Naguib Mahfouz - Adrift on the Nile

"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 sleeplessness, and there is no cure for it except the balm of eternity. Until then the Nile will not ease you, nor the flocks of white doves; and with an anxious eye you picture your companions of the evening disperse as you picture all endings. The moon, appearing over the acacias, only serves to reinforce this melancholy instead of soothing it away; and as long as that is so, even good actions are succeeded by regret, and the heart is oppressed by any wisdom save that which sounds the death of all wisdoms. Let pains retreat before the magic, never to return. When we emigrate to the moon, we will be the first settlers ever to run from Nothingness to Nothingness. Pity the web of the spider who sang one evening in the village, in time to the croaking frogs. Just before sleeping this afternoon you heard Napoleon, accusing the English of killing him by slow poison. But the English are not the only ones who kill by slow poison…

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?"

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…"