No One Sleeps in Alexandria by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid Read Free Book Online

Egyptians. Bahi said that the northerners from Rosetta and Damietta and elsewhere were always peaceable, but that the southerners from the Jafar and Juhayna clans stopped them in the street and insulted them. There was always a conflict between the two southern clans, but they united in theiropposition to the northerners. He said he was working for a day when he would lead the northerners to rout the southerners, and that day was going to be very soon.
    Zahra found herself breaking in, “What do you do in Alexandria, Bahi?”
    He looked at her for a moment and smiled. “Ask Sheikh Magd.” He left them, took a blanket and a pillow, and went out to sleep in the entryway. Zahra was amazed that she slept without a single dream. She placed her head on the pillow in Bahi’s bed and took her baby in her arms and slept. She did not even notice that Magd al-Din was stretched out on the floor next to the narrow bed. He had told her to sleep on the bed. As a peasant wife, she should have refused and let him take the bed, but she found herself, without thinking about it, getting into the bed and going to sleep, as if another woman was doing it. In the morning she sat, ashamed, in front of him and kept herself busy making tea for him and Bahi.
    Magd al-Din went out without delay to look for work, and Bahi left after him, no one knew where. As he was having tea with Magd al-Din and Zahra, he told them, “Khawaga Dimitri passed by early, and I told him how you want to rent the room next to his apartment, and he agreed. He even went upstairs and told his wife to expect Zahra today. You can go up in an hour or so, Zahra.”

    Around ten o’clock, Zahra found herself alone in Bahi’s room, so she decided to go upstairs. As she stepped out of the room, she saw before her a beautiful, blonde woman wearing a see-through nightgown with bare shoulders and arms. She was washing up at the tap in the hallway. She was startled, and Zahra said awkwardly, “Good morning.”
    “Bahi’s sister?” asked the woman as she turned from the tap.
    “Sister-in-law.”
    The woman looked her up and down. “Where’s his brother?”
    “He went out to look for work, and Bahi went out with him.”
    Zahra gathered her courage and looked the woman up and down, then went upstairs.

    Zahra sat in silence between Sitt Maryam and her two beautiful daughters, Camilla and Yvonne. Sitt Maryam was about forty years old. She had a white, round face and short chestnut-colored hair that she left untied and uncovered. Her daughters also wore their hair untied but long, hanging down their backs. The girls had their mother’s chestnut hair and amber eyes and round face, though a little narrower at the chin. Camilla had two attractive dimples in her cheeks that were quite pleasing to look at.
    Zahra was wearing the same long black peasant dress that she had worn the day before, a dress with a wide square neck that made it easier for her to nurse her baby. On her head she had a black shawl that hung down both sides of her chest to cover whatever might be revealed by the loose-fitting bodice of her dress. Under the shawl was a tight head wrap that covered all her black hair. Camilla and Yvonne kept looking closely at Zahra, as though she were from a different planet. It was Zahra’s silence that surprised them, as well as her neatly trimmed eyebrows and her dark, almond-shaped eyes. Zahra was silently studying the icons hanging on the opposite wall. She knew them well. She had seen them many times in the home of Ata, the village grocer, whose wife, Firyal, was a seamstress. Zahra noticed that Sitt Maryam had a pedal-operated sewing machine in a corner of the room. Firyal’s sewing machine was small and hand-operated, and Firyal had it on a low table and worked on it all night long.
    Sitt Maryam’s room was smaller than Firyal’s house, but it wasn’t made of mud. Besides, it was painted sky blue, so it seemed sunny, and the window opening onto the street bathed it in