Adrift on the Nile by Naguib Mahfouz
Ahmad said that every living creature was serious, and built its life upon that foundation; and that absurdity did not usually occur to the mind. One might find a killer without a motive in a novel such as L’Etranger, but in real life? Beckett himself was the first to take swift legal action against any publisher who broke the contract on his absurdist works!
Samara was not convinced. She maintained that what was in the mind must somehow influence behavior—or, at the very least, feelings. Take, for example, the nihilism everywhere, the immorality, the spiritual suicides! But human beings are still human beings, and they must rebel against it, even if only once a year!…
Ragab suggested that she stay until dawn, to watch the sun come up over the acacias.
She declined the invitation, and at midnight took her leave. When they suggested one of them drive her home, she thanked them but refused.
After she had gone, there was a silence like that of rest after toil. Fatigue threatened to overtake them all. Anis decided to tell them about his atomic experiment, but he was forced by his own lassitude to abandon the idea.
“What is behind this strange and fascinating woman?” Ahmad wondered aloud.
Ali’s large eyes were red now, and his great nose looked almost bulbous. “She wants to know everything,” he said. “And she wants to make a friend of everyone worthy of friendship.”
“Could she possibly be thinking that she might win us over one day?” asked Mustafa. And Khalid added: “In that case, we should try to win her over into one of these three bedrooms.”
“That’s Ragab’s task!”
Sana went pale; but no value was attached to any comment now, after so many pipes.
“We must find a successor for Sana,” Khalid said next. The girl gave Ragab a hard look, and he humored her: “People say anything when they’re high…” Khalid, however, would not let it drop. “Is it easy for a trivial man to love a serious woman, do you think?”
The water pipe went round, and eyelids drooped. They took the brazier out to the balcony and blew the ash off the coals, which glowed and spat sparks. Anis went toward the door to the balcony to feel the damp night breeze. He gazed in wonderment at the fire, surrendering to its enchantment. He thought: Nobody knows the secret of power like the Delta does. Geckos and rats and midges, and the river water; all these are my family, but only the Delta knows the secret of power. The North was an enchanted world, covered with forests that knew no day except spots of light glancing in through the lattice of leaves and branches. And one day the clouds fled away, and an unwelcome guest with cracked skin and gray face appeared, whose name was Drought. What can we do, when Death is at our heels? The green shriveled away, and the birds migrated, and the animals perished. I said: Death is coming, creeping nearer, stretching out his hand. My cousins, they went southward in search of the easy life, and fruit off the tree, even if it was at the end of the earth. But my family had made for the standing lakes of Nile water, and we had no weapons save resolution, and no witness to our mad, brave deeds except the Delta. And waiting for us there, the thorny plants and reptiles and wild beasts and flies and gnats, and there was a savage feast of Death; and no witness save the Delta. They said: All we can do is fight, inch by inch, welter in blood and sweat. Forearms bloody. Eyes staring and ears pricked, and not a thing to hear except the advance of Death. And the ghosts were everywhere, the vultures wheeling, waiting for victims. No time save for action, no armistice for burying our dead. No one there to ask: Where are they going? Wonders were worked, the seeds of miracles were sown, and no witness save the Delta…
When a new evening begins, the feeling of immanence intensifies. All existence is at peace. The thought of the end is far away, and there is a rare chance to give rein to notions of eternity. Because the sky is moonlit, the neon light has been put out, and we content ourselves with a dim blue lamp hung over the door to the balcony. The faces of my companions look pale. Out beyond the balcony, the moon—which is too high to be seen from here—casts a silvery rhombus over the semicircle of smokers.
“You’ve read Samara’s article about the new film, of course.”
“You mean about Ragab al-Qadi!” someone interjected.
Of course, he has not. He does not read newspapers or magazines. Like Louis XVI, he knows nothing of what goes on in the world.
Layla said, out of regard for Sana’s feelings: “Seriousness! Indeed! I never paid much attention to that—I knew from the beginning that she had come with another aim in mind.”
“Let’s dance,” Sana said to Ragab.
“There’s no music,” he replied, with odious placidity.
“Think how much we’ve danced without music!”
“Be patient, my dear—or the pipe will never get going.”
He thinks that he is the center of the universe, and that the pipe only circulates because of him. But really the pipe goes around for the same reason that anything does; if the planets traveled in a straight line, then the order of nature would be altered. Last night I believed totally in eternal life—but on my way to the office I forgot the reason why.
“I thought that the article smacked of ‘commitment,’ ” Khalid said sardonically. “What did you think, Ragab?”
Ragab replied, as if Sana was not there: “I thought it was a compliment, an approach, on her part.”
“But what is certain is that she has deserted us for days!”
That hidden quarter-moon floods the darkness with an intoxicated glow, like the sleepy eye of a violet. Do you remember how weary the moon became, staying miraculously full through all the nights of battle in the first days of Islam? Here is the warrior once more, leaping into a new fray; and like all warriors’, his costume has the hardness of chain mail…
Ragab said, with even more callous indifference to his companion: “I called Samara to thank her, and said that I would like to visit her were I not afraid of embarrassing her—and she said, amazed, that there was no question of embarrassment!”
“An open invitation!”
“So just a few minutes later I was knocking on her door—and whom did I find inside but our friend Ali al-Sayyid!”
The “friend” was subjected to a hail of abuse.
“I thanked her and drank some coffee, and said that her article had all but made a new man of me!”
“Hypocrite, son of hypocrites, descended from a long line of bred-in-the-bone hypocrites,” Ali intoned.
“My gaze was drawn irresistibly to her allure—while from her vocal cords issued the sort of honeyed tones that take a lot of effort to get past the censors!”
“Deluded fantasy,” said Ali. “It was a normal conversation—conducted in a normal voice.”
“But you were engrossed in a heated discussion with a film director, on the point of clinching a deal—”
Ali laughed loudly. “That was about a case of whiskey, nothing else. Which will shortly be consumed by the people on this infernal houseboat.”
“And was it confined to honeyed tones?” asked Mustafa Rashid.
“What more can you expect from an almost formal occasion? But even so, the serious miss was swathed in a veil of femininity, like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower—or Amm Abduh doing the rounds of his street girls!”
Sana’s voice sounded like the top string of a zither when the player strikes it by accident. “What a magician you are,” she said.
He smiled at her—a faint smile, which in the pallid blue light looked like a grimace. “My dear little thing,” he said.
“I’m not little, if you don’t mind!” she snapped.
“Little in years, but how great in…in stature—”
“Oh, spare me clichés that were old in the days of the Mameluke sultans!”
Ali sighed. “Oh to be in the Mameluke age—as long as we could be sultans, of course.”
Sana replied, with undisguised dislike: “And oh how quickly the people on this boat turn into heartless beasts!”
But beas
“This tobacco!” Anis cried. “It’s burning like paper!” And he wrapped it in a handkerchief to squeeze it down, all the while taking part in the Japan Olympics, running races and lifting weights and setting new world records. Then the telephone rang.
Ragab rose to answer it as if he was expecting a call. Anis could not hear what he was saying, apart from isolated phrases such as “Of course” and “Right away.” He replaced the receiver and turned to the company. “If you will excuse me,” he said; and turning to Sana: “I might be back at the end of the evening.” And with that, he left. The houseboat shook under his powerful tread.
Sana twitched. It seemed to the others that she was almost in tears. Nobody said a word. Everyone looked questioningly—but Ali shook his head.
At last Mustafa addressed Sana, speaking to her gently. “Don’t. The romantic era is long gone. It’s the age of realism now.”
And Layla said, concealing a gloating smile: “It is an accepted rule here—nothing is worth regretting…”
“Hang romanticism! And regrets!” cried Sana vehemently.
“He has gone to meet a producer, I assure you,” said Ali. “But you really should bear in mind that your friend is a professional ladies’ man!”
Ahmad stood up. “I’ll bring you a whiskey,” he said. “But do try to pull yourself together.”
Then Saniya spoke. She was startlingly blunt. “And if worse comes to worst,” she said, “you’ve still got Ahmad and Mustafa!”
“And what about me, you bastards!” shouted Anis wildly; and then he added roughly, spitting the words out: “Dissipated, addicted wretches!”
Everyone convulsed with laughter. “Do you think he’s really gone to see Samara?” Mustafa wondered.
“No, no, no,” said Ali.
“It wouldn’t be unusual for him to be after a woman!”
“Would somebody please tell me,” asked Layla, “why on earth she came here if it wasn’t because of him?”
“Nothing’s impossible, I admit,” said Ali. “But Samara is not a naïve young girl. I don’t think she would be satisfied with being a nine-day wonder.”
“What is it that makes some men so incredibly presumptuous?” Mustafa wondered.
“Well, any star in his position is bound to have a certain charisma.”
“It isn’t just the aura of a star, or even elegance and good looks; he is simply sexuality itself!”
“Oh, let the women speak about that,” said Ahmad. But Ali went on: “Women fall in love, but they don’t say why!”
“In that case,” advised Khalid, “consult your pituitary gland.”
Sana took a mattress and went out onto the balcony to sit on her own. “Is she the feminine ideal you are searching for?” Ali asked Mustafa, surreptitiously indicating Sana. Mustafa tersely replied that she was not.
“The permissive society!” said Khalid. “Free love! It’s the only remedy for all these ills.”
“Damn you all,” Anis said suddenly. “It is you who are responsible for the decline of Roman civilization.”
Everyone roared. “You’re unusually touchy tonight!” Ahmad observed of him.
“This filthy tobacco.”
“But it is often like that.”
“What about the moon?” Anis asked. “Do you know what part it plays in the comedy?”
“What comedy?”
“The comedy of comedies!”
The water pipe circulated without ceasing. They were silent, to collect their scattered thoughts. There were no more accusations to make. History? The future? It was all nothing. Neither more nor less. Zero. Miracle of miracles. The unknown was revealed in the moonlight. Amm Abduh’s voice came from outside, as he chanted words that no one could make out. Somebody laughed; and somebody else said that it was amazing how quickly the time had passed. They could hear the waves lapping against the bottom of the boat. Yes indeed, the part played by the moon in all this…And the part played by the ox, blindfolded at the waterwheel. One day the sheikh said to me: “You love aggression, and God does not love aggressors,” as the blood poured from my nose. Or perhaps the sheikh had said that to the other man, and perhaps the blood had been pouring from his nose. How can you trust in anything after that? And then the same voice said: “Amazing how quickly the time has passed.”
Ahmad sighed. “Time to go,” he said.
That is the death knell of our evenings. An indolent activity spread among them, and then Ahmad and Mustafa left, followed by Khalid and Layla. Ali and Saniya, however, slipped into the bedroom overlooking the garden. Amm Abduh came to tidy up the room, and Anis complained to him about the quality of the tobacco. The old man replied that there was nothing except bad tobacco on the market.
A sneeze came from the balcony. Anis suddenly remembered Sana. He crawled out to the balcony on all fours. Then he leaned against the rail, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Beautiful evening,” he murmured. The moonlight had retreated from the balcony to the other side of the boat, toward the road, drawing its glittering carpet behind it.
“Do you think he will come back?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Ragab!”
“How miserable it is, to be asked a question one cannot answer!”
“He said that he might come back at the end of the evening.”
“Might.”
“Am I annoying you?”
“Of course not!”
“Do you think I should wait?”
Anis gave a light laugh. “People have been waiting for their saviors for a thousand years.”
“Are you laughing at me, like them?”
“Nobody is laughing at you. It’s just their way of talking.”
“In any case, you’re the nicest.”
“Me!”
“You don’t say evil things.”
“That is because I am dumb.”
“And we have something in common.”
“What is that?”
“Loneliness.”
“You’re never alone when you smoke.”
“Why don’t you flirt with me a bit?”
“The real smoker is self-sufficient.”
“How about a little trip on the river in a sailing boat?”
“My legs can hardly carry me.”
She sighed. “There’s nothing for it. I shall have to leave. There is no one to take me down to the square.”
“Amm Abduh will take anyone who has no one to go with.”
In the breeze, the moist breaths of the night; and from behind the locked door of the bedroom, chuckles of laughter. The sky was completely clear, studded with thousands of stars. In the middle of the sky he saw a smiling face, the features obliterated. He began to feel as he had only ever felt when he set the world record at the Olympics. The time had gone so amazingly fast that the true tragedy of the battle appeared now before his eyes. The Persian King Cambyses sat on the dais, his victorious army behind him. On his right, his conquering generals; on his left the Pharaoh, sitting bowed in defeat. The prisoners of war from the Egyptian army were passing before the victorious Cambyses when suddenly the Pharaoh burst into tears. Cambyses turned toward him, asking what it was that made him weep. The Pharaoh pointed to a man walking, head bent, among the captives.
“That man!” he said. “I knew him so long in his glory, it pains me to see him bound in chains!”
Everything has been prepared for the evening, and now Amm Abduh is giving the call to the sunset prayer. But there is a heavy trial ahead, of waiting; waiting for the enchanted cup of coffee to work its magic. Waiting is a tense feeling of s
Anis began to pace back and forth between the balcony and the screen by the door. He lit the blue lamp; and it was then that he felt the fingertips of mercy begin to soothe him inside.
The houseboat shook; voices were raised, heralding life. The company assembled, and the water pipe circulated beneath the eye of the moon.
For the first time, Sana was not there. When Ahmad remarked upon it, comments were quick to follow. “The thing is,” said Saniya, “that you are all men in a state of zero gravity—you’ve lost your bearings.”
Ragab appeared unconcerned, occupied as he was with the kif just then.
“You were cruel to her,” Ahmad told him. “You didn’t think how young she is.”
“I can’t be a lover and a nanny at the same time.”
“But she is only a girl!”
“As I said, I’m not the first artist in her life.”
Ahmad said that she had probably been truly in love with him. “If love manages to stay alive for a month in this space age,” retorted Ragab, “it can be counted as middle-aged!” And he told them how she had tempted him with her wiles, and how he had refused “like Joseph with Potiphar’s wife!” And how love had been responsible for the fabrication of stories since the beginning of time…The moonlight shone down on them. Before long it would disappear from view. As Anis stared at his friends, new features were revealed; it was as if he were seeing them for the first time. For he saw them usually with his ears, or through a cloud of smoke, or through their ideas, the way they behaved. But when he focused on their faces spontaneously, penetratingly, he found himself to be a stranger among strangers. He saw ruin in the light wrinkles around Layla’s eyes. He glimpsed an icy cruelty in Ragab’s mocking smile. The world also appeared strange; he no longer knew where they were in Time; perhaps it did not exist at all. He became aware of the name Samara on their lips—and almost immediately he heard her voice as she joked with Amm Abduh outside. The boat’s shaking ran like a shudder through his body. And then she appeared, in a white tailored jacket and skirt, waving her hand in greeting and taking her place on the mattress that was free—Sana’s place. She lit a cigarette in a relaxed manner, and no one could detect anything in her bearing to justify Ragab’s mysterious behavior the previous night. Innocently, she asked: “Where’s Sana?”