Adrift On The Nile Part 4

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 gathered 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 gla.s.s 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 cliches. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 wh.o.r.e._ 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing 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 scent, 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 s.h.i.+ns 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."

7.

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.

She approached him, smiling. He regarded her, astonished. They shook hands. She apologized for coming so early, but he welcomed her in, genuinely pleased. She went out onto the balcony as eagerly as if she were about to see the Nile for the first time, and let her lively, cheerful gaze wander over the sleepy evening scene. She gazed for a long time at the acacia blossoms with their red and violet tints. Then she turned to him and they looked at each other, curiously on her part and with a certain confusion on his. He invited her to sit down, but she went first to the bookshelves to the left of the door, and looked over the t.i.tles with interest. Then she took a seat beside his usual place in the middle of the semicircle. He sat down in turn, and said again how pleased he was that she had come early after her weeklong absence. He compared her simple outfit of white blouse and gray skirt with his long white tunic. Perhaps it was because of her work that, unlike other women's, the neck of the blouse did not show her cleavage. Or perhaps because she was a serious girl.

Suddenly she asked: "You were once married, and had a child--is that not so?"

Before he could reply, she apologized, taking back the intrusion with her tone of voice, adding that she believed that Ali al-Sayyid had mentioned it once in the course of telling her about his friends. He replied with a bow of the head. But when he saw the curiosity unsated in her beautiful hazel eyes, he said: "Yes. When I was a student from the countryside, alone in Cairo. Mother and daughter died within the month, from the same illness." Then he added, with a detached simplicity: "That was twenty years ago."

He was reminded of the story of the spider and the fly. He realized, annoyed, that he had hardly started on his journey yet. He was afraid that he would meet with words of pity from her, but she expressed her feelings by a prolonged silence. Then she turned to the bookshelves. "They tell me that you are very keen on history and culture. But, as far as I know, you do not write on those subjects."

He raised the wide eyebrows that suited his broad, pale face in apparent rejection or scorn. She smiled. "So why did you stop studying?" she asked.

"I had no success at it," he replied. "Then I ran out of money, and managed to get a job at the Ministry of Health on the recommendation of one of the doctors who taught me at medical school."

"Perhaps the work doesn't agree with you."

"I can't complain."

He looked at his watch, and then poured a little fluid from a bottle onto the charcoal in the brazier. He put a match to it and placed the brazier in the doorway of the balcony. But now she questioned him again.

"Don't you feel lonely, or . . . ?"

He interrupted her with a laugh. "I don't have time for that."

She laughed in turn. "In any case," she said, "I am happy to have found you in your right mind this time."

"Not entirely," he said. He had seen her looking at the newly lit charcoal, so he pointed, smiling, at the dregs in the bottom of the coffee cup. She accepted the evidence, and began to praise riverside life. He confessed that he himself was relatively new to it. "We gathered in any number of apartments, but the nosy neighbors never once left us in peace!"

And then he laughed, but this time in a different, exultant way. She looked at him inquiringly. He laughed again, and then pointed to his head. "The journey has begun," he said, "and your eyes are beautiful."

"And where is the connection?"

"There is no connection between any one thing and another," he announced, as if it were an axiom.

"Not even between the firing of a bullet and the death of a person?"

"Not even then--for the bullet is a rational invention, but death . . ."

She laughed. "Did you know?" she said, "I came early on purpose so that I could be alone with you."

"Why?"

"Because you are the only one who hardly speaks at all."

The lift of his eyebrows showed that he did not accept this, but she did not retract this time. "Even if you are talking to yourself all the time!"

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 a.s.sured 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 s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 wh.o.r.e!" 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.