Adrift on the Nile

The houseboat rocked; someone was coming. Since the party was already complete, they wondered who it could be, and looked toward the door with a certain anxiety. Ahmad rose in order to stop the newcomer at the door, but a familiar laugh was heard, and then Sana's voice, calling: "Hello!" She came in, bringing by the hand a well-dressed young man. Ragab stood up to welcome him, saying: "Good evening, Ra'uf!" and introduced him to the others as "the well-known film star . . ." The couple sat down amidst lukewarm and formal expressions of greeting.

Sana said, in a voice that was bolder than usual: "He gave me so much trouble before he finally agreed to come! He said: "How can we intrude on their privacy?"' But he is my fiancé--and you are all my family!"

She received congratulations from all the group, and continued: "And like you, he's one of those!"--pointing at the water pipe and laughing. Her breath smelled of drink. Anis felt no embarrassment, and vigorously sent the pipe on its rounds. "Aren't you lucky, Ra'uf," Sana said next. "Here is the great critic Ali al-Sayyid, and the famous writer Samara Bahgat--the pipe makes strange bedfellows!"

"But Samara, unfortunately, does not partake," said Ragab.

"Why does she keep on coming, then!" Sana replied scornfully.

Ra'uf whispered a few words in her ear that were unintelligible to anyone else; she only giggled. Then Amm Abduh came in to change the water in the pipe, and when he had gone, Sana said to Ra'uf: "Can you believe that all that great hulk is one man?" And she laughed again, but this time alone. There followed a tense silence that lasted a quarter of an hour. Finally Ra'uf prevailed upon her to leave with him. Taking her by the arm, he stood up. "My apologies," he said. "We must go--we have an urgent appointment. I am very happy to have met you all. . . ."

Ragab accompanied them to the door, and then returned to his seat. They remained gloomy in spite of the water pipe passing from hand to hand. Ragab smiled at Samara to humor her, but she only said, indicating the pipe and alluding to Sana's scornful remark, "Whatever I say, no one believes me."

"It doesn't disgrace you totally to have people say that," said Layla.

"Except when those people are my enemies."

"You have no enemies," said Ragab simply, "except the fossilized remnants of the bourgeoisie."

But she began to talk about the rumors that were spreading among her journalist colleagues, and she mentioned also her former flat in al-Manyal, where her late homecomings had set the neighbors to gossiping. "And when my mother said: "Her job keeps her out late," they said: "Well, what keeps her at her job!"

"But you are living on Kasr el-Aini Street now," said Ragab.

Mustafa tried to arouse Anis; a repeat of yesterday's outburst might disperse the gloom. But Anis did not come out of his own world. He was thinking of the empty cycles that hemmed him in every day; the rising and the setting of sun and moon, going out to and returning from the Ministry, friends gathering and parting, wakefulness and sleep. Those cycles that reminded him of the end and made something into nothing. Fathers and grandfathers had turned in these revolutions, and the earth waited calmly for their hopes and pleasures to fertilize its soil. What does it matter, that passions are consumed by fire, turned to clouds of smoke tainted with the musk of a forbidden and obscure magic. . . .

As for Layla, she tormented herself with a fruitless love, soaring out into the void like a spaceship out of orbit. The god of sex stretches out his leg until his white shoe comes to rest against the brazier, and he stares at this delightful and irksome girl, his gaze smoldering in his compelling black eyes. There was much said on the subject of Sana and her fiancé, but Ragab did not share in it. When the friends noticed his total absorption in Samara, Rashid said: "How fortunate we are, to witness in our age the story of a grand passion."

"Oh, let's call it by its real name," said Khalid.

"Don't spoil the dream for us!" pleaded Ahmad.

"What is new about it," said Layla, "is that one of the parties is a serious person."

"What could be the role of a serious woman in love whose lover is futile?" wondered Khalid.

"Cathartic," Ragab replied. "To purify him of his futility."

"And if his futility were his unchanging essence?"

"Love must be victorious in the end!" said Ragab, and Samara laughed at them all.

Khalid spoke. "I would be interested to see a serious girl in love. A minister tripping up is so much funnier than an acrobat."

"There is no difference between a serious and a frivolous woman when it comes to love," said Ali. "Seriousness is simply a practical concern with public matters in the same way as private ones."

Khalid winked in the direction of Samara. "In which of the two regards," he inquired, "do you think she is concerned now?" At which everybody laughed, and then he continued: "Do you think there is any hope of her becoming interested in general concerns?"