Magd al-Din was confused by this remark, especially because Dimitri had called him ‘Sheikh Magd.’ Dimitri explained that he was referring to how the rain had been pouring down non-stop for the last two days, Epiphany and the day before it, and it could have ruined the celebration of the Muslims’ feast — they would have had to stay home and not go out to pray and visit. But God saved the day.
“God be praised,” Magd al-Din assented. “Everything that comes from God is good.”
“I was kidding you,” Dimitri laughed. “I know you’re a good man and that you don’t treat Copts any differently from Muslims. This country. Sheikh Magd, has a slogan that goes back to the days of Saad Pasha Zaghlouclass="underline" ‘Religion belongs to God, and the country belongs to everyone,’ but there are some bastards who like to kindle the fires of discord, especially in poor neighborhoods like ours.”
Magd al-Din fell silent. He remembered Bahi, who had told him that the strife between the Muslims and the Christians had greatly diminished.
“There’s always strife between different communities,” he finally said to Dimitri. “Somebody must have given our country the evil eye, Khawaga Dimitri. Thank God the war is keeping everybody preoccupied.”
The Feast of the Sacrifice was over. The Piaster Project Committee was still collecting donations for the Egyptian national industry in Cairo and the provinces. A new and unfamiliar type of mosquito descended upon Alexandria from the environs of Lake Maryut. The laboratory at the city’s Center for Epidemiology studied it, and concluded that it was not a mosquito but some kind of feeble fly that the cold weather would take care of, and that it did not pose any threat. And indeed the remaining days of the Coptic month of Tuba wiped it out. The Muwasa Society conducted its annual lottery. The Opera House dedicated its shows to the Commonwealth troops. Queen Farida and Queen Nazli were keen on attending these shows. News came that Charlie Chaplin had finished The Great Dictator. Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab’s film Happy Day was shown in Alexandria, and Camilla and Yvonne attended its last screening and told Zahra about penniless Abd al-Wahhab and the charming new child actress, Fatin Hamama. In the newspapers, Mrs. Aziza Amir thanked the Egyptian people for making her film The Workshop such a success and gave special thanks to the army and the art critics. Joint Egyptian-British maneuvers were conducted in the east at the eightieth kilometer on the Suez Road. Rita Hayworth was crowned Miss Hollywood for the year 1940. A new tomb dating back to 4500 B.C. was unearthed near Saqqara. King Farouk donated a movie projector for the entertainment of the troops and the people of Marsa Matruh. Three bodies were found in the Mahmudiya canal in the month of March. Among them was the body of the boy who spoke with a twang. The police apprehended the perpetrator, his own father, who had gone crazy. He also admitted to killing the mother. Magd al-Din stayed in his room for three days, blaming himself for the murder of the idiot boy, because he had not believed him the day he cried and said his father had killed his mother. Dimyan had advised him not to go to the police, saying that if there was a crime, it would be discovered. And it was, but it claimed the poor boy as its victim.
Dimyan saved Magd al-Din from his sorrow by taking him one evening to a faraway café on Mahmudiya Canal between the Raghib and Karmuz bridges, where lupino bean vendors lived in the houses scattered along the street parallel to the canal. They would place the lupino beans in sacks, which they secured firmly and left in the running water of the canal for a few days until the bitterness was gone. They would then pull the sacks to the bank of the canal and load the beans onto pushcarts and start selling them in the early morning in the neighborhoods of Raghib, Karmuz, Mahattat Masr, and Muharram Bey to the east and Qabbari and Kafr Ashri to the west. In the evening they would return exhausted and leave their pushcarts safely on the bank of the canal. In the morning they began their rounds again. A few of them sat in the remote café, in the empty area that was a good place for murder and love, as well as prayer and devotion.
Magd al-Din and Dimyan sat every evening in the very small café on the bank of the canal, which was really no more than a few wooden tables and straw chairs outside a small tin-sheet kiosk in which the coffee and tea were made. A pleasant breeze blew from Mahmudiya, laden with white mist, as if winter wanted to breathe its last breath there. In front of them passed boats with their sails unfurled, pulled from the bank by strong men with ropes tied between the masts and their chests. Around the big boats were small, colorful feluccas, in which young people were singing and making merry. The boats came from all over, ended their route at Nuzha, then went back.
Magd al-Din felt that everything around him was free except him, who had been shackled to Alexandria indefinitely. He was doomed to stay in the very Alexandria where yesterday he had seen Ghaffara, the sawdust vendor, stand in front of his cart and donkey and exclaim, “Please God, let Italy get together with Germany so Alexandria might be lit up with foreigners and sexy dames!” Everyone laughed — the passers-by as well as the store owners who bought sawdust from him to strew on the floor before sweeping their stores at the end of the day.
Ghaffara had a wooden cart with a wooden box about one meter high extending the length of the cart, about two meters, The cart was drawn by an old donkey that always looked exhausted. On both sides of the cart Ghaffara had written “Capacity: four tons; nationwide transportation; will take telephone orders and deliver sawdust.” People would read the sign and laugh, as the whole cart — the wood, the donkey, sawdust, and Ghaffara himself — could not weigh a quarter of a ton. Ghaffara had appeared the day before with a fez on his face. He had removed the tassel of the fez and attached a rubber band that secured it behind his head. He had attached a round water filter to what had been the top of the fez and cut two small holes, into which he fixed two pieces of glass that stuck up to protect his eyes. He told everyone that he had heard an educated man reading from the newspaper about a proposal submitted by a doctor to the ministry of health to use fezzes as gas masks, since there were no gas masks in the market. Since the face and head had the same circumference, the fez could be secured to the face by means of a rubber band and a person could then make mica eyes for the fez. Ghaffara did not know where one could buy mica, so he used glass instead. The doctor suggested placing an air filter through which to breathe. In the stores in Attarin, Ghaffara could find no air filters, so he bought a small water filter. But there were no gases, or even raids against Cairo, or Alexandria, or anywhere else in Egypt. Ghaffara knew that and countered that the air in general was dirty and full of poisonous gases. One did not have to wait for the raids to get the gas.
Cannons were fired in Alexandria and throughout the country to bring the good news that a new precious gem had been added to the royal crown, as Princess Fawziya had given birth to a baby girl on the eighth of April. When the news was broadcast, a large number of Egyptians went to the royal palace in Cairo to offer their felicitations. Contrary to what was expected, Hitler did not attack Holland, Belgium, or France. He attacked Norway and Denmark instead. Russia was now done with Finland. The northern seas witnessed the fiercest battles over Norway, but the king of Denmark surrendered quickly and called upon the people to be calm. The Germans increased their pressure against the Allied forces in Norway. Troops from Rhodesia arrived in Egypt and were welcomed in Suez harbor by Ahmad Rasim Bey, the governor of Suez, whom the newspapers did not mention was also a great poet who wrote in French, and also a great lover of women. Joining him to welcome the troops was the British minister plenipotentiary, who delivered a speech welcoming them on behalf of the soldiers of the empire, not just in Egypt but in the “greater fatherland, from New Zealand to India.”