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!”
“Oh, I think it won’t be long before the theater of the irrational, known generally as the absurd, will be founded here,” said Mustafa.
“But the absurd has existed among us in abundance, even before it became an art,” said Ragab. “Your colleague Ali al-Sayyid is known for his absurd dreams, and Mustafa Rashid strives after the absurd in its guise of Absolute. And our master of ceremonies here—his whole life, since he cut himself off from the world some twenty years ago, is absurd.”
Samara laughed aloud, throwing off her gravity. “I am really a wisewoman, then!” she said. “My heart told me that I would find wonderful and interesting things among you!”
“Was it your heart that told you,” wondered Ragab, “or Ali’s tattle?”
“He said nothing but good!”
“But our houseboat is not unique, surely?”
“Perhaps not, but the more people there are, the fewer who can live in friendship.”
“I never imagined that I would hear a journalist say that!”
“People generally present the same face to us as they do to the camera.”
“Have we not met you in a sincere and guileless way?” said Khalid. “When will you give to us in kind?”
She laughed. “Consider that I have. Or give me a little time.”
Anis piled the brazier with charcoal and carried it to the threshold of the balcony, where it was exposed to the breeze. He waited. The patches of heat grew gradually larger until the black charcoal had turned a soft, deep, glowing, crumbling red. Dozens of small tongues of flame darted up, branded with evening glow, and began to spread so that they joined into a dancing wave, pure and transparent, crowned at the tips with a spectral blue. Then the charcoal crackled, and swarms of spark clusters flew up. Female voices screamed, and he returned the brazier to its place. He acknowledged to himself his unlimited wonder at fire. It was more beautiful than roses or green grass or violet dawn; how could it conceal within its heart such a great destructive power? If you feel inclined, you should tell them the story of the person who discovered fire. That old friend who had a nose like Ali’s, and Ragab’s charisma, and the giant stature of Amm Abduh…Where had that curious notion gone? He had been about to toss it into the discussion when he was carrying the brazier out to the balcony…
“I am a lawyer,” Mustafa was saying. “And lawyers by their nature think the worst. I can almost imagine what is going through your head about us now!”
“There is nothing like that in my head!”
“Your articles pour forth bitter criticism of nihilism, and we could be considered—in the eyes of some—nihilism itself!”
“No, no,” she replied. “One cannot judge people on what they do in their free time.”
Ragab laughed. “Better to say ‘free lifetimes’!”
“Don’t remind me that I’m stranger to you,” Samara said to him.
“It is bad manners to talk like this about ourselves!” Ahmad said. “We should really be finding out about you.”
“I am not a mystery!” she said.
“The writer’s articles can generally be counted on to reveal the writer,” said Ali.
“Like your critical pieces, you mean?” asked Mustafa.
The room resounded with laughter. Even Ali laughed for a long time. Finally he said, his face still full of mirth: “I am one of you, O dissolutes of our time, and whoever is like his friends has done no wrong. But unfortunately this girl is sincere.”
“Everyone is writing about socialism,” remarked Khalid, “while most writers dream of acquiring a fortune, and of nights full of dazzling society.”
“Do you discuss these matters a great deal?” Samara asked.
“No, but we are forced to if someone alludes to the way we live.”
Anis called Amm Abduh. The huge old man came in and took the pipe out through the side door, and then brought it back after changing the water.
Samara’s eyes were drawn to him all the while he was in the room. After he had gone, she murmured: “What a fascinating giant of a man!”
Ali remembered that Amm Abduh was the only person whom he had not introduced to Samara. “He is a giant,” he said. “But he hardly utters a word. He does everything, but he rarely speaks. It often seems to us that he lives in an eternal present, but we cannot be sure. The most marvelous thing about him is a that any description you care to give of him proves to be true; he is strong and weak, there and not there; he is the prayer leader at the neighboring mosque and a pimp!”
Samara laughed for a long time. “Honestly,” she said, “I adored him at first sight!”
“When will it be our turn!” said Ragab without thinking.
Sana turned her gaze out to the Nile like a fugitive, and he put his arm apologetically around her. Unconnected questions poured into Anis’ head. Had this group of friends been gath
ered before as they were tonight—clad differently—in Roman times? Had they witnessed the burning of Rome? And why had the moon split off from the earth, dragging the mountains behind her? And who was it, in the French Revolution, who had been killed in his bathroom by a beautiful woman? And how many of his contemporaries had died—as a result—of chronic constipation? And how long after the Fall did Adam have his first quarrel with Eve? Did Eve never try to blame him for the tragedy brought about by her own hand?
Layla looked at Samara. “Are you always clearheaded?” she asked her.
“Coffee and cigarettes—nothing else.”
“As for us, if ever we heard of a crackdown on drugs, we’d all be at our wits’ end,” Mustafa remarked.
“Is it that bad!”
Ragab remembered that they had some whiskey with them. She accepted a glass gladly and he rose to fetch it. Then she asked why they were all so attached to the water pipe. No one volunteered a reply—until Ali said: “It’s the focal point of our gatherings. None of us is really happy except when we are here.”
She nodded, agreeing that it was a very pleasant party. Then Saniya Kamil addressed her. “You can’t escape so easily—you have plenty to say that goes right to the heart of the matter!”
“I don’t want to repeat clichés. Nor do I want to come across as a piece of bad didactic theater!”
“But we want to know your opinion!” Ahmad protested.
“I expound it week after week,” Samara said, and took a sip of her whiskey. “But what do you have to say about it?” she continued.
“Well,” began Mustafa, “for the first half of the day we earn our living, and then afterward we all get into a little boat and float off into the blue.”
Now, genuinely interested, she asked, “Are you not concerned at all by what goes on around you?”
“We sometimes find it useful, as material for jokes.”
She smiled disbelievingly. Mustafa went on: “Perhaps you are saying to yourself, They are Egyptians, they are Arabs, they are human beings, and in addition they are educated, and so there cannot be a limit to their concerns. But the truth is that we are not Egyptian or Arab or human; we belong to nothing and no one—except this houseboat…”
She laughed, as she might at a good joke. Mustafa continued: “As long as the floats are sound, and the ropes and chains strong, and Amm Abduh is awake, and the pipe filled, then we have no concerns.”
“Why!” she exclaimed, and then thought for a minute. “No,” she amended. “I will not be tempted into the abyss. I will not allow myself to be a moralizing bore.”
“Don’t take Mustafa too literally,” Ali suggested. “We are not as egotistical as he makes out. But we can see that the ship of state sails on without need of our opinion or support; and that any further thinking on our part is worth nothing, and would very likely bring distress and high blood pressure in its wake.”
High blood pressure. Like adulterated kif. The medical student turns hypochondriac the moment he enters college. The Director General himself is no worse than the operating room. That first day in the operating room! Like the first death I knew, the death of those most precious to me. This visitor is interesting even before she opens her mouth. She is beautiful. She smells wonderful. And the night is a lie, since it is the negative of day. And when dawn breaks, tongues will be made dumb. But what is it that you have tried in vain to remember all evening?
Khalid Azzuz turned to Samara. “Your writing shows a literary talent.”
“One that has never been tested.”
“Doubtless you have a plan.”
“I am mad about the theater, first of all.”
“What about the cinema?” Ragab asked.
“Oh, my ambitions do not go so far,” she replied.
“But the theater is nothing but talk!” he retorted.
Mustafa smiled. “Just like our little society here.”
Samara replied earnestly now. “No! The opposite is true: the theater is…concentrated; every word has to have a meaning.”
“And that is the fundamental difference between the theater and our group,” Mustafa suggested.
Suddenly her eyes fell on Anis, who was sending the water pipe around the circle, as if she had discovered him for the first time. “Why don’t you speak?” she demanded.
…She is tempting you, so that she can say to you, when it comes to it: I am not a whore. She reminds me of someone. I cannot remember who. Possibly Cleopatra, or the woman who sells tobacco down in the alley. She’s a Scorpio too. Does she not realize that I am absorbed in abstractions of an erotic nature?
Mustafa excused him. “He who works does not speak,” he said.
“Why does he do it all himself?”
“It is his favorite pastime,” Mustafa replied, “and he allows no one to help him.”
“He is the master of ceremonies here,” added Ragab. “Sometimes we call him the master of pleasures. Any of us old hands are inexperienced amateurs compared to him, for he manages never to wake up.”
“But he must be clearheaded first thing in the morning at least!” Samara protested.
“For a few minutes, during which he bellows for one of his ‘magic’ cups of coffee, and then…!”
Samara addressed her next remarks to Anis. “Tell me yourself,” she said. “What do you think about during those moments?”
He did not meet her eyes as he spoke. “I ask myself why I am alive.”
“Splendid—and how do you answer that question?”
“Generally,” he replied, “I’m high again before I get the chance.”
They all laughed, rather too long, and he laughed along with them, his eyes passing over the other women through the billowing clouds of smoke. There was no love in their eyes for the visitor; there was a lion among them, one who devoured the flesh and threw the bones to the others. The new visitor’s bones were filled with a disquieting kind of marrow.
But as long as the midge is a mammal, we need not fear. The fact is, were it not for the planets’ revolution around the sun, we would soon know immortality at first hand.
Ragab looked at his watch. “Time for us to stop this babbling,” he said earnestly. “Tonight has been a milestone in our lives. For the first time, a serious person has graced us with her presence. Someone who has something none of us possesses. Who knows? Perhaps with the passing of time we will find the answer to many questions that have up to now remained unanswered…”
She looked at him cautiously. “Are you making fun of me, Ragab?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it! But I do hope that you will become part of our circle here…”
“I hope so too—and I won’t miss any opportunity that time allows.”
There was an air of defeated resignation as people prepared to leave. The curse that puts an end to everything took hold. Was that the thought which had slipped my mind for so long? There was nothing left in the brazier of the pipe except ash. One by one they left; until he was on his own. Another night dies. From beyond the balcony, the night observed him…and here was Amm Abduh, setting the room to rights.
“Did you see the newcomer?” Anis asked him.
“As much as my old eyes could.”
“They say she’s a detective!”
“Ah!”
As the old man was on the point of leaving, Anis said to him, “You must go and find a girl for me. A girl to go with this pitch-dark night.”
“It’s so late at night—there will be no one out in the street now.”
“Go on, you great lump!”
“But I’ve just washed for the dawn prayer!”
“You want to last even longer than you have already, do you? Go on!”
From the ashtray, he took the end of one of the cigarettes she had smoked during the evening. There was just the orange filter left, and part of the white end, squashed. He looked at it for a long time, and then he put it back, in the middle of a little heap of dead midges. The river breathed a watery sc
ent, musky and female. He thought of entertaining himself by counting the stars, but he lacked the will. If there is no one watching our planet and studying our strange habits, then we are lost. How, I wonder, does the observer of our evenings full of laughter interpret what goes on between the meetings and the partings? Perhaps he would say: There are small gatherings that puff out a dust that thickens the atmospheric veil around the planet; and from these groups there come obscure sounds that we will not understand as long as we are without any idea of their composition. The gatherings increase in size from time to time, which means that they must become more numerous through some intrinsic or extrinsic motive. And it is thus not impossible that there is a primitive form of life on that cold planet—contrary to the opinion of some, who hold that it is impossible for life to exist in other than fiery atmospheres. It is extraordinary how these small gatherings disappear, to return repeatedly in this way without any clear goal, a fact that adds weight to the argument against life here—life in the proper sense at least…
He hitched his long tunic up over his shins and laughed loudly, so that the watcher would hear and see him. Yes, we do have life, he thought; we have penetrated so deeply in our understanding of it that we have realized that there is no meaning; and you too will penetrate deeper and deeper, and still, no one will be able to predict what will come to be. You will be no more astonished than Julius Caesar was when he was first struck by that immortal beauty tumbling from the rolled-up carpet…
“Who is the girl?” the bewildered Caesar asked.
And she replied, utterly confident in her beauty: “Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt.”
Anis leaned against the rail of the balcony and gazed at the peaceful sunset. The breeze blew in through the neck of his robe to caress his body. It carried to him, along with the scent of the water and the greenery, the voice of Amm Abduh as he led the prayer in the little mosque near the houseboat. The black coffee was still bitter in his mouth, and his mind was still partly in thrall to the Caliph Ibn Tulun, in whose distant reign he had been wandering for a while before his siesta. He usually dreaded the short time between sipping the coffee and embarking on his evening’s journey, in case something happened to bring the mysterious, causeless grief down upon him. But the boat began to rock slightly in time to a faint vibration on the gangway, and he wondered who could be coming so early. Leaving the balcony, he entered the main room just as Samara Bahgat appeared from behind the screen by the door.