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

ships sailing slowly into the harbor or going back south. Several tugboats stopped in the distance, especially in front of the companies. Anchored on the shore close to the bridge there was always a ferry, which ran back and forth when the bridge was raised for ships to go through. He rarely saw women in the early morning. Every morning he would be certain that he would meet someone he knew, but he never did. The truth was he wished for something like that to happen; he needed someone to take him by the hand in the city.
    Bahi was no longer good for anything—he spent all day at the café. How he lived and where he got the money, Magd al-Din did not know. Bahi said that in Ghayt al-Aynab there were more than a hundred men from their village, and he knew each and every one. He knew why they had left the village for Alexandria and whatscandals they had been involved in before they left, and he had imposed a five-piaster monthly tax on each of them, thus making five pounds per month. Two months earlier they had rebelled against him. They went to the police precinct and complained to the prefect, who looked at Bahi and could not believe that a hundred people feared the man standing before him. The prefect kicked them out. Once outside, Bahi raised the tax to ten piasters a month. Now they were his fighting force, and he wanted to lead them in battle against the southerners. Magd al-Din remembered but did not believe Bahi’s words.
    He kept listening for someone who knew him to call out his name, but that did not happen. One morning followed another, and the search for work never stopped. Every day he saw men with bare feet and bare heads walking or hurrying along with him to look for work. He noticed that one young man in particular, who looked lost and whose eyes rolled in a way that Magd al-Din had never seen before, had tried deliberately to stay close to him. When the young man spoke, saying “Every day it’s like this,” Magd al-Din realized that he had a nasal twang. He always looked angry when he did not get work, but would soon smile and hurry along with the others, following close to Magd al-Din who, for a moment, thought the reason he was not picked for work was because that half-idiot stood next to him. But he knew that these were the blessed children of God, so he asked Him for forgiveness. He was turning left now because most of the men seeking work were turning left after crossing the bridge. He stopped with the others in front of one plant’s big metal gate.
    “What kind of work do they do here?”
    “Ice.”
    “What do we do with the ice?”
    “We stack it or carry it to the delivery carts. This plant will close next month—it doesn’t work in the winter.”
    A worker at the plant went out and looked at the crowd of job seekers. He picked a few among them, but not Magd al-Din, who noticed that most of those seeking temporary work wore tattered clothes and were barefoot, and so deduced that work was in very short supply. He decided he would not change his new gallabiya or shiny shoes; he was never going to appear shabby, and when hefound work he would buy suitable new clothes. Zahra had already taken thirty pounds that he had saved over the last few years and spent twenty pounds to buy all the necessary furniture. Magd al-Din felt sad every time the job seekers jostled each other rudely and cruelly when a company representative would ask for five or less. He would choose a spot in the back of the crowd. In front of the Ahliya textile mill with the big green metal gate, he stood with the others. The black man who came out every day to pick the workers pointed to him and said in a confident voice, “You there—come here.”
    Magd al-Din approached.
    “Tomorrow I will give you a job,” the man said with a smile. “You have to come in pants and a jacket.”
    He got a job at the mill rolling the bales of cotton from the cars that carried them from the ginneries up close to the spinning machines. The job