Nile Shadows

Ahmad began to twist and turn where he sat by the fire, as if he were drawing near to some uncomfortable truth about himself, some irrevocable confession.

It may be, he said, that I've given you the impression my failures in life have been of the material kind, but that just isn't so. My failures of the spirit have been far more profound and painful. And to what do I refer?

Ahmad gripped his fists together in a fierce pathetic gesture.

To Stern, of course. Doesn't everything always come back to him?

Ahmad's knuckles bulged and there was despair in his voice.

I committed a crime, he whispered. I've always been a sensitive person and I know there are certain things you don't do, especially to someone you love. When you act as I did with Stern, you shatter something deep inside a person. And when you do that. . . .

Ahmad faltered, clenching his powerful fists more tightly.

What I mean is, you can't humiliate someone you're close to, you can't do that, because it's more than we can bear as human beings. We can be defeated forever but we can't be insulted by someone we love, and the failure to give love when it's needed, needed, must always be one of our darkest sins. For in failing that we violate our very essence as human beings and cast ourselves out, and become no longer qualified to be called human. . . .

Again Ahmad faltered, and this time it seemed he would be unable to go on. He busied himself adding sticks to the fire, then carefully adjusted his flat straw hat to some new angle, then changed the subject.

Slowly slowly, thought Joe. But at least Ahmad was finally beginning to circle the forbidden subject Liffy had referred to as a betrayal of some kind, the cause of the old poet's irreparable rupture with Stern, now linked in some mysterious way with an adventure that Ahmad, his voice shaking with emotion, insisted on calling Stern's Polish story.

***

I know why they brought you to Cairo, Ahmad whispered one evening. No one has told me anything, but I know.

Joe looked at him and said nothing. Ahmad's face was troubled as he went on poking the fire, casting new shadows over their flowering oasis in the darkness. A shower of sparks shot into the air, once, twice, a third time. Ahmad watched them go out, then finally whispered again.

It's obvious, Joe, to me anyway. The Monastery called you in because they're afraid of Stern's secret connection with the nationalists in the Egyptian army, the Free Officers who want the British out of Egypt.

Ahmad glanced nervously around the debris-strewn courtyard. For several moments he listened intently to the night, then leaned closer to Joe.

Oh I've known all about that for some time, and I've always assumed the Monastery knew about it too and overlooked it for their own reasons, because Stern's so valuable to them. But now they must have this new fear that Stern has gone too far and joined the nationalists in some Egyptian-German conspiracy, some plot to turn the British codes over to the Germans. Well there's no use denying Stern could probably lay his hands on such information. After all these years of doing the kind of work he does, Stern has contacts at every level of Egyptian society, and given Stern's nature, a good many of those people must be indebted to him. But even if they weren't, Stern's knowledge of people is so great he could easily find a way to get what he wanted.

Again Ahmad glanced nervously around the little courtyard, and this time his whispers were even softer in the firelight.

Listen to me, Joe. Once or twice in the last months Stern has mentioned something called the Black Code in front of me. I have no idea what it is but I assume it must be some highly secret British cipher, because Stern also implied that much of Rommel's success comes from the fact that the Germans can read this Black Code. Now none of that means anything to me, but you're a friend of Stern's and you care about him, so I want to warn you it's more complicated than you think, perhaps even more complicated than the Monastery knows. The Zionists also want the British out of the Middle East, and as much as Stern has always done for their cause in Palestine, there are still Jewish extremists who would be glad to see Stern out of the way, because they distrust Stern's kind of cooperation with the Arabs. And as for the Germans . . . and the Monastery. . . .

Somberly, Ahmad shook his head.

It's dangerous, Joe, all of it. Monks . . . Rommel . . . Arab fanatics and Jewish fanatics . . . they all have their reasons for wanting to see Stern dead and gone, and he just has nowhere to turn, don't you see? So it may not matter what you do now. I hate to say it, but it's probably too late for anything.

Ahmad looked sadly at Joe, shuddered, looked away. Joe touched his arm, holding his hand there.

I know that, Ahmad. I do. But as Stern himself used to say, we have to try anyway. Even if it makes no difference, even when it's to no end, we still have to try. . . . Because what else is there, Ahmad? What else . . . ever?

***

And there were moments of unexpected revelation when Ahmad came out with some remark that suddenly illuminated his entire life.

Sometimes I try to think of my mother, he once said, as simply the person she was. And I wonder then if this obsessive concern I've always had for her, for what she thought of me, has been enough to justify all these years of loneliness I've known, these decades of eccentric behavior.

By all accounts she was a plain and simple woman, an uneducated farm girl who chanced to come to Egypt one winter as a servant to a German family, and chanced to become pregnant, and then corrected matters as soon as she could by returning home to lead a regular life. Not a remarkable person in any way, nor was there anything exceptional in what she did. And it certainly would have been a mistake for her to take me with her. A brown baby on a small farm in Germany would have assured a dreadful life for both of us. Yet because this girl was my mother, and because of what happened, my entire life has taken a particular course.

Deep within us, it seems, we begin life with the false notion that our appearance in the world is of monumental significance, and so we assign universal meanings to the threads and colors of our early lives, assuming them to be a unique tapestry of mysterious import, rather than merely one more shoddy human patchwork in one more tiny corner of the world. There's nothing rational about the way we look at it, and perhaps because the belief is irrational, it takes much of our lives to unlearn it. But by the time we do unlearn it, that small commonplace irony may have grown into monstrous proportions. For by then we have long since stumbled out into life in such-and-such a manner, and our course may well be irrevocably set.

Consider.

If I were to meet a person such as my mother today, or even my mother herself as she was when she abandoned me, the ultimate cause of my obsession, would I suddenly find myself in a human presence so powerful, I could imagine it determining a man's whole life?

Ahmad's laughter boomed and thundered, then all at once his face was creased with scars.

No, a ridiculous notion . . . but the joke's on me. All you have to do is to look at me to know that. And seeing what you see before you, would you ever dare claim that some peasant girl from the backwoods of Germany, harboring thoughts no more complex than the blood sausage to be enjoyed next Saturday night, could conceivably fashion this complex brooding creature who now whispers to you deep in these Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Ahmad shook his head.

No. Sheer nonsense. What we have here is simply a case of that grand murky importance we falsely assign to the parent of the opposite sex. . . . Do you realize I've probably spent thousands of hours seething with resentment over my mother, and why? Why have I secretly devoted so much of my life to her? Why have I harbored this absurd notion of her overwhelming significance in the scheme of things?

It's a terrible irony, that notion, and in my case it's an irony that was discovered too late. For this mother of superhuman proportions, this mythical woman who plotted all manner of things in the world and set loose a host of brooding demons within me, this woman never even existed. And thus have I spent a great part of my life secretly confounding a shadow of my own making. . . . A terrible irony, but at my age one that can't be undone.

You see I've had no restraint, no restraint. I've been a tree swayed by the wind. Most of us are afraid because someone else is in charge of our lives, and because we're terrified of failing alone. So we wait and wait for something to happen, thinking we can accomplish something by showing patience, but time passes and we grow