Adrift On The Nile Part 13

"You madman! This is where your addiction has got you!"

"It would be better if you held your tongue!" Anis retorted.

The man leaped to his feet, his face pale. "You insolent man!" he shouted. "You evildoer--you drug addict!"

Anis, without thinking, seized the blotter and threw it at the Director General. It hit him on the chest, on his tie. Shaking, the Director General pressed a bell.

"If you had said another word," shouted Anis, "I would have killed you!"

Back in his own office, he encountered a heavy silence. He met n.o.body's eyes. He sat down stony-faced, completely cut off. He did not even feel the pain.

Shortly before the end of the working day, a colleague approached him. He spoke to Anis in a sympathetic whisper. "I am sorry to inform you that there has been an order for your dismissal, and that you are to be sent to the civil service tribunal."

17.

He surrendered himself to the fates. It was the worst calamities that made you laugh.

While he was eating his midday meal, Amm Abduh told him that he had not managed to buy anything from the dealer. They had erred in ignoring his warning. What to do? He would try his luck with another dealer, but he could not be sure of the outcome.

Disasters gathered like winter clouds. He lay down on his bed and skimmed through a few chapters of a book on the age of martyrs. He read for a long time, but sleep did not come. Martyour after martyour fell, but sleep eluded him. Lying there became detestable. He rose, and began to prepare the room for the evening, to pa.s.s the time.

When disasters rain down like this, one cancels out the other. A mad joy with a strange taste takes hold. You can laugh from the bottom of a heart which no longer knows fear. And, what is more, the pleasant diversion of the civil service tribunal awaits! What is your full name? Anis Zaki, son of Adam and Eve. Age? I was born a thousand million years after the earth. Job? Prometheus Drugged. Salary? The price of twenty-five kilos of Egyptian beef. A dealer must be found, at least.

He went out onto the balcony. Amm Abduh's voice caught his ear; he was leading the afternoon prayer. He stood there like a mountain, dwarfing the rows of worshippers. There was a night watchman, a villager, a servant. . . . A fleet of sailing boats, loaded with stones, was plying upriver. A wash of greenish-brown waves lapped monotonously, calmly against the houseboat, as if peace ruled the world. Acacia trees stood straight and tall along the bank like blessings, part of a different world.

Amm Abduh came in after the prayer, but found the room already prepared for the evening. Anis returned from the balcony. "You were chasing me, old man!" he said jokingly.

"What?"

"I dreamed that you were chasing me!"

"All's well with you, I hope?"

"What would you do if I sent you away from the boat?"

Amm Abduh laughed. "Everybody loves Amm Abduh," he said.

"Do you love the world, old man?"

"I love everything created by the Merciful."

"But sometimes it is hateful. Is that not so?"

"The world is beautiful, G.o.d grant you long life."

"Make sure you don't come back empty-handed."

"Our Lord is present."

The boat began its familiar shaking. Anis looked toward the door, to see who was coming early. Hardly had Amm Abduh left when Samara appeared. She looked harried and pale, her eyes full of apprehension and worry. The bloom of youth had dulled in her face. She shook his hand mechanically. Then they sat down, at some distance from each other. She noticed the room, prepared with extraordinary care for the evening. "Can life really go on as before?" she murmured.

"Nothing is as it was."

She closed her eyes. "I did not sleep for a minute."

"Neither did I."

She sighed, and then said: "Something irreplaceable has died in me."

"I have been hounded by death as well."

She held out the evening paper to him. "The body of a man in his fifties," she said. "Half naked. Sustaining fractures to the spine, legs, and skull. Hit by a car. The perpetrators fled. His ident.i.ty, and therefore next of kin, have not been discovered."

He read the article, and then threw the newspaper aside. "We are back in h.e.l.l again," he said.

"We never left h.e.l.l," she replied.

"We never left h.e.l.l," he echoed.

"We are really murderers."

"We are really murderers. And what is more," he continued, looking out at the Nile, "I am as good as jobless now." And he told the story of the Director General. They exchanged lifeless looks as she said how sorry she was.

"Have you any other source of income, apart from the Ministry?" she asked.

He laughed, in a way that dispensed with a reply. "Our friends pay the rent on the boat, and the expenses of our evening parties, but . . ."

"It is rare that someone is actually dismissed."

"He will tell every living person that I am a degenerate. A drug addict!"

"How dreadful! One catastrophe after another."

They withdrew into themselves.

And then the houseboat shook, again and again. The friends all came in together, and their faces were strange.

They fear trouble from Samara, Anis thought. Ragab asked him, pointing to the water pipe, why it was not filled and lit, and he replied that there was nothing to put in it. He thought: He's trying to make light of it, but in vain. It seemed that they all knew about the newspaper report, and it was not long before they also learned of his downfall at the hands of the Director General. "What disasters!" sighed Ali.

"We must get rid of the pipe immediately," said Ahmad earnestly.

They glared at him.

"The Director General could well organize a raid on the houseboat!" he argued; and then and there he rose to his feet, and hurled the pipe and the tobacco into the Nile. Then he threw himself down on a mattress. "We should consider this place a danger zone until things clear up," he said.

They looked at each other in undisguised misery. "Paradise has gone," said Anis.

And when no one replied, he spoke again. "That trip was doomed from the start. Why did you think of going out?"

"We must forget what is past," Ragab said sharply.

Samara snorted. "How can we forget, when there is a murdered man behind us!"

"That is why we must forget!" said Ragab harshly.

"It's beyond the bounds of possibility."

Ragab looked at her for a long time. No one knows what is going on in his head; no one knows about the trials of love. Could things get even worse than they already are? Ragab looked at everyone in turn. "I guessed what would happen here before I came," he said. "Now that we are at a distance from the event and at liberty to think calmly, we must declare our positions."

"I thought we had decided that it was all over!" said Ali in annoyance.

"It seems that Samara has another opinion!"

"Please don't go over all that again," said Saniya anxiously. "I'm completely broken down already."

"I spent a h.e.l.lish night," added Layla. "We have a lot of suffering ahead of us. That is enough, surely."

Ragab said again: "But it seems, as I said, that Samara is of a different opinion."

Ali turned to Samara. The tone of his voice was grave and sad. "Samara," he said, "tell me what you think. We are all grief-stricken--agonized. None of us has had a wink of sleep. There is not one of us who likes murder, or could even imagine committing it. We share in your feelings, and the news has cut us to the quick. A poor man--perhaps migrating from the country. A stranger with no family. There is no way that we can right the wrong. How could there be? If it turns out that he has a family, then we will find a way of compensating them, but what can we do now?"

She did not utter a word; nor did she raise her eyes to his.

"Perhaps you are saying to yourself that our duty is clear," he continued. "Theoretically, that is true. We should have stopped, not fled; and when we were sure that he was dead, we should have gone to the nearest police station and made our statements of guilt, and then gone through the courts and paid the full price--is that not so?"

"Which in my case would be prison without doubt!" said Ragab.

"And appalling disgrace for everyone, including you!" added Ali.

"And even then the man would not rise from the dead, or benefit from our sacrifices in any way!" said Mustafa.

Ali spoke again. "I know you better than the others do," he went on. "You are an exemplary girl in every sense, but a little adaptability is essential if we are not to collapse under the burdens of life. This is an unfortunate accident, not a matter where country or principle is at stake. The question is simple. An unknown man was killed by mistake; and there is a responsibility which I do not deny. The stupidity of it is obvious. I wish to G.o.d it had not happened! But are we all of so little importance to you? Do you really wish to sacrifice our happiness and honor--and let me add, yours as well--for the sake of nothing?"

"I shall be good for nothing after this!" she murmured, sighing.

"That is a groundless fear. Thousands are killed every day without reason, and the world does not grind to a halt. You will always find opportunities for work, and a tolerant att.i.tude toward us won't make you any less keen, or clever, or stop you from getting to the bottom of things--or anything else you care to name! Perhaps it will make you redouble your efforts."

"As do feelings of sin sometimes?" she said.

"But it is not your sin, at any rate; and these situations are apt to compel us to think about everything. Ragab has really developed, because of you, at least in his att.i.tude toward women. Think on that. Be kind."

And she said, with great bitterness: "So I am going to certain death, then!"

"We are all going to our deaths," said Khalid.

"I mean a more appalling death."

"There is nothing more appalling than death."

"There is the death that seizes you when you are still alive."

"No, no! I will not allow us to be sacrificed because of a metaphor!" protested Khalid.

And at that point Ragab shouted in great agitation: "The newspapers will report that you were in the company of men with a bad reputation, out in the dead of night, involved in criminality, in murder! Doesn't that mean anything to you at all?"

His harshness enraged her, and she cried vehemently: "No, it does not!"

Now he became incensed. "This courage is a bluff! You know that we will all stand against you!"

"Lies!"

"Then off to the police station with us!" Ragab cried--and Mustafa bellowed furiously at him: "Everything we have just tried to do, would you, with your stupidity, destroy in one second?"

Saniya rose and went over to Ragab. She touched his hand to calm him down, and kissed his forehead. Then she stood in front of Samara. "Do you really mean to sacrifice yourself and us?" she asked calmly.

"Yes," Samara persisted, still angry.

"So be it," Saniya replied. "Do with us what you will."

But before Samara could say a word, Amm Abduh entered. Everyone was silent.

He gave Anis a small package. "I nearly wore myself out getting that," he said.

"Get rid of it at once," Ahmad told Anis.

"No."

"Well, I've had my say!" Ahmad said.

"There's nothing easier than throwing it into the water if we have to."

"What has happened?" asked Amm Abduh.

Anis gave it back to Amm Abduh for him to make a cup of coffee with it. The old man took it away. His arrival had subtly altered the atmosphere.

Silence reigned. Then Mustafa said sadly: "The evil eye is upon us."

"Let's roll a joint with it--who knows . . ."

Ali's face shone with a sudden optimism. "I bet that Ragab will have children!"

And then Anis laughed. He laughed in spite of his tense nerves. "You've made a mountain out of a molehill," he said.