Adrift on the Nile

by Naguib Mahfouz

  The friends arrived shortly afterward, earlier than usual in celebration of the holiday. Anis set about his usual business. They talked, for some of the time, about their personal affairs. Ragab announced that he planned to raise his asking fee to five thousand pounds per film, and Khalid congratulated him, for reaffirming in this way his loyalty to Arab socialism. Ragab laughed, but made no comment. He began instead to talk about Sana, how she was appearing with Ra‘uf at parties and at the studios as his fiancée. Ragab was sure that this engagement would not end in marriage. Layla wondered how long the serious one’s seat would remain unoccupied.

  “She came back yesterday from a press tour of the industrial zone,” Ali said. “She will probably come tonight.”

  “Tell us the truth,” said Khalid to Ragab. “What is your relationship with her?”

  Ragab smiled.

  “Are you meeting in some little bachelor apartment behind our backs?” Khalid pursued.

  “Certainly not—you must believe me! There are no secrets between us here!”

  “In that case, you must now admit defeat for the first time in your life.”

  “Not at all. I’m just not launching my attack quite yet, so I can relive my memories of Platonic love!”

  “So there is love?”

  “Of course.”

  “On your part as well?”

  He took a deep drag on the pipe, and exhaled in a leisurely fashion. “I am not devoid of love,” he said at last.

  “Love, Ragab style?” Saniya inquired.

  “Yes, but a new model.”

  “This means that it is essentially nothing.”

  “Let’s wait and see.”

  “She is truly beautiful,” Ahmad said.

  “But she has a strong personality,” said Ali.

  “Which is a somewhat repellent characteristic in a woman,” said Saniya, at which Layla fixed her with a disapproving look, so she cheerfully amended: “Well, it can be, sometimes.”

  “The more impregnable the fortress, the greater the glory of those who take her,” said Ragab.

  “But the atom bomb takes no account of fortresses or conquerors,” said Layla.

  “She has turned down a splendid marriage,” said Ahmad. “That deserves admiration in itself.”

  “Don’t prejudge the matter!” said Saniya. She turned to Ragab. “Has she not referred to marriage at all?”

  “Sometimes marriage comes without anyone referring to it, like death,” he replied.

  “Tell me truly, could you seriously contemplate marriage?”

  He paused for a moment before saying: “No.” His hesitation made a deep impression on everyone. Why don’t I put the brazier out on the balcony and have my own fire festival? Its blaze is immortal, unlike that of false stars. But women are like the dust, known not only by their rich scent but by the way they seep and settle into you. Cleopatra, for all her amours, never divulged the secret of her heart. The love of a woman is like political theater: there is no doubt about the loftiness of its goal, but you wonder about the integrity of it. No one benefits from this houseboat like the rats and the cockroaches and the geckos. And nothing bursts in unannounced through your door like grief. And yesterday the dawn said to me when it broke that really it had no name.

  He listened to them discussing domestically produced meat and Russian fish and hard currency and the balance of payments. Then they all roared with laughter; and the boat shook, announcing a newcomer. Silence reigned. “Here comes the bride!” Saniya murmured.

  Samara sauntered gaily in, and shook hands with them warmly as a festival greeting. She was eagerly asked about the trip, and replied that it was splendid, and that they should all go on one like it in order to be created anew. Khalid let his eyes wander over those present and then wondered aloud: “Do you think we could be created anew?”

  They exchanged looks, and then were convulsed with laughter. “It’s your fault!” Mustafa said. “You have failed to reveal the secret of your seriousness and zeal!”

  “I will not fall into that trap!”

  “It is clear that you are of the old faith like us, and—also like us—of the class that is sliding toward the abyss. So how, in the light of that, have you come upon the meaning of life? Won’t you tell us at least what it is?”

  She hesitated for a moment, and then said: “It’s life itself that is important, not the meaning.”

  “But we feel life propelling us along instinctively, and within those bounds, we lead it perfectly well.”

  “No!”

  “We’ve already told you—”

  She interrupted him. “Some of us have an instinctive death wish, as you well know!”

  “And the way out?”

  “Is to come out of your shell.”

  “Pretty talk, but it makes no difference one way or the other.”

  “Life is above logic.”

  And at that point Ragab said to her: “Careful—you’re falling into the trap again!”

  Amm Abduh came to change the water in the water pipe. Ali congratulated him on the good quality of the kif.

  “Yesterday the dealer advised me to buy enough for a month. He says the police are watching him,” Amm Abduh said.

  “That’s just a ploy to fleece us. Take no notice.”

  “Amm Abduh,” Samara asked him, “aren’t you afraid of the police?”

  Mustafa replied for him. “He’s so long in the tooth,” he said, “that he is above the law.”

  A star twinkled on the horizon like a serene smile. Anis asked it about the police; were they really watching the dealer? It replied that they watched the wakeful, not the drugged; and that stars twinkled as they approached the earth, and dimmed as they plunged further into space; and that some of the lights which adorned the dome of the heavens came from stars now shrouded in Nothingness; and that the power which subjects you to Nothingness is stronger than that which subjects you to Being. A comet suddenly plummeted down, so close that he imagined that it had landed on the violets on the bank, just beyond the houseboat.

  “The whole department received a bonus for the festival except me,” he said.

  Ahmad Nasr cursed the Director General.

  “I leaped up to protest, but burst out laughing instead,” Anis finished.

  They all laughed, but he shrugged his shoulders. Ali recalled how they used to celebrate this festival out at the Nile Barrages. Ragab said: “The best way to celebrate the Prophet’s journey is to make one of our own.” His face lit up. “What do you say to a trip to the country in my car?”

  “But we haven’t smoked enough yet!”

  Samara thought it was a good idea. Ahmad said that there was blessing to be had from a journey. Nobody objected—except Anis, who muttered: “No!”

  But would the expedition proceed in two cars? No, in one; otherwise there would be no point. How, if the car only has room for seven and we are nine? Well, Layla can sit on Khalid’s lap, and Saniya on Ali’s. Enthusiasm for this spontaneous expedition grew. And Anis still said, languidly: “No…”

  But they were bent on him coming. How could an adventure like this take place without the master of ceremonies? He refused to move, or to change his clothes, so they insisted on taking him in the long tunic he always wore at home. At about midnight, they rose to leave. Anis yielded under duress.

  They went out toward the car. It was earlier than their usual time for leaving. Amm Abduh, who was standing in front of his hut like a palm tree, asked if he should go and tidy the room now. Anis told him to leave everything as it was until they returned.

  The car set off, Ragab, Samara, and Ahmad sat in front, and the rest were squashed together in the back like one flattened body with six heads. They made for Pyramids Road, crossing the almost deserted city. Ragab suggested that the road to Saqqara would make a nice trip and everybody concurred, whether they knew the road or not. Anis sat hunched and silent in his white robe, pressed against the right-hand side of the car.

  They co
vered Pyramids Road in minutes, and then turned left toward Saqqara. They began to travel at speed down the dark and deserted road, the headlights picking out the landmarks ahead. The road stretched infinitely out into the darkness, bordered on either side by great evergreens whose branches met overhead. On both sides lay the open spaces, the landscape and the air of the country. To their left the scenery was cut across by a canal running alongside the road. The water’s surface stood out here and there under the faint starlight, iron gray against the black. The car went faster; the air rushed in, dry and refreshing and smelling of greenery. “Slow down,” said Saniya to Ragab.

  “Don’t break the smokers’ speed limit,” said Khalid.

  “Are you a speed freak?” Samara asked him.

  We are on the way to the site of an ancient Pharaonic tomb. A good moment to recite the opening verse of the Qur’an…

  Ragab soon slowed down again. Khalid suggested that they stop for a while and go for a stroll in the dark. Everybody agreed, so Ragab turned off onto a dusty patch of ground between two trees, and stopped the car. Doors were opened. Ahmad, Khalid, Saniya, Layla, Mustafa, and Ali got out. Anis shifted himself away from the car door and sat comfortably for the first time. He shook out his tunic and stretched his legs. He searched with one foot for the slipper he had lost in the crush. When they called him to go with them, he replied tersely: “No.”

  Ragab caught hold of Samara’s hand as she was about to get out. “We can’t leave the master of ceremonies alone,” he said.

  The expedition moved off. They were going toward the canal, laughing and talking. They turned into phantoms in the starlight, and then disappeared altogether, leaving only disembodied voices.

  “What is the meaning of this journey?” asked Anis thickly.

  “It’s the journey that is important,” Ragab teased, “not the meaning.”

  Samara said: “Hmm!”—in protest at his allusion to her; but Anis was complaining now. “The darkness makes me sleepy,” he grumbled.

  “Enjoy it, master of ceremonies,” said Ragab eagerly. Then he turned to Samara. “We must talk about us,” he said. “Honestly. Like the honesty of the nature surrounding us.”

  It is difficult to sleep when you are witnessing a romantic comedy. Very fitting, honesty, in the middle of the night on the road to Saqqara! Now his arm is creeping along the back of her seat. Anything can happen on the road to Saqqara.

  “Yes,” he continued. “Let us talk about our love.”

  “Our love?”

  “Yes, ours! That is exactly what I meant!”

  “It is not possible for me to have anything to do with a god.”

  “It is not possible that our lips have not yet become acquainted.”

  She turned her head away toward the fields as if to listen to the crickets and frogs. How beautiful the stars were over the fields, she murmured. I wonder if any new ideas have been recorded in the notebook. Could we still perhaps see ourselves one night on the theater stage, and guffaw along with the audience?

  “I know what you would like to say,” Ragab went on.

  “What?”

  “That you are not like the other girls.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “But love…”

  “But love?”

  “You don’t believe me!”

  Where is honesty in this darkness? What do our voices mean to the insects? You are in your forties, Ragab. You’ll have to start playing different roles soon. Do you not know how the great Casanova hid in the Duke’s library?

  “Please don’t say ‘bourgeois mentality’ again,” she said now.

  “But how else can I interpret your fear?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Then it’s a problem of trust?”

  “I heard you say that in a film.”

  “Perhaps I don’t believe in seriousness yet, but I believe in you.”

  “That’s the Don Juan mentality!” she replied.

  Ghosts, walking abroad in the fields—or in my head. Like the village in days gone by. Marriage, fatherhood, ambitions, death. The stars have lived for billions of years, but they have not yet heard of the stars of the earth. No ghosts out there; just lone trees, forgotten in the midst of the fields.

  “I could perhaps remain chaste until we get married,” Ragab was saying now.

  “Get married?”

  “But I have a devil in me that rebels against routine.”

  “Routine!”

  “One hint, and you understand everything! But I do not understand you…”

  Where is the balcony, and the lapping of the waves? The water pipe, and the smell of the river? Where is Amm Abduh? And those thoughts that gleam like lightning striking the shades of the evergreens and then vanish, but where?

  “Why did you refuse to marry your important suitor?”

  “I was not satisfied with him.”

  “You mean, you did not love him.”

  “If you like.”

  “He was in his forties, like me.”

  “It wasn’t that.”

  “Satisfaction is only important in free choice. Not in love.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And sex?”

  “That’s a question that should properly be ignored!”

  With a voice that broke the spell of the night, Anis shouted: “Rulings and classifications of age and love and sex? You damn grammarians!”

  They turned around uncomfortably—and then both laughed. “We thought you were asleep,” said Ragab.

  “How long will we stay in this prison?”

  “We’ve only been here an hour.”

  “Why haven’t we committed suicide?”

  “We were trying to talk about love!”

  Across the abyss of the night came the voices of the expedition. Then their scattered shapes could be made out. They approached the car to stand together around the hood. Yes, my dear, we could easily have been killed out there…Where are they now, the days of knights and troubadours? Khalid said that he had been about to commit the primary sin, had the “fraudulent pioneer” not been so prudish.

  “And then in the dark,” Mustafa added, “we decided to find out how modern we really are, and see who could admit to the most misdeeds!”

  Ragab thought it was a clever idea. “And so everyone confessed to their sins,” continued Mustafa.

  “Sins!”

  “I mean, what are considered such in public opinion.”

  “And what was the outcome?”

  “Wonderful!”

  “How many could be called crimes?”

  “Dozens.”

  “And how many were misdemeanors?”

  “Hundreds!”

  “Have none of you committed a virtue?”

  “He who goes by the name of Ahmad Nasr!”

  “Perhaps you mean his fidelity to his wife.”

  “And to financial directives and stocktaking and regulations for the acquisition of goods!”

  “And what was your opinion of yourselves?”

  “Our consensus was that we are in a state of nature, immaculate; and that the morals which we lack are the dead morals of a dead age; and that we are the pioneers of a new and honest ethic as yet unsanctioned by legislation!”

  “Bravo!”

  Anis gave himself over to the view of the trees that bordered the road. They had been planted with extraordinary regularity. If they moved out of their fixed order, the known world would come tumbling down. There was a snake coiled around a branch; it wanted to say something. Very well, say something worth listening to. But what a cursed row. “Let me hear it!” he cried aloud.

  At his bellow, they all laughed.

  “What do you want to hear?” asked Mustafa.

  They piled back into the car, and Anis was once more pressed against the door. The snake had completely disappeared.

  “You will be driven by a thoroughly modern driver!” Ragab said. The car moved onto the road, engine roaring, and
then they set off, faster and faster, until they were traveling at an insane speed.

  People laughed hysterically; then their voices shook; and then they began to protest and shout for help. The trees flew by. They felt as if they were plummeting into a deep gulf, and waited in dread to hit the bottom.

  “Madness—this is madness!”

  “He’ll kill us in cold blood!”

  “Stop! We have to get our breath back!”

  “No! No! Even madness has to stop somewhere!”

  But Ragab put his head back in a terrifying frenzy, and drove as fast as the car would go, whooping like a Red Indian. Samara was forced to put a hand on his arm, and whisper: “Please!”

  “Layla’s crying,” Khalid snapped. “Will you return to your senses!”

  My mind is dead. All that is left in my head is the pulse of my blood. My heart is sinking as in the worst depressions of kif—close your eyes—that way you will not see death—

  Suddenly a horrifying scream rang out. He opened his eyes, shaking, to see a black shape flying through the air. The car was jolted with the shock and nearly turned over, and they were thrown against the seats and doors by Ragab’s violent braking. Sobs and cries of “God forbid!” broke out.

  “Somebody was hit!”

  “Killed ten times over.”

  “We should have seen this coming!”

  “God, what an appalling night!”

  “Get a grip on yourselves!” Ragab shouted. He pushed himself up in his seat and turned to look out through the back window. Then he sat down again and started to drive off. Ahmad leaned toward him, a question on his lips. “We must get out of here!” Ragab said decisively.

  There was a sick silence. “It’s the only solution!” he continued.

  Nobody uttered a word. Then Samara whispered: “Perhaps he needs help?”

  “He’s already finished.”

  She said, this time more loudly: “You can’t just…lay down the law like this!”

  “What can we do, anyway! We are not doctors!”

  “Well, what do you all think?” said Samara, turning to the others. And when not a word was said, she began: “I think—”

  Ragab furiously slammed on the brakes. The car stopped in the middle of the road. Then he turned to the others. “Let no one say tomorrow that I took this decision into my own hands. I leave it up to you. What do you think we should do?” And then, when there was silence, he shouted: “Answer me! I promise you that I will do whatever you tell me!”