What is this which has come to pass in Egypt?
The Nile still brings its flood;
He who had nothing is rich now;
Would that I had raised my voice before.
What did you say also, sage?
You have wisdom and vision and justice,
But you let corruption gnaw at the land.
See how your orders are held in contempt!
Will you order till there comes one who will tell you the truth?
He awoke to a voice whispering his name.
He opened his eyes to find himself lying on his back on the balcony. A shining halo in the sky betrayed the moon, now hidden from his gaze. Where was he—and in what time?
“Anis!”
He turned his head, and saw Samara standing on the threshold of the balcony. He sat up, leaning on his elbows, looking up at her, not fully awakened from the intoxication of his dreams.
“I am sorry to have come back at such an unsuitable time!”
“Is it still the same night?”
“It’s only an hour since everyone left. I’m truly sorry.”
He shuffled over to lean against the railing of the balcony, and tried to remember.
“I came back from Tahrir Square,” she said, “after Ragab dropped me there.”
“It’s an honor, I’m sure. You can have my room if you deign to stay.”
But she said, agitated: “I did not come back to sleep—as you know very well!” And then she added quietly, lowering her eyes: “I want my notebook.”
“Your notebook!” he echoed, frowning.
“If you please.”
The demons of malice awoke. “You are accusing me of theft!” he protested.
“No, I am not! But you came across it somehow.”
“You mean that I stole it.”
“I beg you, give it back to me—this is no time for talking!”
“You are mistaken.”
“I am not mistaken!”
“I refuse to listen to any more of this accusation.”
“I am not accusing you of anything. Give me back the notebook that I lost here.”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“I heard you repeating what was written in it!”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh yes, you do—you understand everything, and there is no reason to torment me.”
“Tormenting people is not one of my hobbies.”
“The night will soon be over.”
“Will Mommy punish you if you get home late?” he teased her.
“Please, be serious, if only for a minute.”
“But we don’t know what the word means.”
“Do you intend to tell everyone about it?” she asked anxiously.
“What have I to do with it, since I know nothing about it?”
“Please, be nice—I know you are, really.”
“I am not ‘nice.’ I am half mad and half dead.”
“What is written in the notebook—it’s not my opinion of you—just a summary of thoughts I’m preparing for a play…”
“We’re back in the world of riddles and accusations.”
“I am still hoping that you will behave honorably.”
“What has given you this idea, anyway?” he demanded.
“You repeated my words verbatim!”
“Don’t you believe in coincidences?”
“I do believe that you will give me back my book!”
“In that case, you’d succeed in understanding in days what I have failed to in years!” And his laugh broke the silence of the void over the Nile. Then he said, in a new tone: “Your observations are inane, believe me.”
“So you admit it!” she cried, gratified.
“I will give it back to you, but it will be no good for anything.”
“It is nothing more than some basic ideas—they have not been developed yet.”
“But you are a…vile girl.”
“God forgive you…”
“You came not for friendship, but for snooping around!”
“Don’t think so badly of me!” she protested. “I truly like you all, and I want to be your friend—and besides, I believe that there is a real hero in every individual. I was not interested in getting to know you just to use you in a play!”
“Don’t bother to make excuses. It doesn’t interest me at all, in fact.”
He held out his hand to her. The notebook was in it. “As for the fifty piasters,” he said. “I think I’ll owe them to you.”
She was perplexed. “But how?…I mean…”
“How did I steal the money? It’s a terribly simple matter. We consider everything we come across on the boat to be public property!”
“I beg you—give me an explanation to set my mind at rest.”
“I just couldn’t resist it!” he said, laughing.
“Did you need the money?”
“Of course not. I’m not as poor as that.”
“Then why did you take it?”
“I found, in spending it in the way that I did, that I could have a kind of closeness to you.”
“Really, I don’t understand at all.”
“Neither do I.”
“But I have begun to doubt my whole plan…”
“It’s better that you don’t have one at all.” She laughed. “Except one that will lead you to the one you desire!” he went on, and she laughed again. “I understand you,” he said, “just as everyone here understands you.”
She was about to leave, but when he spoke she stood still, intrigued.
“You are only here because of Ragab,” he said.
She laughed scornfully, but he pointed to the bedroom. “Careful not to wake the lovers.”
“I am not what you think! I am a girl who…”
“If you really are a girl,” he interrupted, “then come to my room and prove it!”
“How sweet you are—but you wouldn’t care for me.”
“Why?”
“Because it is too much if the girl is serious.”
“But I only ever invite serious girls!”
“Really?”
“All the street girls are serious.”
“God forgive you!”
“They don’t know what absurdity is. They work until the crack of dawn, and there’s no fun or pleasure in it. But they have a truly progressive aim—and that is to lead better lives!”
“Shame on you all! None of you can tell the difference between seriousness and frivolity!”
“Seriousness and frivolity are two names for the same thing.”
She sighed, indicating that she was about to depart, but hesitated for a moment. “Will you tell the others about the notebook?” she asked.
“If that were my intention, I would have done it.”
“I beg you, by all that is dear, tell me frankly what you have in mind.”
“I have.”
“I would prefer simply to disappear rather than be driven away.”
“I do not want either to happen.”
They shook hands in farewell. “Thank you,” she said, like a close friend.
As she hurried away, the voice of Amm Abduh rang out, giving the call to the dawn prayer.
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 cong
ratulations 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?”
“Her hopes are pinned on the new generation!”
Khalid looked at Ragab. “It appears that the generation of the forties is no longer good for anything but love,” he said.
“That is, if it is actually any good at love!”
“The new generation is better than us,” said Ahmad.
“Is there no hope for our changing, then?” asked Mustafa.
“We usually change only in plays and films,” said Khalid. “And that is our weakness.”
“And the strength of the satires which show us our true selves!” said Ali.
“Why don’t you ever admit to that in your articles?”
“Because I am a hypocrite,” said Ali, “and I was referring anyway to foreign comedies. As for the homegrown versions, they usually end in a sudden character change on the part of the lead in a facile, preachy manner. That’s why the third act is usually the weakest in the play; it is usually written for the censors.”
Khalid turned to Samara. “If you were thinking of writing a play about people like us, then I would advise you as a fellow writer to choose the comic form. I mean farce or absurdism—they’re the same thing.”
“That is certainly worth considering,” said Samara, continuing to ignore Ragab’s gaze.
“Avoid the committed type of hero who does not smile, or speak, except of the higher ideal, who exhorts people to do this or that, who loves sincerely, and sacrifices himself, and pronounces slogans, and finally kills the audience off because he is so insufferable!”
“I will take your advice,” Samara said. “I will write instead about those others who kill off the audience because they are so charming!”
“But these also have their artistic problems,” Khalid continued. “They live without any beliefs at all, wasting their time in futile pursuits in order to forget that they will soon turn into ashes and bones and nitrogen and water; and at the same time they are worn down by a daily life that forces upon them a certain kind of desperate and—to them—meaningless seriousness. Don’t forget, either, that the insane everywhere around us threaten destruction at any moment. People like this do not act, they do not develop; so how can you hope to succeed in constructing a play around them?”
“That’s the question!”
“And then there is another problem, which is that any one of them is no different from any other—except in outer appearance. That is, any one of them is not a personality, but is made up from disintegrating elements, like a crumbling building. We can distinguish between one house and another, but how can we tell the difference between two piles of stones, wood, glass, concrete, mortar, dust, paint? They are like modern painting, one canvas just like the next. So how can you justify having several characters on the stage?”
“You are practically telling me to give up writing!”
“Not at all—but I am pointing out that like attracts like. Just as the righteous stick together and the evil find each other, so is the drama of the absurd for the absurdists. Brother Ali here will never take you to task for the lack of plot or character or dialogue. No one will embarrass you with questions about the meaning of this or that. Since there is no foundation to build on, your detractors cannot shake you. Indeed, you will find people who will praise you work, who will say—and rightly—that you have expressed, through a chaotic play, a world whose identity is chaos…”
“But we do not live in a world whose identity is chaos!”
Khalid sighed. “And that is the difference between you and me. You can go back to the loving looks of brother Ragab now.”
Nothing here turns with certainty, sure of its goal; nothing save the pipe. Before long, lethargy will descend from its enchanted abode among the stars and tongues will be stilled
. The new passion will likely bear fruit before the night is out in the form of a kiss beneath the guava tree. And before that, the earth has turned for millions and millions of years to result in this night party on the surface of the Nile. The moon disappeared from view, but he could see the gecko above the balcony door. It ran, and then stopped, and then ran again. It seemed as if it was looking for something. “Why is there movement?” he asked.
They turned to him, expecting some surprise.
“What movement, master of ceremonies?” asked Mustafa.
And he murmured, continuing with his work: “Any movement at all.”
As it was an official holiday, Anis spent the day on the balcony and in the sitting room, withdrawn into a state of complete harmony. Just before sunset Amm Abduh came to prepare for the evening. He bid Anis a happy festival day for the third or fourth time, thinking that it was the first time he had greeted him. Anis asked him what he knew about the festival. Amm Abduh replied that it was on this day that the Prophet left the unbelievers—curses upon them—for a new place.
“This room will shortly be filled with unbelievers!” said Anis.
The old man laughed, unable to credit such a thing.
“You are escaping into your faith,” Anis continued wickedly.
“Escaping!” Amm Abduh replied. “I came here one day, a long time ago, riding on top of a train.”
“Where did you come from!”
“Oh…”
“And from what crime were you fleeing?”
“Well…”
He was determined to forget. Perhaps he really had come to Cairo on the run from some crime. Perhaps he was carried to the city on the wave of revolution in 1919. And now he no longer knew; and so no one knew at all.
“Are you a serious man, Amm Abduh?” he asked, still teasing.
“Ah!”
“Do you not know that Samara is a new Prophet?”
“Almighty God forgive you!”
“And she has an army behind her, to wage war on Nothingness, and march forward!”
“Where to?” asked the simple Amm Abduh.
“To prison—or to the madhouse.”
Amm Abduh left for the sunset prayer. “Where shall I find a cat for all the rats on the embankment?” he murmured to himself as he left.