Anis answered without a second thought. "To be your lover," he said.
Everybody roared with laughter — and Ragab burst out: "But…" before remembering himself. Everyone laughed all the more, and in spite of the embarrassment, Samara persisted in getting a reply. Ahmad answered for him. "To kill the Director General."
Samara laughed. "At last I have found somebody serious," she said.
"But he only thinks about that when he is clearheaded."
"Even so!"
Amm Abduh returned. He stood by the screen in front of the door. "The woman committed suicide," he said. "After a quarrel with her lover."
There was a short silence, broken by Khalid. "She did the right thing," he said. "Change the water in the pipe, Amm Abduh."
"So there is still love after all," murmured Samara.
Khalid spoke again. "The woman most likely killed herself when she was serious. We, on the other hand, will not."
Ahmad said that every living creature was serious, and built its life upon that foundation; and that absurdity did not usually occur to the mind. One might find a killer without a motive in a novel such as _L'Etranger_, but in real life? Beckett himself was the first to take swift legal action against any publisher who broke the contract on his absurdist works!
Samara was not convinced. She maintained that what was in the mind must somehow influence behavior — or, at the very least, feelings. Take, for example, the nihilism everywhere, the immorality, the spiritual suicides! But human beings are still human beings, and they must rebel against it, even if only once a year!..
Ragab suggested that she stay until dawn, to watch the sun come up over the acacias.
She declined the invitation, and at midnight took her leave. When they suggested one of them drive her home, she thanked them but refused.
After she had gone, there was a silence like that of rest after toil. Fatigue threatened to overtake them all. Anis decided to tell them about his atomic experiment, but he was forced by his own lassitude to abandon the idea.
"What is behind this strange and fascinating woman?" Ahmad wondered aloud.
Ali's large eyes were red now, and his great nose looked almost bulbous. "She wants to know everything," he said. "And she wants to make a friend of everyone worthy of friendship."
"Could she possibly be thinking that she might win us over one day?" asked Mustafa. And Khalid added: "In that case, we should try to win her over into one of these three bedrooms."
"That's Ragab's task!"
Sana went pale; but no value was attached to any comment now, after so many pipes.
"We must find a successor for Sana," Khalid said next. The girl gave Ragab a hard look, and he humored her: "People say anything when they're high…" Khalid, however, would not let it drop. "Is it easy for a trivial man to love a serious woman, do you think?"
The water pipe went round, and eyelids drooped. They took the brazier out to the balcony and blew the ash off the coals, which glowed and spat sparks. Anis went toward the door to the balcony to feel the damp night breeze. He gazed in wonderment at the fire, surrendering to its enchantment. He thought: Nobody knows the secret of power like the Delta does. Geckos and rats and midges, and the river water; all these are my family, but only the Delta knows the secret of power. The North was an enchanted world, covered with forests that knew no day except spots of light glancing in through the lattice of leaves and branches. And one day the clouds fled away, and an unwelcome guest with cracked skin and gray face appeared, whose name was Drought. What can we do, when Death is at our heels? The green shriveled away, and the birds migrated, and the animals perished. I said: Death is coming, creeping nearer, stretching out his hand. My cousins, they went southward in search of the easy life, and fruit off the tree, even if it was at the end of the earth. But my family had made for the standing lakes of Nile water, and we had no weapons save resolution, and no witness to our mad, brave deeds except the Delta. And waiting for us there, the thorny plants and reptiles and wild beasts and flies and gnats, and there was a savage feast of Death; and no witness save the Delta. They said: All we can do is fight, inch by inch, welter in blood and sweat. Forearms bloody. Eyes staring and ears pricked, and not a thing to hear except the advance of Death. And the ghosts were everywhere, the vultures wheeling, waiting for victims. No time save for action, no armistice for burying our dead. No one there to ask: Where are they going? Wonders were worked, the seeds of miracles were sown, and no witness save the Delta…
8
When a new evening begins, the feeling of immanence intensifies. All existence is at peace. The thought of the end is far away, and there is a rare chance to give rein to notions of eternity. Because the sky is moonlit, the neon light has been put out, and we content ourselves with a dim blue lamp hung over the door to the balcony. The faces of my companions look pale. Out beyond the balcony, the moon — which is too high to be seen from here — casts a silvery rhombus over the semicircle of smokers.
"You've read Samara's article about the new film, of course."
"You mean about Ragab al-Qadi!" someone interjected.
Of course, he has not. He does not read newspapers or magazines. Like Louis XVI, he knows nothing of what goes on in the world.
Layla said, out of regard for Sana's feelings: "Seriousness! Indeed! I never paid much attention to that — I knew from the beginning that she had come with another aim in mind."
"Let's dance," Sana said to Ragab.
"There's no music," he replied, with odious placidity.
"Think how much we've danced without music!"
"Be patient, my dear — or the pipe will never get going."
He thinks that he is the center of the universe, and that the pipe only circulates because of him. But really the pipe goes around for the same reason that anything does; if the planets traveled in a straight line, then the order of nature would be altered. Last night I believed totally in eternal life — but on my way to the office I forgot the reason why.
"I thought that the article smacked of 'commitment,'" Khalid said sardonically. "What did you think, Ragab?"
Ragab replied, as if Sana was not there: "I thought it was a compliment, an approach, on her part."
"But what is certain is that she has deserted us for days!"
That hidden quarter-moon floods the darkness with an intoxicated glow, like the sleepy eye of a violet. Do you remember how weary the moon became, staying miraculously full through all the nights of battle in the first days of Islam? Here is the warrior once more, leaping into a new fray; and like all warriors, his costume has the hardness of chain mail…
Ragab said, with even more callous indifference to his companion: "I called Samara to thank her, and said that I would like to visit her were I not afraid of embarrassing her — and she said, amazed, that there was no question of embarrassment!"
"An open invitation!"
"So just a few minutes later I was knocking on her door — and whom did I find inside but our friend Ali al-Sayyid!"
The "friend" was subjected to a hail of abuse.
"I thanked her and drank some coffee, and said that her article had all but made a new man of me!"
"Hypocrite, son of hypocrites, descended from a long line of bred-in-the-bone hypocrites," Ali intoned.
"My gaze was drawn irresistibly to her allure — while from her vocal cords issued the sort of honeyed tones that take a lot of effort to get past the censors!"