Adrift on the Nile by Naguib Mahfouz
Mustafa answered: “In Amm Abduh’s hut.”
Samara’s innocent expression did not change. Mustafa said that perhaps she was looking for the Absolute in there. Samara replied that she ought to look for that in him, not in Amm Abduh’s hut. Mustafa continued his mockery. “The fact is, Sana found that Ragab’s love was a somewhat impermanent attribute, so she departed in search of something true and unchangeable.”
“There’s something truly unchangeable in Amm Abduh’s hut,” Samara rejoined sadly. “Emptiness.”
It was true. The old man possessed only the robe he stood in, and he slept on an old couch with no coverlet. That was how Anis had found him when he had moved to the houseboat. He must get him a blanket before winter came.
Mustafa again urged Samara to try the water pipe, and Ragab backed him up. “Why are you so adamant!” he said.
She laughed. “Why do you love it so much? That’s the important question!”
“No—it is your abstinence that needs to be explained!”
It was clear to everyone that she had a passionate desire to get to the bottom of this. Very well, then. Why did people adore the pipe’s oblivion? Why did they yearn for that stupefied drowsiness?
“Why don’t you look up ‘addiction’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” suggested Khalid, but Mustafa added quickly: “Beware of clichés, miss!” She smiled uncertainly as he continued: “And of fatuous words like ‘escape’ and so on…”
“I want to know,” she said simply.
“Is this a new investigation?” Ragab asked.
“I will not allow you to keep accusing me like this!”
“Platitudes are worth nothing,” challenged Mustafa. “We are all working people—the director of an accounts department, an art critic, an actor, an author, a lawyer, a civil servant. We give to society all that it requires and more. What are we escaping from?”
Her reply was candid. “You are constructing arguments and then knocking them down. I’m simply asking what the water pipe does for you.”
Ali al-Sayyid spoke. “As the poet of old said:
“Eyes sleepless, eyes sleeping
For some reason or none
Cast off care if you can,
For care to madness leads…”
“So it’s because of your cares!” she said, with something resembling triumph.
But Mustafa persisted: “We give our daily concerns our closest attention. We are not good-for-nothings. We are the fathers of families! We have jobs to do!”
As the discussion proceeds, the world seems more and more bizarre. Cares and lazy people and clichés. The drugged debate with reddened eyes. The moon has completely disappeared, but the surface of the water glitters as if it were an unfamiliar, smiling, happy face. What does the woman want? What do the smokers want? They say leisure, and she says addiction. It is extraordinary that the boat does not shake with this debate, but only rocks now under footsteps on the gangway. Amm Abduh came, and took the pipe away to change the water. He brought it back and left again. Anis looked at the glitter of the Nile and smiled. He became aware of Samara’s voice calling him—and looked over at her, his hands still busy with the water pipe.
“I would like to hear your opinion,” she said.
“Miss,” he said simply, “get married.”
Everybody laughed. “She prefers the role of preacher,” said Ragab.
But she was determined not to be embarrassed, and continued with her eyes to urge Anis to speak. But he looked away from her, down at his work. Why do one and one make two?
An annoying woman. Bursting in on us with life’s banalities. What does she want? And how can we ever get high with this battle raging all the time!
When she despaired of him, she turned to Mustafa. “I accept that you take your problems seriously in your daily lives—but what about public life?”
“Do you mean national politics?”
“And foreign policy!” she replied.
“And international affairs as well, why not!” said Khalid sarcastically.
She smiled. “And that as well.”
“And we must not neglect the politics of the universe either,” added Mustafa.
“I see that there are more problems than we imagined!” she said, laughing.
“Now we begin to understand each other,” Mustafa went on. “You regret the time we waste in evenings like this one. You consider that it is an escape from our real responsibilities. That were it not for this, we would come up with solutions for the problems of the Arab world and the planet as a whole and the universe as well…”
They laughed again. They told Anis that he was the real reason for the sufferings of the world, for the unsolved mysteries of the universe. Mustafa suggested that they throw the water pipe into the Nile, and then divide the work among them. Khalid would concern himself with national policy, and Ali with international affairs, and Mustafa himself with solving the more cosmic difficulties. How would they start? How would they organize themselves? How would they realize socialist ideals on a national democratic basis, without betraying these ideals or oppressing the people? How, after that, would they find a cure for world problems like war and racial discrimination? As for Mustafa, they had to decide whether he would begin by studying science and philosophy or whether he would content himself with meditation, waiting for the ray of light! They also gave careful attention to the challenging obstacles that lay in their path, the dangers awaiting them. Confiscation of personal assets. Imprisonment. Execution…
And then someone complained: “Amazing, how quickly the time has passed…
The moon had disappeared completely, and on the water there remained only a small scrap of the glittering carpet of light. The water pipe had not ceased in its rounds, and neither had Samara stopped laughing.
Thoughts clashed in Anis’ head. Thoughts of the first battles of Islam, of the Crusades, of the courts of the Inquisition. The deaths of great lovers and philosophers, the bloody conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, the age of the early Christian martyrs. The founding fathers’ voyage to America, the death of Adila and Haniya, his dealings with the street girls; and the whale that had saved Jonah, and Amm Abduh’s job, divided as it was between prayer leading and pimping. The silence of the last watch of the night, which he could never describe; and the fleeting, phosphorescent thoughts that glowed for an instant before vanishing forever.
He became aware of Samara’s voice; she was asking everyone what they were like in their youth, at the beginning of their lives.
They laughed. Why do they laugh? It is as if their lives had no beginning. Just distant, Stone Age memories. The village, and then the single room and resolution; resolution in the village and the single room. When the moon rose and set without signaling the end of anything.
“When I was a boy,” said Khalid, “there was no question without an answer. The world did not go around, and hope stretched out into the future for a hundred million light years.”
Ali said: “I remember wondering once why our fear of death hindered our eternal happiness.”
“And one day,” added Mustafa, “Anis and I nearly died in a revolutionary demonstration!”
None of this surprised Samara. She began to talk about the possibility of recalling this same ardor, but in a more contemporary form. The others, however, began to discuss the natural treachery of women, how it banished trust in any one of them…She said to Mustafa, who was arguing the most strongly: “You are taking refuge from responsibility in the Absolute.”
“Responsibility is the way many people take refuge from the Absolute,” he replied cynically.
Chicken and egg. As for me, I stack the coals and fill the pipe and light the fire and send the pipe around; and so I get my fill, willy-nilly, of all their rubbish, and the women laugh and dream of love; and time goes by with amazing speed. And each time the cultured young miss wishes to leave, the magician insists on her staying. In a little while, destruction will befall the gather
“Time to go home!”
The men and women left—all except Ragab and Samara.
One thing is sure. They do not know that it is the Nile which has condemned us to ourselves. And that nothing remains of our ancient worship except the cult of the bull god, Apis. And that the real malady is fear of life, not death. And now you will hear the oft-repeated conversation, proceeding in time-honored fashion:
“Would it not be better, my dear, if we took pleasure in love?”
“A nice idea!”
“So…?”
“I told you, my dear, that I am serious!”
“Bourgeois mentality, I think.”
“Serious, s-e-r-i-o-u-s.”
“Then how on earth will you ever give of yourself?”
And when she did not reply he continued: “Only in marriage, for example?”
“Say, real love.”
“So come, then…”
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“I never joke,” he replied.
“What about Sana?”
“You know nothing about the mad psychology of puberty.”
“I do know some things, you know.”
“Would you surrender to me if I promised to be serious too?”
“You are quite charming!”
Now he is bringing his face closer to hers. The old scene will be repeated. And now he is putting his lips to hers. She did not resist, but neither did she respond. He gave her a cold and mocking stare. The knight’s ardor waned, and he retreated. The ancient Persian occupation failed this way. Through the passive resistance, that is, of the Pharaonic Egyptians.
Ragab smiled. “Let’s stroll in the garden, then,” he said.
“But it’s so late…”
“There’s no such thing as time on this houseboat.”
The room was empty now. No, it was not empty; there was still the debris of the evening there, and the library and the screen and the refrigerator and the telephone and the neon light and the blue lamp, and two armchairs and the sky-blue carpet with a pink pattern; and also the recumbent figure of an atom-age man. As for those two, they are strolling in the garden, and the dewy grass will cool their heat, and their whispers will linger in the leaves of violet and jasmine. And they could well be dancing, now, to the song of the crickets.
Amm Abduh came to perform his final task. Anis watched him for a while, and then said: “If you found a girl…”
“Oh!”
“Before or after washing for the prayer. If you don’t, woe betide you.”
“One of the men who prayed every dawn prayer with us has died. A good man.”
“God spare you. I think you will probably bury us all.”
The old man laughed as he took away the brass tray.
Anis’ eyes fell on a large white handbag on the mattress where Samara had been sitting. It seemed to him that the bag had a personality; that by some cunning sorcery it was influencing him…yes, he was aware of a violent urge to commit a dreadful deed. He stretched out his hand to the bag and opened it.
He saw all the things one would expect, but they seemed to scream of unfamiliarity. He was overwhelmed by the odor of purity. A handkerchief, a small navy-blue bottle, a comb with a silver handle. And a purse, and a pocket notebook. He opened the purse. There were several bank notes in it. He decided to take fifty piasters to give to the girl Amm Abduh would bring—what a delightful idea. Then another, matchless notion occurred, one uniquely capable of stirring up all kinds of mischief: he took the notebook and slid it into his pocket. Then he closed the bag, and began to shake with laughter.
He would do a little surgery again. The operation he had failed at so many years ago. Open up a heart that was closed to him. His youth would be renewed. His prime would come again. The girl would say everything which occurred to the mind and everything which did not. And then she would wonder how one primeval protozoan could contain all these wonders. And she would ask me when it was that I was a volcano before the layers of dead ash settled over me. And I do not know the answer…
I do not know the answer, but perhaps you do, you on whose memory history was built. He sat in front of me like a statue and I said: “Are you in truth the Pharaoh? Are you Thutmose III?”
He answered, in a voice that reminded me of Mustafa Rashid: “Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
“I am sharing the throne with my sister Hatshepsut.”
Earnestly I said: “Many people ask why you languish in her shadow.”
“She is the Queen.”
“But you are also the King.”
“She is powerful, and she wishes to have dominion over everything.”
“But you are the greatest general of Egypt, and the most mighty judge…”
“But I have not yet leaped into battle, or passed judgment!”
“I am telling you what you will become. Do you not understand?”
“And how do you know that?”
“From history. Everyone knows that.”
He appeared to my eyes. He was looking at me with the expression people reserve for idiots. I persisted. “It is history. Believe me.”
“But you are speaking of a future which is unknown.”
And I said, like someone who is speaking in a nightmare, helplessly: “It is history! Believe me!”
SCENARIO FOR A PLAY
The major theme of the drama is the Serious versus the Absurd.
Absurdity is the loss of meaning, the meaning of anything. The collapse of belief—belief in anything. It is a passage through life propelled by necessity alone, without conviction, without real hope. This is reflected in the character in the form of dissipation and nihilism, and heroism is transformed into mockery and myth. Good and evil are equal; and one is adopted over the other—if adopted at all—with the simple motive of egotism, or cowardice, or opportunism. All values perish, and civilization comes to an end.
What must be studied in this context is the problem of religious people who take the path of the absurd. They are not lacking in faith, but still, in a practical sense, they lead futile lives. How can this be explained? Have they misunderstood the nature of religion? Or is it their faith which is unreal, which is a matter of routine—a rootless faith, which serves merely as a cover for the most vile kinds of opportunism and exploitation? This point demands closer study, as does the question of whether I should deal with it in the play or treat it as an independent issue.
As for seriousness, it means belief. But belief in what? It is not enough for us to know what we must believe in. It is also necessary that our belief has the sincerity of true religious faith, plus faith’s astonishing power to inspire acts of heroism. If this is not the case, then our belief is no more than a serious form of the absurd. All this must be expressed through situation and action, whether it be belief in humankind, or in science, or in both together. In order to simplify the issue I will say that mankind of old faced absurdity, and escaped it through religion. And today again, man faces absurdity; but how can he escape this time? It is pointless to entertain hopes of communicating with people in a language other than the one they use; and we have acquired a new language, which is science. This is the only language in which we can articulate greater and lesser truths. For they are the old truths after all, once contained in the language of religion; and they must now be re-presented in the new language of man.
Let us look to the scientists for example and method. It seems that they are never trapped by absurdity. Why? Perhaps because they have no time for it! Perhaps also because they are permanently in contact with reality. Relying on a successful methodology of proven worth, they are not assailed by doubt or despair. One among them may spend twenty years solving an equation; and the equation will provoke new in
In any case, it is best for now that I occupy myself no further with the theme. I shall return to it after a summary of the other elements I need for the work.
I imagine the scenario to unfold in the following fashion:
A young woman launches an attack on a group of men in order to change them. She must succeed in this by way of art—if not, then the play has no meaning. A serious woman and absurdist men. I require a love story. It would be truly interesting if they were all to fall in love with her and she had to choose one of them; or if she should fall, without knowing it, in love with one of them. There must be a dramatic tension between the love interest and the problem of the serious and the absurd, so that the play does not flag. But will it develop as a love story within the framework of an intellectual conflict? Will it perhaps be confined to intellectual discussions and whispered intimacies? And how, and when, will the plot develop to a conclusion in an artistically convincing way? Will it be based on debate or on emotion? I lack some important, essential thing; what is it? How can absurdists find any kind of creed? And what is the extent of this creed? Is it enough for it to be a belief in society? I mean, is that sufficient for heroism to be created anew?