Panic increased in the country and large numbers of Jews left, and their property was sold at ridiculously low prices. The Alexandrians heard the racket of guns at al-Alamein, and confusion reigned in the city. The foreign consulates began to burn their documents, as did the embassies in Cairo. The British embassy thought of evacuating five hundred ATS women to Luxor on the grounds that such a delightful bounty should not be left for the Germans. There was a strong rumor that the English had asked the Egyptian government to flood the Delta in case the Germans occupied Alexandria so that the land would turn into a sea of mud in which the German armored vehicles would be stuck. The people’s resentment of the English grew.
For their part, the English insisted that it was necessary to evacuate the popular singers Umm Kulthum and Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab, voluntarily or involuntarily, from Cairo so German propaganda could not exploit their songs.
People mobbed the banks to withdraw their money. They were gripped with fear and stayed at home, venturing out only when necessary and in groups because of news of the arrival of stray animals — Hons, tigers, wolves, foxes, and monkeys — from the desert, driven into the city by the war. And indeed people found that several monkeys had climbed some trees, so they chased them with stones and killed them. At night dogs turned into foxes and wolves that everyone fled from. As for the lions and tigers, no one saw them. There was news, however, of an old Hon that appeared in the Mina al-Basal neighborhood, went to sleep on the streetcar tracks, and was killed by the first morning streetcar, which almost overturned. Thus people began to expect to see Hons and tigers at any moment. The military commander of Alexandria, an Egyptian, fell into confusion since he had no specific instructions about what he should do in case the Germans entered the city. So he sent a letter to the war ministry asking what he should do if such an eventuality came to pass: should he resist or surrender? The letter was brought to the attention of the minister, who ordered that no response be sent. But the confused commander sent another letter to the same effect, whereupon the war minister yelled, “Transfer the son of a bitch!” The minister was afraid that if he ordered resistance, the Germans would try him if they were victorious, and if he ordered surrender the British would try him for treason! An air raid on the city leveled the whole of Manasha Street in one night. The inhabitants of Karmuz, Raghib, and Ghayt al-Aynab ran in panic to the banks of the Mahmudiya canal, but the German planes dropped many bombs on Mahmudiya that night, setting many ships on fire, sinking them and killing dozens of people on the banks. A great exodus to the countryside began by train, car, taxi, carts drawn by horses and donkeys, carriage, bicycle, and on foot, choking the main road out of Alexandria. The women went out in panic in their housedresses or nightgowns. Dimyan made the rounds to see the damage, as he did after every raid. He found that many houses had been destroyed and among them was Khawaga Dimitri’s house. The second floor had fallen in on top of the first, and the facade wall had collapsed, blocking access to the pavement in front of the locked door, which remained standing. There had been no one at home at the time of the raid, no tenants, and Dimitri had gone to Upper Egypt. Dimyan thought of taking his family there, but he remembered that he had been out of contact with his sisters for quite a long time. So he decided to take his family to the shelters set up by the government in Kafr al-Dawwar.
On the road Dimyan ran alongside the cart driven by Ghaffara, who had the fez on his face. On the cart sat Dimyan’s mother, his wife, and his two daughters. Ghaffara had once again removed the walls of the cart so people could easily sit on the long migration route. He no longer transported the dead. He could not stand it. Now he was moving the living to Kafr al-Dawwar, outpaced by the taxis and the horse-drawn carriages and the long carts drawn by healthy mules. But it was all right. The two sickly donkeys did the job, and people were poor, having left their houses with nothing. So he did not charge much. He asked Dimyan to climb up next to him, but Dimyan, who saw how slowly the cart was moving, and how poorly the donkeys were, was content to walk or run alongside the cart. Why did he not see the scene around him as well? That misshapen line of people fleeing in different garb, nakedness, loud voices, crying, too much baggage, too little baggage, clean, dirty, the sun above exposing them, the trains dashing past them, near them and more crowded, everyone looking at everyone else, moments without meaning. Dimyan thought of Brika. Rommel has made it to al-Alamein, and she and all the Bedouin must be gone by now, having fled before the stupid armies. God Almighty! Would Brika appear in the shelter camps? He did not think so. If that happened, he would marry her. She is married. He is married. He would kidnap her. He could not see her again, just let her go. The mere memory of her almost lifted him from the ground. His service at the church and his undertaking the most menial of jobs was not enough to make him forget, even cleaning the toilets and taking a long time doing it was not enough. But the vast, wide open space in which people and vehicles ran said there was no way that Brika would come back to the vast expanse. The Lord had sent her and the Lord had taken her back. Bedouin did not sleep in government houses. Brika was a grain of sand carried by the wind. He must go back to Magd al-Din.
In Kafr al-Dawwar, Queen Nazli’s tents provided temporary shelters for the refugees until real houses were built. Nothing was more beautiful than living in houses built by royalty, even if they were mere tents! He had to convince himself also that nothing was fancier than being transported by Ghaffara on whose cart he had loaded some belongings and the whole family and which moved ever so slowly on the main road, so crowded with refugees that you could not see ahead or back, and Dimyan was in the middle of it all.
The strange story that surprised the people of Alexandria was the story of the Jewish lady Miss Samhun, who lived in a small villa on Manasha Street with dozens of cats. She came from the famous Samhun family, which was among the first to live on that street in the time of Ismail Pasha. No one knew her name, so they used her family name. No one knew when she was born or the day she had first appeared on the street, but she became well known during the previous world war. She had been in love with a young Jewish man who went to the Eastern front with Lord Allenby and entered Palestine with him and did not come back. He had promised to write her to join him after victory, but he did not. He was killed in the fighting against the Ottoman Turks and their allies. In turn she chose not to go to the land where her beloved was killed. She discovered that she could never leave Egypt. She stayed home alone after the death of her mother and father and after her brothers and sisters married and moved to Saba Pasha. No one remembered her except on Saturdays, when she would go to the synagogue on Nabi Danyal Street. Since the temple was destroyed, she no longer went out on Saturdays. No one knew how she lived. It was said that she had a maid who came from Hadra every day. But the servant was seldom seen, and unlike most servants, she did not speak with anyone. She bought everything from the bazaar in Hadra and brought it in the morning. She rarely bought anything from Manasha Street or from Paulino or Muharram Bey. During an air raid, the Samhun villa received a direct hit, and it fell into rubble like the other houses on the street. Rescue teams came, and crowds gathered around the remnants of the villa. Where had Miss Samhun, the most famous resident on the street, gone? The rescue teams worked, and as they made some progress, small and big cats ran out meowing from the rubble, not believing what had happened to them. Miss Samhun was found on her side in a corner surrounded by strong walls and covered with some pieces of wood from the ceiling. She was dusty and her eyes were closed and she did not move. There is no power or strength save in God! What an end for a true lover! She was the most beautiful woman, but loneliness brought her an early old age. She must have had heaps of money. People talked and waited for the money to appear. It took three days to remove the rubble, and jobless and poor people from all over Alexandria pitched in. They had come to look for the buried treasure of the Samhun family. No one asked why no one from the family had appeared, except for a few moments, to take the body of their sister, then disappeared. In the end they found a few old utensils and some decayed pieces of furniture and some incense sticks, many colorful bundles of incense sticks, that the beautiful Miss Samhun had kept.