Adrift on the Nile

"Why don't you tell us something about her," Mustafa suggested. "That would be more useful."

"Certainly. She's twenty-five. She graduated in English just before she turned twenty. She's an excellent journalist, better by far than most people her age. And she has ambitions in the artistic sphere which she hopes to realize one day. She looks at life from a serious angle, but she is very pleasant company. Everybody knows that she refused to marry a very well-to-do bourgeois man, in spite of her small salary."

"Why?"

"The man was under forty, the director of a firm, the owner of an apartment block--like Khalid here--and a relation on her father's side to boot. But, as I understand it, she did not love him. . . ."

"If we can judge by her heart, then," said Khalid, "she's a radical."

"Call her progressive, if you like. But genuine and sincere as well."

"Has she ever been arrested?"

"No. I have known her as a colleague ever since she got her first job on _Kulli Shay'_ magazine."

"Perhaps when she was a student, then?"

"I think not, or else I would have found out about it during our long talks together. In any case, it wouldn't influence my opinion of her one way or the other."

Sana spoke. "Why do you want to invite such a dangerous woman to the houseboat," she asked, "when she can't entertain us in the least?"

"She must come," said Layla. "We need some new blood here."

"Make a decision," said Ali. "She's at the club now. If you like, I can call her on the telephone and ask her to come over."

"Did you tell her that it is the whale who gathers us all here?" Anis asked him.

Ali did not reply. He suggested taking a vote. Anis laughed at his own embalmed memories. He suggested that they bring Amm Abduh to add his vote as well. Ragab put his arm around Sana, and Ali rose to go to the telephone.

6

Half an hour after his telephone call, Ali al-Sayyid left his seat in order to be ready to welcome the newcomer at the door. Not long afterward, they felt the faint vibration of footsteps on the gangway. Ahmad wished aloud that they had hidden the water pipe so that they could feel easy in the presence of the visitor, but Ragab signaled contemptuously to Anis. "Pile it on," he said.

She appeared smiling from behind the screen, and came forward--followed by Ali--to meet their combined gazes in a calm, friendly, and unembarrassed way. All the men rose to their feet. Even Anis stood up, his white robe rumpled up over his shins. Ali began the conventional introductions. Ahmad offered to bring her a chair, but she preferred to sit on a mattress; and Ragab--involuntarily--moved closer to Sana in order to make room for her. Anis resumed his work, stealing occasional glances at her. He had been led, by what he had heard, to expect someone rather odd, and she was definitely a woman of character; but she was also quite charmingly feminine. From under drooping lids he saw that her dark complexion was undisguised by makeup. Her features were as open as her simple elegance, but in her gaze there was an intelligence that prevented him from fathoming her. He imagined that he had seen her before, but in what bygone age? Had she been queen or subject? Another furtive glance--but this time she showed him a new picture! He tried to absorb it all, but the concentration tired him out and he turned away to the Nile instead.

The customary hubbub of introductions and compliments was followed by a silence. The gurgle of the water pipe made a duet with the crickets. Adroitly, Samara avoided looking at the pipe in any meaningful way. When Anis passed her the mouthpiece she put it to her lips without smoking, by way of salutation, and then passed it to Ragab, who took it, saying: "Be at your ease."

She turned to him. "I saw you in your last film, _Tree Without Fruit_," she said. "I can say that you played your part extraordinarily well."

He was not so modest as to be embarrassed by praise. "Opinion, or flattery?" he asked warily.

"Opinion, of course--and one shared by millions!"

Anis looked through the smoke at Sana and, seeing her tame her rebellious lock of hair, smiled. The Director General himself, with all the power conferred on him by financial and administrative directives, could not control all "incomings and outgoings". Thousands of comets, scattered by stars, burned and frittered away as they were flung into the earth's atmosphere, and not one of them found their way into the archives. Nor were they entered in the register of incoming mail. As for pain, that was the heart's domain only . . .

Now Samara was addressing Khalid Azzuz. "The last story of yours that I read was the tale of the piper . . ."

Khalid adjusted his spectacles.

"The piper whose pipe turned into a serpent!" she continued.

"And since its publication," said Mustafa, "he well deserves the epithet of "python."

"It's a strange, exciting story," she said.

"Our friend is a leading light of the old school--the school of 'art for art's sake,'"said Ali. "Don't expect anything else from this houseboat!"