Читаем Adrift on the Nile полностью

A silence separated them. He sat looking at the gathering mists, and realized that her early arrival had caused him to miss his usual contemplation of the evening's leisurely entrance. But he was not sorry. They heard the familiar cough from outside. "Amm Abduh," he murmured. She spoke about him with interest, and put a whole string of questions about him to Anis. He answered simply that no, the man was never ill, and that no, the weather did not affect him, and that no, he did not know how old he was, just as he could not imagine him ever dying.

"Would you accept," she asked now, "if I invited you all to the Semiramis Hotel?"

"I think not," he replied uncomfortably. "As for myself, it's impossible." And he assured her that he never left the houseboat except to go to the Archives Department of the Ministry.

"It seems that you don't like me!" she said.

"On the contrary!" he protested. "You're a sweet girl!"

Now the night had drawn in. The boat swayed under many footsteps, and a clamor of voices rose on the gangway. The rocking motion made Samara uneasy. "We live on the water," he told her. "The houseboat always moves like this when people arrive."

The friends appeared one by one from behind the screened door. They were astonished to find Samara there, but welcomed her warmly. Saniya put a special complexion on this early visit, and jestingly congratulated Anis. And shortly after that, his hands were busy as usual, and the water pipe circulated.

Ragab poured Samara a whiskey. Anis saw Sana snatching a furtive look at Samara from beneath her curls, and he smiled. As the coals glowed, he became merry. He offered the water pipe to Samara, but she declined, and all his encouragement was in vain. Everything was silent, save for the bubbling of the pipe. Then they were swept away on a stream of diverse remarks. American planes had made strikes on North Vietnam. Like the Cuban crisis, remember? And as for the rumors, there was no end to them. The world was teetering on the brink of an abyss. The price of meat, the problems of the government food cooperatives--and what about the workers and the peasants? And corruption, and hard currency, and socialism, and the way the streets were jammed with private cars? And Anis said to himself: All these things lie in the bowl of the pipe, to go up in smoke, like the vegetable dish, _mulukhiya,_ which Amm Abduh cooked for lunch that day. Like our old motto, "If I were not, I would wish to be." And when a light like the light of these embers blazes in the heavens, the astronomer says that a star has exploded, and in turn the planets around it, and everything has been blown to dust. And one day the dust fell onto the surface of the earth and life sprang from it . . . And after all that, they tell me: "I will cut two days from your salary!" Or they tell me: "I am not a whore!" The poet al-Ma'arri summed it up in one line--a line which I cannot remember, which I do not care if I remember or not. Al-Ma'arri was blind, and could not have seen Samara when she lived in his time.

"My husband is trying to get a reconciliation."

"God forbid!"

Blind, and could not see. The thread was cut, and some splendid thing was scattered away. The important thing is that we preserve . . . preserve what? Tomorrow we have a wearisome task; tomorrow is the day of the annual accounts. In the prison house of the Archives Department. A museum for insects. Midges, of course, being mammals . . .

"But you are a beautiful blonde," Samara was saying to Layla. "Really you are."

Khalid Azzuz spoke, and it was clear that he meant Layla. "Her real problem," he began, "is the problem of the country as a whole; that is, she's a modern girl--but the husband is bourgeois!"

Anis looked out at the night. He saw the lamps of the opposite shore, slipping into the river's depths like pillars of light. And from a houseboat out of sight, carried on the breeze, came the sound of singing and music. Perhaps a wedding party. As Muhammad al-Arabi had sung on the night of your wedding: "Look! What a wonder. I fell for a peasant girl!" And my uncle had said: "God preserve you, and let your house be full of fine children, but be careful, there are only two acres left. . . ." How beautiful the village was, with the garden smelling of orange blossom; a perfume as heady as musk behind the ears of fine women . . .

"What a suggestion!" someone was exclaiming.

"But it's a wonderful idea!" Samara replied eagerly. "And this way we will really get to know each other; there's no room for pretenses!"

"But what do you mean by it?"

"I mean the primary concern of your lives!"

"Sounds like a probe to me!"

"If you have any doubts about me at all, then I should leave this minute!" Samara protested.

"Let's start with you, then," Ahmad said cautiously. "Tell us about your primary concern."

She appeared not to be surprised by the question, and said simply, in a way that seemed very candid: "Mine, at the moment, is that I try my hand at writing a play."

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