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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, holdingback 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