Adrift on the Nile

by Naguib Mahfouz

  Ragab continued, indicating Mustafa now. “Mustafa Rashid, the well-known lawyer. Successful advocate and philosopher as well, married to an inspector in the Ministry of Education. He searches earnestly for the Absolute, and no doubt he will succeed in finding it one of these nights. But beware of him, my dear, for he says that to this day he has not found the perfect ideal of womanhood…”

  Ragab then gave Ali a pat on the back. “Ali al-Sayyid, the famous art critic. Of course, you have read his work. I have the pleasure of informing you that he dreams of an ideal city, an imaginary one. As for the reality, he has two wives, and is also the close friend of Saniya Kamil, not to mention anything else…”

  Lastly, Ragab indicated Khalid. “Khalid Azzuz, a member of the first rank of short-story writers. He owns an apartment block and a villa and a car, and several shares in the theory of art for art’s sake, plus a son and daughter; and he also has a personal philosophy which I am not sure how to name—but certainly promiscuity is among its external traits…”

  He smiled at them all, revealing regular white teeth. “There remains only Amm Abduh,” he murmured, “whose ghostly form we passed in the garden on our way here. You will meet him in due course. Everyone in the street knows him.”

  Anis called Amm Abduh and asked him to change the water in the pipe. He took it away through the side door and returned it in a moment, and then went away again. Sana’s eyes widened in amazement at the towering figure. Ragab said: “Luckily he’s the soul of obedience. He could drown us any time he wanted.”

  There is nothing to fear as long as the whale remains in the water. The hand of this underage girl is as small as Napoleon’s, but her nails are red and as pointed as the prow of a racing skiff. Now that she is here, we have broken every rule in the book…

  Thus the darkness spoke.

  Mustafa coughed. “And which of the arts does Mademoiselle specialize in?”

  “History,” she replied, her voice coy and girlish.

  “Marvelous!” cried Anis.

  Ragab rebuked him. “Not your gory type of history! Her history is concerned with nice things!”

  “There are no nice things in history.”

  “What about the passion of Antony and Cleopatra?”

  “That was a gory passion.”

  “But one not wholly confined to swords and asps.”

  Sana appeared uneasy. She looked toward the screened door and asked: “Aren’t you afraid of the police?”

  Mustafa smiled. “The arts police?”

  After the laughter died down, she said: “Or being investigated?”

  “Because we are afraid of the police and the army,” Ali said, “and the English and the Americans, and the visible and the invisible, we have reached the point where we’re not afraid of anything!”

  “But the door is open!”

  “Amm Abduh is outside, and he can be counted upon to turn away any intruders.”

  Ragab smiled. “Forget your worries, light of my eyes,” he said to the girl. “The economic plan is keeping everyone busy. The authorities have enough to do already without bothering with the likes of us.”

  Mustafa Rashid offered her the pipe. “Try this kind of courage,” he suggested.

  But she declined gently. “One step at a time,” Ragab said. “Bare hands came before space technology. Roll her a joint.”

  In two minutes the cigarette was proffered. She took it rather cautiously, and fixed it between her lips. Ahmad looked at her sympathetically. He is afraid for his own daughter, thought Anis. And if my daughter had lived, she would be Sana’s double.

  But what is the point, whether you remain on this earth or depart? Or whether you live as long as the turtle? Since historical time is nothing compared to the time of the cosmos, Sana is really a contemporary of Eve. One day the Nile’s waters will bring us something new, something which it would be better we did not name. The voice of the darkness spoke to him: Well said.

  And I believe that I may well hear, one night, the same voice command me to do some extraordinary thing—something to bewilder those who do not believe in miracles. The scientists have had their say on the stars, but what are the stars, in fact, but single worlds that chose solitude, worlds separated one from the other by thousands of light-years? Whatever or whoever you are, do something, for the Nothing has crushed us…

  “So do you find time to study?” Ahmad asked Sana kindly.

  Ragab replied for her. “Of course—but she’s crazy about art as well.”

  The girl shook her finger at him. “Don’t make me the entire subject of your conversation!”

  “Perish the thought!”

  “Do you want to be an actress?” Ahmad continued. When Sana smiled and did not demur, he continued: “But…”

  Ragab interrupted him. “Quiet, you reactionary—and I don’t use that disgusting term lightly.” He took Sana’s chin between finger and thumb and tilted her head toward him. Then he said, examining her carefully: “Let me study your face…beautiful, that fresh bloom harboring a hidden power. A sugared date with a hard kernel; the gaze of a young girl—which, when she frowns, radiates the subtlety of a woman! Which role would fit you? Perhaps the part of the girl in The Mystery of the Lake.”

  She was intrigued. “What part is that, exactly?”

  “She is a bedouin girl who loves a wily fisherman—one of those men who make a game out of love. He scorns her at first, but she tames him eventually. By the end he is wrapped around her little finger.”

  “Could I really play that?”

  “I am talking about an artistic instinct,” Ragab replied. “One that producers and distributors alike believe in. Just a minute—pucker your lips. Show me how you kiss. Beware of being embarrassed. Embarrassment is the enemy of the art of acting. Now, in front of everyone, a real kiss, real in every sense of the word. A kiss after which the international situation must surely improve…”

  He put his long, strong arms around her, and their lips met with force and warmth, in a silence unbroken even by the gurgling of the pipe. Then Mustafa Rashid cried: “That was a glimpse of the Absolute I’ve been wearing myself out trying to find!”

  “Maestro and maestra!” Khalid gushed. “My congratulations! Indeed, we must all congratulate ourselves; we must salute this splendid moment of civilization. Now we can say that Fascism has been completely routed! That Euclid’s axioms have been demolished! Sana—no surnames from now on—please accept my sincere acclaim…”

  Layla smiled. “For goodness’ sake,” she said, “let someone else speak.”

  “Jealousy is not an instinct, as the ignorant maintain,” Khalid said ruefully. “It is the legacy of feudalism.”

  I am not a whore. Damnation! Oh, smell of the Nile, heavy with the scent of a dusty, exhausting journey. There is an ancient tree in Brazil that stood on the earth before the Pyramids existed. Am I alone among these drugged minds to laugh in the face of this unstoppable turn in history’s tide? Am I alone when it whispers in my ear that forty knocks on the door will make the impossible come true? When will I play football with the planets? One day long ago I was forced into a bloody battle, and I alone am keeping the adversaries apart…

  Outside, beyond the balcony, a bat sped past like a bullet. Anis contemplated the decorations on the brass tray, interlinking circles separated by gold and silver spangles, now veiled by ash and scraps of tobacco. For a while he dozed, insensible, where he sat, and when he opened his eyes he found that Mustafa Rashid and Ahmad Nasr had gone. The door of the room overlooking the garden was closed on Layla and Khalid; and Saniya and Ali were in the middle room. As for Ragab and Sana, they were standing out on the balcony, murmuring to each other. The only room left empty was his own, and more than likely his door as well would be shut in his face that night.

  The lovers were talking.

  “Certainly not!”

  “ ‘Certainly not’? That’s not a very suitable reply, considering the age we live in.”

  “I
should be studying with a girlfriend.”

  “Well, let it be study with a boyfriend.”

  Anis stretched out his leg and knocked against the water pipe. It toppled over, and the black spittle poured out and spread toward the threshold of the balcony.

  There was no importance to anything. Even rest had no meaning. And Man had invented nothing more sincere than farce.

  Then Amm Abduh’s great height was blocking the light from the midge-surrounded lamp.

  “Is it time?” the old man asked.

  “Yes.”

  Amm Abduh began to collect the things and sweep up the scraps with great care. Then he looked at Anis. “When will you go to your room?”

  “There is a new bride in there…”

  “Ah!”

  “Don’t you like it?”

  Amm Abduh laughed. “The street girls are nicer—and cheaper.”

  Anis roared with laughter. His voice rang out over the surface of the Nile. “You ignorant old man,” he said. “Do you think these women are like those girls?”

  “Have they got more legs, then?”

  “Of course not, but they are respectable ladies!”

  “Ah!”

  “They don’t sell themselves. They give and take, just like men.”

  “Ah!”

  “Ah!” Anis mimicked.

  “So will you sleep out on the balcony until the dew comes to wash your face?” Amm Abduh asked; and he saluted him as he left, announcing that he was going to give the call to the dawn prayer.

  Anis looked at the stars. He began to count as many as he could. The counting exhausted him…and then a breeze came scented from the palace gardens. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid was sitting on a couch under an apricot tree, and the courtesans were dallying around him. You were pouring him some wine from a golden jug. The Caliph, the Commander of the Faithful, became finer and finer until he was more transparent than the wind. “Bring me what you have there!” he said to you.

  But you had nothing with you, so you said that you were already dead. But then the servant girl plucked the strings of her lute and sang:

  “I recall the days of love’s fever,

  Bent o’er my heart for fear it will break

  Gone are love’s evenings forever,

  Let the tears then fall from your eyes…”

  Harun al-Rashid was so transported that he tapped his hands and feet, and you said: Now is your chance, and slipped lightly away; but the giant guard saw you and came toward you; and you ran, and he ran after you, unsheathing his sword, and you screamed, calling for help to the Family of the Prophet; and he swore that they would put you in the prison of the palace…

  Refreshed by a cold shower, Anis gave himself up to the sunset. A somnolent, all-pervasive calm reigned. Flocks of pigeons made a white horizon over the Nile. If he could only invite the Director General to the houseboat, then he would be guaranteed a life as peaceful as the sunset, free of its present rankling thorns. He sipped the last of the bitter black coffee. He had mixed a little magic into it, and now he licked out the dregs with his tongue.

  The friends arrived all together—as did Ragab and Sana. They had been inseparable all week, and Sana had finally become acquainted with the water pipe—at which Ahmad Nasr had whispered in Ragab’s ear, “She’s a minor!” And Ragab had whispered back, propping his elbow on Anis’ knee: “I’m not the first artist in her life!” And Layla Zaydan had pronounced: “Woe betide those who respect love in an age when love has no respect!”

  Ahmad found no one to whom he could expound his conservative ideas—save the peaceable Anis, to whom he said, leaning toward him: “Wonderful, the way yesterday’s whore becomes today’s philosopher!”

  “That,” replied Anis, “is the way it usually goes with philosophy.”

  Then Ali al-Sayyid snapped his fingers, causing heads to turn toward him. “By the way,” he began in a serious tone, “I have a message to relay, before you all become too addled.”

  When he had the attention of some of the company, he continued in a clear voice: “Samara Bahgat wishes to visit the houseboat!”

  Now the interest was universal. All eyes were fixed upon him, including those of Anis, though he continued to minister to the water pipe.

  “The journalist?”

  “The same. My beautiful and renowned colleague.”

  A silence fell while this news was digested. Unreadable glances were exchanged. “But why does she want to visit us?” Ahmad inquired finally.

  “I am the one who has made her interested in you. We’ve had many long conversations about the houseboat.”

  “You’ve got a loose tongue,” Ragab remarked. “But does your friend like houseboats?”

  “It’s not so much whether she does or not—more that she knows, or has heard, about more than one person here. Myself, being a colleague and friend, and Khalid Azzuz because of his stories, and you from your films—”

  “Does she have any idea of what goes on here?”

  “I think so. She is not completely unfamiliar with our world, because of her work, and her general experience of life.”

  “If we are to judge her on the strength of what she writes, then she is an alarmingly serious person,” Ragab said.

  “Well, she is serious. But everyone has a taste for the more mundane side of life.”

  “And has she made other excursions like this?” Ahmad asked, with some irritation.

  “I should imagine so. She’s a friendly person, she likes people.”

  “But she’ll constrain us,” Ahmad pursued.

  “No, no, no. Don’t have any worries about that.”

  “So will she—participate?”

  “To a certain extent—in our more blameless activities, that is.”

  “Blameless! So we are going to be investigated, then!”

  Ali stressed that she was coming for no other purpose than to get to know them.

  Concern yourself no more with the matter, or else all the water pipe’s good will come to nothing. Remember how the Persians received the first news of the Arab conquest…Anis smiled. He spotted a number of dead midges on the brass tray, which prompted him to ask: “What class of animal do midges belong to?”

  The question held up the flow of their ideas in an annoying and intrusive way. “Mammals,” Mustafa Rashid replied sarcastically.

  “The messenger’s only duty is to deliver the message,” Ali went on. “If you don’t like the idea…”

  Ragab interrupted him. “We have not heard the opinion of the ladies.”

  Layla raised no objection. Neither did Saniya. As for Sana, she suggested that Anis and Ahmad and Mustafa should be allowed to decide, “since they are the ones who need girlfriends!”

  “No—no,” protested Ali, “what an unthinkable idea—don’t embarrass me, please!”

  “But in that case,” wondered Sana, pushing back a stray lock of hair from her brow, “why do you want her to come?”

  “I have nothing to add!”

  “If the midge is a mammal”—Anis pursued his train of thought—“how can we maintain that your friend is not in the same class?”

  Ali addressed everyone, ignoring Anis’ interruption. “Your freedom is guaranteed in every way. You can say or do what you like—smoke, tell your ribald jokes; there will be no investigations, no probes, no reporter’s trickery of any kind. You can rest assured. But it would not do for you to treat her as a frivolous woman.”

  “Frivolous woman?”

  “What I mean is that she is an excellent person, just like any of you, who should not be treated as if she were…loose.”

  “Really,” said Ahmad, “I don’t understand anything.”

  “That is to be expected of you, O Nineteenth Century personified. Everyone else understands me without any difficulty at all.”

  “Perhaps,” said Khalid, “in spite of those articles of hers, she’s actually an unreformed bourgeoise.”

  “She is not bourgeois in any sense of the w
ord.”

  “Why don’t you tell us something about her,” Mustafa suggested. “That would be more useful.”

  “Certainly. She’s twenty-five. She graduated in English just before she turned twenty. She’s an excellent journalist, better by far than most people her age. And she has ambitions in the artistic sphere which she hopes to realize one day. She looks at life from a serious angle, but she is very pleasant company. Everybody knows that she refused to marry a very well-to-do bourgeois man, in spite of her small salary.”

  “Why?”

  “The man was under forty, the director of a firm, the owner of an apartment block—like Khalid here—and a relation on her father’s side to boot. But, as I understand it, she did not love him…”

  “If we can judge by her heart, then,” said Khalid, “she’s a radical.”

  “Call her progressive, if you like. But genuine and sincere as well.”

  “Has she ever been arrested?”

  “No. I have known her as a colleague ever since she got her first job on Kulli Shay’ magazine.”

  “Perhaps when she was a student, then?”

  “I think not, or else I would have found out about it during our long talks together. In any case, it wouldn’t influence my opinion of her one way or the other.”

  Sana spoke. “Why do you want to invite such a dangerous woman to the houseboat,” she asked, “when she can’t entertain us in the least?”

  “She must come,” said Layla. “We need some new blood here.”

  “Make a decision,” said Ali. “She’s at the club now. If you like, I can call her on the telephone and ask her to come over.”

  “Did you tell her that it is the whale who gathers us all here?” Anis asked him.

  Ali did not reply. He suggested taking a vote. Anis laughed at his own embalmed memories. He suggested that they bring Amm Abduh to add his vote as well. Ragab put his arm around Sana, and Ali rose to go to the telephone.