I can see myself with Tal'at on the top of a rise, watching from afar what is happening to one of the forts. Tal'at says in a choking voice, 'It's slaughter, not war,' and I reply, 'You're right.' We see the British ships shelling the fort as though carrying out a leisurely review, with three large ships in a geometric formation pointing their guns at the fort and then shelling it very precisely, and then the fort responding — those who remain alive inside it, that is, responding — by firing their ancient cannon, the shells falling far, far from the ships, and even those that reach the fleet being rebuffed by sheets of steel that clad the ships so that a giant white fountain explodes out of the sea at the place where the shell hits it without inflicting any damage. The revenge comes immediately, however. The serene battleships move closer to the openings from which the cannon peek and strike them with machine-gun fire. The artillerymen, who have no sheets of steel, or even of stone, to protect them are cut down and the firing doesn't stop until the fort is blown up, along with its soldiers. And we run towards it. We strain to hear the sound of the ambulance horses and their bells, but the bombardment continues, even after the forts have raised white flags and not one cannon in them remains in a condition to fire.
On our way back from the military hospital we see fires in the city, in el Manshiya and Kom el Dikka, and in one street we see gangs of Bedouin riff-raff breaking into the locked shops and plundering them. They throw torches to burn what the guns of the British have not already burnt. We corner them and fire at them with our revolvers and rifles and they fortify themselves behind the walls and return fire. Their weapons are much better than ours. Then one of their chiefs orders his men in a loud voice to stop shooting and comes towards us, his hands in the air. He stands in the middle of the road and asks us in astonishment, 'Why are you firing? Didn't you get the orders?' They were carrying out orders, he says, so why were we standing in their way? Tal'at asks him, 'What orders, you madman?'
I see Tal'at's reddened eyes and the blood clotted on his military jacket and on his hands, as it is on mine and on those of all the soldiers of the patrol. He's the one whose looks speak of madness, while the tribesman stands in front of us in his flowing white robes addressing Tal'at calmly and arrogantly, saying, 'Those of His Excellency the governor, my dear lieutenant. Have you forgotten how we helped you out a month ago, the day the Greeks were killed? Didn't Umar Basha give you orders that day not to interfere with us when we struck at the foreigners? Will you not carry out the orders to bring down Urabi, who is in a state of mutiny against Our Master the Khedive and bringing ruin on the country? What is different now? Why are you shooting at us?'
Tal'at started letting out short laughs, like exclamations, as he looked towards me and said, 'Did you hear? Let's be off, Mahmoud. Back to the station! Or to our houses! Are we to disobey the orders of His Excellency the governor? Or those of Our Master the Khedive? Or of Our Lord Admiral Seymour? Back to our houses!' He went on laughing his strange laugh and gesticulating with the hand in which he was holding the revolver and the tribesman sensed danger and started to retreat in the direction of his men, who had fortified themselves behind the walls, but Tal'at yelled, pointing his revolver at him, 'Wait! Wait! Take this for yourself! And this for Our Master the Khedive! And this…' and he couldn't name the one he wanted the third bullet for because of the volley of fire directed at him by the followers of the chief, who ran to join his men. I threw Tal'at to the ground and flattened myself next to him. I managed to hit the tribesman and he fell to the ground and went on crawling to get to the others, and a bullet hit me in the top of my left arm, at the shoulder. But for the Alexandrians, who came at the sound of the shooting carrying rifles, staves, and knives, we would not have got out alive. Most of the Bedouin took refuge in flight, but I was able to catch a number of them. We made our way to the monks' hospital on Saba' Banat Street where they bound the men's wounds, and there I left Tal'at and the wounded soldiers and Bedouin, and drove the captives before me to the Labban police station.
The Italian station chief looked at my arm, which was bandaged and tied in a sling, and said nothing. He pointed to the Bedouin I had caught, however, and asked me, 'Who are they?' I told him what had happened and he gazed into my face for a while before indicating to his men that they should take the Bedouin to the gaol. Then, for the first time, he gestured at my sling and said, 'There are still fires in el Manshiya. If your wound isn't serious, take a patrol there quickly and help evacuate the civilians.' And that was the sole mission I was entrusted with on that day. I asked the police chief what he was going to do with the Bedouin and he responded in Arabic, which he neither spoke nor understood, 'Look to your business!'
But there was no work that I or the soldiers could do in el Manshiya or anywhere else in the city. Alexandria had been turned into a bonfire under renewed bombardment from the fleet, the shells failing to discriminate between fortifications and houses or soldiers and civilians. For two days, thousands of men, women and children rushed towards Rasheed Gate to get away from the burning city — an uninterrupted flood of humanity that swept up with it the soldiers of my patrol, so that I found myself alone, moving from one place where the tongues of flame were encroaching to another to which the marching crowds, the crackling of the flames, the weeping of the children, the wailing of the women and the insults of the men, who cursed the British, the Khedive, the army and the police at the tops of their lungs, pushed me. Some of the men pointed at me and said, 'Traitor!' They were right: on that day, when their city had been burnt and they had lost sons and fathers, who could sort out the traitors from those who had remained true? The Khedive moved from palace to palace to take advantage of the protection of the fleet that was invading his country, the army withdrew following the destruction of the forts without explaining to the people why they were leaving the city, and the police left them without protection from the arsonists and plunderers. Among the flames of the burning buildings and the chaos, the page on which the courage of the soldiers of the forts and of the people of the city who had fought with them had been inscribed was erased. How, then, could I tell those refugees who insulted me that I, I alone, had not betrayed them?
All that remains in my mind of those days is disconnected images. I see myself in the midst of thousands blocking the streets, donkey carts loaded with people and possessions all brought to a halt by this human dam, while everyone quarrels with everyone else, and I see a cloud of dust and smoke hanging over their heads and spreading darkness at the height of the day, and I join a troop of soldiers seizing the thieves who were looting the abandoned shops, and executing them on the spot, and I see columns of soldiers making for Rasheed Gate to get out of the city; but I don't remember whether I slept or where I slept or what I did exactly during those two days. I went of course to the hospital to change the dressing on my wound, which was extremely painful, and to see that Tal'at was all right. He had been struck by bullets in his belly and legs but his life was not in danger. (Would that it had been! Would that he had died at that moment when he was true to himself! And would that I had departed with him!) And I saw my Italian superior officer when I went to the police station. He pointed with revulsion at the filthiness of my uniform. He himself hadn't left his office throughout the bombardment of the city and his badges of rank shone on the shoulders of his clean uniform, which fitted his plump body perfectly. And I remember him handing me that small paper crowded with official stamps that cancelled my transfer and ordered me without explanation to return forthwith to Cairo. In Cairo, however, I discovered that he had sent a telegram accusing me of dereliction of duty and saying that