A number of men had gathered in front of the bridge, and three women sought safety together in the doorway of the candlelit café. Magd al-Din reached for Zahra to make sure she was there, even though he knew she was. Carriages gathered and drew nearer to each other. The taxicabs, their blue lights barely shining ahead of them, headed for the Karmuz bridge. The driver took out the quinine bottle again and said under his breath, “The boats coming in are chock full of weapons, cannons, and cars. There’re soldiers with flashlights all around them. Seems like the war is coming here.” To Magd al-Din, he said, “Why did you come to Alexandria today? Aren’t you afraid of the war?”
Just then, the streetlights came on, so Magd al-Din did not answer. The bridge began to lower to its normal position on the canal.
As the carriage crossed the bridge, it nearly fell apart going over the potholes. To the right, immediately after the bridge, a strong smell of flour came from a high-walled mill. Its wire-screened windows were covered with fine white flour, making them stand out in the dark. Before the end of the streetcar’s winding tracks at the end of the street, and in front of the police station that occupied a commanding position in the square, the driver turned right onto Ban Street, which people called Twelve Street, because it was twelve meters wide. It was the widest and longest street in the area. Zahra saw several dimly lit streetcars sitting in the square and cried out, “What’s that? A train?”
“It’s a streetcar, Zahra. A streetcar,” Magd al-Din calmly replied.
The driver laughed and asked if it was their first visit to Alexandria. Magd al-Din said yes and fell silent. Once again there was the smell of flour, this time from another mill to the left of the carriage on Ban Street, where the carriage was proceeding with great difficulty, greater even than on the bridge. The street was not paved, only covered with little white stones. A few moments later, Magd al-Din asked the driver to stop. The house was to the right, there was no mistaking it, a small two-story house stuck between two three-story buildings.
“You’re lucky you found me. I just got back from the cafe,” Bahi said, as he made tea for them on a small spirit stove in a corner of the small room.
Magd al-Din, who was stretched out on a mat on the floor, leaning his head to the wall, asked, “What were you doing at the café so late?”
“Nothing, Sheikh Magd — just chatting and drinking tea.”
He laughed as he poured tea in the little glasses. Zahra was squatting with her back to them in another corner of the room, nursing her baby, who had not had her fill in the carriage. How were they all going to sleep in one room? she thought, holding back her tears as she remembered their big house in the village. The baby opened her amber eyes and looked at her mother without letting go of the nipple, then she burst out crying. Did the pain the mother felt flow into her? Probably. Zahra’s feelings, however, soon changed to surprise at how clean and neat Bahi’s room was and at the fragrance of musk that permeated it. She was also surprised at Bahi himself, who wore pants and a shirt like city folk, and white shoes. This is a different man from the one she had seen ten years earlier, she thought. Did Alexandria do this to everyone?
“Why don’t you tell me the real reason you left the village?” Bahi asked. “I didn’t know you hated the village, or loved Alexandria.”
“I told you I’ve been wanting to leave for a long time.”
“And your land?”
“My sisters and their husbands will take care of it.”
“Then you might as well kiss it good-bye.”
Hearing faint moans coming from Zahra’s direction, Bahi asked her, “What’s the matter, Zahra? Why are you crying?”
Magd al-Din had no choice but to tell him the whole story. They all fell silent. Bahi’s silence was the most profound. Had he been such a curse on his family? To this day? What did fate want from him? He had suffered more than enough all these years. Should he have killed himself early on? And all because he was born attractive to women? He had let himself walk anywhere, at any time, but none of the Talibs had killed him. He went through all the horrors of the last war, but fate had not given him a chance to die. He had left his village and wandered through the markets of neighboring villages. A woman selling ghee and butter from Shubra al-Namla picked him up. His reputation had preceded him to all the villages, and he still had those killer eyes that radiated allure. The ghee vendor picked him up while Bahiva was still stalking him, following him to the other villages. In these villages, too, the children no longer chased her — they had gotten tired of it. Bahiya followed him like his shadow. At night she disappeared in the fields, and he hid from her, thinking that she would never find him. In the morning, he would discover she was following him again.
“Don’t follow me in the streets, Bahiya.”
She would smile and run her hands over his chest with a distant look in her eyes. He would see her tears and turn his back on her, almost in tears himself. More than once he thought of grabbing her and standing with her in front of the train. But he could never bring himself to do that; he was too weak to commit suicide, He could see the lines of old age beginning to appear prematurely on her face, and a few thin hairs on her chin. When the ghee vendor picked him up, he let himself go, unafraid of anything. The fiendish thought that he might become the cause of another woman’s madness even occurred to him; he wished he would become the cause of all women’s madness, in all the villages. If only all the women all over the countryside would follow him, thoroughly besotted! It was as if Bahiya knew. She disappeared suddenly. The ghee vendor brazenly invited him to her house, and he went with her without fear, hoping to become the cause of her madness. He watched her introduce him to her father as a big merchant from Tanta who wanted to buy all their butter and ghee, all year long. He saw in her mother’s eyes slyness and greed and doubts about his story. He thought of turning her into a madwoman too. They prepared a room for him to sleep in, and he asked them to collect all the ghee, butter, and eggs from the village. He learned from the beautiful, rather buxom woman that she was a widow, whose husband had been run over by a car in Tanta. She came to his room every evening. He had no doubt that her parents knew. He realized what was being planned for him. But he was not made for marriage and family life. On the dawn of the seventh day he sneaked out. The whole village, with its black houses, was enveloped in fog. It was a sight he would not forget: black houses made gray by the white vapor that stretched to the edge of the universe. Could hell be any different from what he was seeing? The houses appeared to him like mythical beasts writhing in torment, in utter blindness. When his feet hit the railroad tracks, he headed for Tanta, not to his village. When he came to an underpass, he sat down to drink tea from a shack that served it. He wanted to wait until the fog lifted so he could see things more clearly.
When it did lift, he saw in front of him a group of border guards on camelback dragging a group of peasants bound with a long rope. He had no chance to escape. One of the guards got down from his camel, grabbed his arm, and calmly bound him with the others. He did not object, question, or scream. They marched him with the others to the governorate headquarters in Tanta and from there to the army camps in Cairo. The ‘Authority’ had kidnapped him to serve and fight, against his will, as corvée in the armies of England, which had declared Egypt a protectorate.