Free No One Sleeps in Alexandria by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid Page A

policemen to open the jail cell. He motioned Magd al-Din to approach.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Magd al-Din Khalil Sulayman.”
    “You don’t look like the rest of the riffraff, Magd al-Din. Why don’t you have your identity card?”
    “I forgot my card in the village.”
    “Village? What village?”
    “My village. I’ve only been in Alexandria a few days.”
    “Are you a farmer?”
    “Yes.”
    “Here for a visit or permanent residence?”
    “Residence, God willing.”
    “Well, do you have five piasters? Anyone who pays the government five piasters can be released.”
    “I do. Nobody asked me before,” Magd al-Din said with a sigh of relief and reached his hand into the vest under his gallabiya, took out the one-pound note, and gave it to the corporal. It was about 2 p.m. Six hours had passed since he had been thrown into the crowded cell to sit in silence with the other detainees. The corporal said he did not have change for the pound and sent a policeman to get change from a streetcar conductor. When the corporal saw that Magd al-Din had not moved, he asked him, “Why don’t you go back to the cell? Are you afraid you’ll lose the pound?”
    “No,” Magd al-Din found himself saying, “but this poor idiot boy, why is in there with us?”
    The corporal looked at him for a moment then smiled. “We’ll take ten piasters from you then and let him go, if that’s what you want.”
    He got up from his desk, walked over to the cell, and dragged out the idiot boy, who kept staring and smiling at Magd al-Din, even twisting his neck to see him, until he was out of the precinct. Magd al-Din sat back down with the others, and the corporal locked them up again.
    “Did he take a pound from you?”
    “No. He asked for five piasters and sent for change. He’ll give me the change.”
    “So, you have five piasters?”
    “Of course—you saw I have a pound.”
    “Can you believe we’re all being held here for five piasters each? Since the days of Sidqi Pasha, anyone caught without an identity card has to pay a fine of five piasters. If anybody here had five piasters in his pocket, he wouldn’t have gone to work. And you, you’re looking for work when you have a whole pound?”
    Magd al-Din was surprised at what he heard. For a moment he thought of paying for all of them, then changed his mind. He needed every millieme now. “How are you getting out?” he asked.
    “Same as every other time. Tonight the head of the neighborhood will come identify us and vouch for us, and we’ll get out.”
    Once again silence descended. The policeman was taking his time coming back with the change. Magd al-Din squatted, his elbows on his knees and his head between his palms. Bahi was the only one who could get him out of this tight spot. He began to have the feeling that perhaps the corporal had intimated to the policeman not to return with the pound. What would happen if night fell before the policeman returned? How would Zahra feel? As he always did in times of crisis, he left it all to God. He sat down on the floor, found room to stretch out his legs, and closed his eyes for a moment. He saw himself walking on the roof of a fast-moving train, surrounded by troops of every complexion, speaking every language, carrying rifles as if they were spears, walking in sands into which their feet sank on the roof of the train. Above him and them were huge black birds, the names of which he did not know.
    Magd al-Din opened his eyes, astonished by this fleeting vision. He saw the feet of the other detainees stretched out in front of him: feet resting on their heels, crossed one over the other, or spread apart, big feet that at first looked like shoes, then turned out to be bare feet, worn on the bottom, completely black on top. Some heels were so furrowed that folds of rolled, dried skin hung down from them. The toes had big outgrowths on top, more than two on each toe, with black nails grown long and bent downward over the frontsof