“We have received from the Reverend Boulos Roman, from Asyut, a description of this animal. He said that it resembled a rabbit, that it chewed its cud but that it did not divide the cloven hoof, that it was one of the beasts that God ordered the Israelites not to eat, since they were unclean. He added that it was sometimes known as “the sheep of Israel,” that it lived in the rocks, and therefore was known for its wisdom. Solomon mentioned it in ‘Proverbs,’ saying, ‘There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the coneys are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks; the locust have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.’ When the prophet David enumerated God’s mercy toward man, beast, and bird, he said that He created the rocks as shelter for the coneys. In some translations, the word ‘rabbits’ has been used, and even though they resemble each other, each was mentioned separately in the Bible, first the coney, then the rabbit. The fact that it was mentioned in the Bible tells us that it is found in abundance in Palestine.”
17
Humans, no matter how numerous, who among them
knows anything about himself?
There was a lot of work the last few days of winter, as cold air seared the faces in the early morning. The wind grew worse, especially after Magd al-Din and Dimyan went beyond the wall to the wide open space above the railroad tracks. There the month of Amshir had a chance to show itself in its true colors, as eddies whirled the dust suddenly, letting loose the cold wind, after which crazy rain poured down from a cloud that had raced in from some distant place. On their usual morning route, Magd al-Din and Dimyan no longer felt provoked by the silent operator of the Raven, who still stared at them. Dimyan noticed that the man had grown a beard and now was rarely ever seated, but instead was constantly walking back and forth. Dimyan asked Magd al-Din whether the man had actually gone crazy. Magd al-Din gave him his usual, vexing response, “Leave the creation to the Creator, Dimyan.”
The workers had the task of completing a two-kilometer extension of the rail line, as the present lines could not accommodate all the trains waiting to enter the harbor. The two direct long-distance lines to and from the desert also had to be clear of all other trains.
The open area extending behind Alexandria, from Muharram Bey to Qabbari and passing by Ghayt al-Aynab and Kafr Ashri, was crowded with hundreds of cars and dozens of black steam engines that never stopped moving. They carried weapons from the harbor to the desert, or weapons and soldiers coming from Suez, or those that had been on furlough in Alexandria, as well as prisoners of war. Several trains arrived from the Cairo warehouses with dozens of flatbed cars carrying crossties, rails, and thousands of huge screws and nails, as well as the square steel plates placed between the cross ties and the rails. Trains coming from the Western Desert brought huge amounts of ballast. The area was suddenly filled with railroad policemen in their distinctive yellow uniforms, stationed near and around the equipment unloaded by the workers and the winches moving on rails. The workers, numbering over a hundred, gathered from all the posts to take part in this giant task that had to be finished in record time, even if they had to work day and night.
Despite their woolen outfits, the cold assailed the workers at the neck, sleeves, and hems of their pants. The heat of working was no longer enough to give them warmth, as the wind and the open space gave them no shelter. No one was allowed to take a lunch break, now reduced to one hour, at home. The workers accepted all this hardship, bothered only by the intermittent downpours. The rain forced them to run and take shelter next to or under the nearest car, but as soon as they returned to work, it came down again. On several occasions they made light of it and stayed at their work posts, but it would surprise them by coming down longer and harder. They found themselves obstinately matching wits with the rain.
They divided themselves — actually, their foremen, who were traditional experts at that kind of work, divided them into teams. One team was assigned to level the ground. Their tools were pickaxes and shovels. Another team poured and leveled the ballast in the spots where the crossties would be placed. Their tools were baskets and shovels. A third team was charged with arranging the ties. Their tools were their shoulders, on which they carried the tics. Another team had to carry the rails and place them on top of the crossties and the plates. One team was to fasten the rails to the crossties, using the spikes, which went through the steel plates under the rails and into the crossties, and which secured the two sides of the rail from the bottom. The last team tamped the ballast under the ties. The foremen’s task was to measure precisely the gaps between the rails horizontally and the bends to make sure that the exact number of millimeters was left between sections of the same rail, so that when the rails stretched in the summer or shrank in the winter, they would not buckle. And, like all workers in the world, it was impossible to endure the hardship of long, arduous work without singing rhythmically, “Haila hop haila, haila hop haila.” This was especially true of those who carried the rails, each of which was eight meters long. Each of these was carried by ten men, who sang as they carried it, then gently lowered it to their feet, and then, all at once, let go of it on top of the plates and the crossties. Then they moved back, leaving the place to the fastening team, which placed the huge screws that went through the crossties, using a long key in the shape of a tube, at the bottom of which was a square cavity the size of the screw head. All the while they sang to the saints about the pain in their backs, about their children, and about the English, who abducted the women. Then they would laugh as Hamza watched.