Adrift on the Nile

Ragab caught hold of Samara's hand as she was about to get out. "We can't leave the master of ceremonies alone," he said.

The expedition moved off. They were going toward the canal, laughing and talking. They turned into phantoms in the starlight, and then disappeared altogether, leaving only disembodied voices.

"What is the meaning of this journey?" asked Anis thickly.

"It's the journey that is important," Ragab teased, "not the meaning."

Samara said: "Hmm!"--in protest at his allusion to her; but Anis was complaining now. "The darkness makes me sleepy," he grumbled.

"Enjoy it, master of ceremonies," said Ragab eagerly. Then he turned to Samara. "We must talk about us," he said. "Honestly. Like the honesty of the nature surrounding us."

It is difficult to sleep when you are witnessing a romantic comedy. Very fitting, honesty, in the middle of the night on the road to Saqqara! Now his arm is creeping along the back of her seat. Anything can happen on the road to Saqqara.

"Yes," he continued. "Let us talk about our love."

"_Our_ love?"

"Yes, ours! That is exactly what I meant!"

"It is not possible for me to have anything to do with a god."

"It is not possible that our lips have not yet become acquainted."

She turned her head away toward the fields as if to listen to the crickets and frogs. How beautiful the stars were over the fields, she murmured. I wonder if any new ideas have been recorded in the notebook. Could we still perhaps see ourselves one night on the theater stage, and guffaw along with the audience?

"I know what you would like to say," Ragab went on.

"What?"

"That you are not like the other girls."

"Is that what you think?"

"But love . . ."

"But love?"

"You don't believe me!"

Where is honesty in this darkness? What do our voices mean to the insects? You are in your forties, Ragab. You'll have to start playing different roles soon. Do you not know how the great Casanova hid in the Duke's library?

"Please don't say 'bourgeois mentality' again," she said now.

"But how else can I interpret your fear?"

"I'm not afraid."

"Then it's a problem of trust?"

"I heard you say that in a film."

"Perhaps I don't believe in seriousness yet, but I believe in you."

"That's the Don Juan mentality!" she replied.

Ghosts, walking abroad in the fields--or in my head. Like the village in days gone by. Marriage, fatherhood, ambitions, death. The stars have lived for billions of years, but they have not yet heard of the stars of the earth. No ghosts out there; just lone trees, forgotten in the midst of the fields.

"I could perhaps remain chaste until we get married," Ragab was saying now.

"Get married?"

"But I have a devil in me that rebels against routine."

"Routine!"

"One hint, and you understand everything! But I do not understand you. . . ."

Where is the balcony, and the lapping of the waves? The water pipe, and the smell of the river? Where is Amm Abduh? And those thoughts that gleam like lightning striking the shades of the evergreens and then vanish, but where?

"Why did you refuse to marry your important suitor?"

"I was not satisfied with him."

"You mean, you did not love him."

"If you like."

"He was in his forties, like me."

"It wasn't that."

"Satisfaction is only important in free choice. Not in love."

"I don't know."

"And sex?"

"That's a question that should properly be ignored!"

With a voice that broke the spell of the night, Anis shouted: "Rulings and classifications of age and love and sex? You damn grammarians!"

They turned around uncomfortably--and then both laughed. "We thought you were asleep," said Ragab.

"How long will we stay in this prison?"

"We've only been here an hour."

"Why haven't we committed suicide?"

"We were trying to talk about love!"

Across the abyss of the night came the voices of the expedition. Then their scattered shapes could be made out. They approached the car to stand together around the hood. Yes, my dear, we could easily have been killed out there . . . Where are they now, the days of knights and troubadours? Khalid said that he had been about to commit the primary sin, had the "fraudulent pioneer" not been so prudish.

"And then in the dark," Mustafa added, "we decided to find out how modern we really are, and see who could admit to the most misdeeds!"

Ragab thought it was a clever idea. "And so everyone confessed to their sins," continued Mustafa.

"Sins!"

"I mean, what are considered such in public opinion."

"And what was the outcome?"

"Wonderful!"

"How many could be called crimes?"

"Dozens."

"And how many were misdemeanors?"

"Hundreds!"

"Have none of you committed a virtue?"

"He who goes by the name of Ahmad Nasr!"

"Perhaps you mean his fidelity to his wife."

"And to financial directives and stocktaking and regulations for the acquisition of goods!"

"And what was your opinion of yourselves?"

"Our consensus was that we are in a state of nature, immaculate; and that the morals which we lack are the dead morals of a dead age; and that we are the pioneers of a new and honest ethic as yet unsanctioned by legislation!"

"Bravo!"