the soldiers’ misery. He returned with Alexander to Cairo and visited the caves at Tura, those caverns hollowed out in the mountains when the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids and which had now become secret recesses for the repair and hiding of military equipment. Churchill wished the ancient Egyptians had taken larger stones so that the English would have more secret depots for their equipment. He reviewed the preparations for the defense of Cairo if Alexandria fell with Alexander. Foremost among those preparations were the plans to flood the Delta and hinder German advances by opening the barrages and dams. He ordered that British employees all over the country be issued rifles. Then he returned to England.

Alexander promised to send him the word “zip” if fighting broke out. “Zip” was the label of Churchill’s clothes.

It was well known that Rommel would not stop at al-Alamein, and preparations were made to meet him there. Al-Alamcin had to be the last post he would reach and the first step of his retreat westward — the day should never come when plans for the defense of Cairo were implemented. The topography of the place did not leave Rommel with any room for maneuver. There was only one way — he and his armored force had to cross the minefields south of the front, in order to go north to encircle the British forces and their right flank. To do that, Rommel would have to occupy the hills of Alam al-Halfa. Therefore Monthly deployed his troops in such a way as to make the capture of those hills impossible.

There were preparations for attack and preparations for defense around Magd al-Din and Dimyan, who felt increasingly isolated. One afternoon Dimyan saw the door of the telegraph room open, and he entered the room. Aciually the door had been open since Amer had lett, but Dimyan saw it as it for the first time. There was nothing in the room but an old, open wooden cabinet containing dirty yellowish notepads of all sizes and scattered pieces of paper on the shelves and the floor. There was also a dusty, faded table on which sat the transmitter and receiver, which suddenly came to life and began to make successive clicking sounds. Magd al-Din was nearby on the platform, and Dimyan quickly called him over, and he did, just in time to see and hear the last clicks of the machine. Then there was silence.

“I wonder who was sending a telegram?” Dimyan asked as Magd al-Din’s thoughts strayed far away as they walked over to their house. The days were now passing in silence, a silence that enveloped the whole desert, on which a heavy ominous gloom descended, making the very air heavy. The long lines of armored cars moving all day did not succeed in dispelling the silence, nor did the movement of the planes which came out, then went quickly back to the sea and the cast, the English and American planes that apparently were training for the coming battle. The traffic of armament trains driven by Indians increased, and the trains were now going back without soldiers — there were no sick leaves or furloughs. The soldiers milled silently around the trains carrying tanks, guns, and ammunition, taking their equipment to the vast desert that seemed to swallow everything. Silence was now the sensation that wrappeed itself around Magd al-Din and Dimyan and permeated everything around them, living and inanimate. Even the sun began to move farther away, opening up the vast expanse around them to even more silence and devastation. Magd al-Din saw the dusty clock in the stationmaster’s room, which had stopped working. He stopped making the call to prayers. Everything here had grown old, foretelling the end. But, so as not to lose track of the time, he planted a stick near the kiosk at the crossing. It was noon when its shadow disappeared, and midafternoon when a long shadow formed to the cast, and sunset when the length of the shadow doubled. As for the time of the last prayer at night, he did not need to find that out, since he usually prayed late at night, One night, close to dawn after the desert night had set up its tent to cover the whole world without a sound except the indistinct noises of unseen insects, Dimyan, who now realized that he had been harboring a desire not to stay there in the desert, suddenly asked, “What’s happening, Sheikh Magd?”

By that he meant the increased movement of the trains carrying armament and of the planes during the day and sometimes at night. Magd al-Din was reciting the Quran, and now he raised his voice, “We surely shall test you with some fear and some hunger and loss of wealth and lives and crops, hut give glad tidings to the steadfast. Those who, when a calamity befalls them, say ‘To God we truly belong and to him surely we shall return.”’ He stopped to respond to Dimyan, “It must be that the war is about to break out, Dimyan.”

Dimyan sensed a little irritation in Magd al-Din’s tone of voice, an irritation that he had not noticed before. Was that the first time that Magd al-Din realized there was a war going on?

“If the war breaks out while we’re here, we will die, Sheikh Magd,” Dimyan said.