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 titles 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 assured 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 snatching 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 whore!' 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.
'My husband is trying to get a reconciliation.'
'God forbid!'
Blind, and could not see. The thread was cut, and some splendid thing was scattered away. The important thing is that we preserve… preserve what? Tomorrow we have a wearisome task; tomorrow is the day of the annual accounts. In the prison house of the Archives Department. A museum for insects. Midges, of course, being mammals…
'But you are a beautiful blonde,' Samara was saying to Layla. 'Really you are.'
Khalid Azzuz spoke, and it was clear that he meant Layla. 'Her real problem,' he began, 'is the problem of the country as a whole; that is, she's a modern girl — but the husband is bourgeois!'
Anis looked out at the night. He saw the lamps of the opposite shore, slipping into the river's depths like pillars of light. And from a houseboat out of sight, carried on the breeze, came the sound of singing and music. Perhaps a wedding party. As Muhammad al-Arabi had sung on the night of your wedding: 'Look! What a wonder. I fell for a peasant girl!' And my uncle had said: 'God preserve you, and let your house be full of fine children, but be
