He could not help but laugh wholeheartedly. Finally he noticed that Zanuba had not budged. She was smiling shyly, as though she thought their past acquaintance too slight for her to be forward. He held his hand out and shook hers. To encourage and flatter her he said, "Greetings to the princess of lute players."
As they returned to their seats, Muhammad Iffat put his arm around Ahmad's and made his friend sit beside him. He laughingly asked, "Did you just happen to drop by or has passion caught hold ofyou?"
"Passion caught hold of me, so I just happened to drop by."
At first he had been blinded by the warmth of the reunion and the jests of his friends when they welcomed him. Now his eyes could take in his surroundings. He found himself in a room of medium size with walls and ceilings painted emerald green. There were two windows facing the Nile and two on the street side of the boat. Although the windows were open, the shutters were closed. Hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room was an electric lamp with a conical crystal shade, which focused the light on the surface of a low table holding the glasses and the whiskey bottles. The floor was covered with a carpet the same color as the walls. On each side of the room there was a large sofa divided in half by a cushion and covered with an embroidered cloth. The corners of the room were filled with pallets and pillows. Jalila, Zubayda, and Zanuba sat on the sofa farthest from the street, and three of the men on the one facing them. The pallets were strewn with musical instruments: lute, tambourine, drum, and finger cymbals. He took his time looking around. Then after sighing with satisfaction he said delightedly, "My God, my God, everything's so beautiful. But why don't you open the windows on the Nile?"
Muhammad Iffat replied, "They're opened once the sailboats stop passing. As the Prophet said, 'If you are tempted, conceal yourselves.'"
Al-Sayyid Ahmad quickly retorted with a smile, "And if you conceal yourselves, be tempted."
"Show us you're still as quick as you used to be," Jalila shouted as if challenging him.
He had intended his words to be nothing more than a joke. The truth was that he was anxious and hesitant about taking this revolutionary step and coming to the houseboat after the long period of self-denial he had observed. There was something more too. A change had taken place that he would have to unravel for himself. He would need to look closely and attentively. What did he see? There were Jalila and Zubayda, each of them as massively beautiful as the ceremonial camel when it set off for Mecca with the pilgrims. He had used that image to describe them in the old days. They had perhaps even added to their mass of fleshly charms, but something had come over them that was almost more easily perceived by his emotions than his senses. No doubt it was associated with the process of aging. Perhaps his friends had not noticed it since they had not been separated from the women as he had. Had he not been affected by age in much the same way? He felt sad, and his spirits flagged. A man's most telling mirror is a friend who returns after a long absence. But how could he pinpoint this change? Neither of the women had a single white hair, for no entertainer would ever allow her hair to turn white. And they had no wrinkles.
"Do you give up?" he asked himself. "Certainly not. Just look at those eyes. They reflect a spirit that's fading, no matter how they sparkle and flash. Fatigue disappears from sight momentarily behind a smile or a jest, but then its full truth is apparent. You can read in that look the obituary for their youth, a silent elegy. Isn't Zubayda in her fifties? And Jalila's several years older. She violently disputes that fact but will never be able to disprove it no matter how often she denies it."
There was a change in his heart too. He felt aversion and repulsion. It had not been that way when he arrived, for he had come in breathless pursuit of a phantom, which no longer existed. So be it. God forbid that he should willingly submit to defeat…. "Drink, let yourself be transported by the music, and laugh. No one will ever force you to do something you don't want."
Jalila said, "I didn't believe my eyes would ever see you again in this world."
He yielded to an overwhelming temptation to ask: "How do you find me?"
Zubayda intervened: "The same as ever. As big and strong as a camel. One white hair shows under your fez. Nothing more than that."
Jalila protested, "Let me answer, because he asked me". Then she told al-Sayyid Ahmad, "You look the way you always did.
But there's nothing strange about that. We're all still youngsters."
Al-Sayyid Ahmad discerned her goal. Trying to seem serious and sincere, he replied, "You two have only increased in beauty and good looks. I wasn't expecting this much."
Examining him with interest, Zubayda inquired, "What has kept you away from us all this time?" She laughingly advised him, "If your intentions were at all good, you could have had an innocent rendezvous with us. Can't we ever meet unless there's a bed beneath us?"
Waving his arm in the air to toss back the sleeve of his caftan, Mr. Ibrahim al-Far retorted, "Neither he nor we know how to have an innocent rendezvous with you."
Zubayda grumbled, "I seek refuge with God from you men. All you want a woman for is sex."
Jalila laughed out loud and commented, "Mother's pet, you should thank your Lord for that. Could you have grown so splendidly fat if you had not been content to profit from sex?"
Zubayda told her critically, "Don't interfere with my interrogation of the accused."
With a smile al-Sayyid Ahmad said, "I was sentenced to five years of innocence without labor."
Zubayda pounced on him again and said mockingly, "Alas, poor boy! You deprived yourself of every pleasure, all of them, poor baby, so that the only ones to enjoy were food, drink, music, humor, and staying out till daybreak, night after night."
He answered apologetically, "These things are necessary for a grieving heart, but the other ones …"
Zubayda gestured toward him as though to say, "You're hopeless!" Then she remarked, "So, I've learned now that you consider us worse than all the other sins and transgressions put together…."
As though remembering an important matter he had almost forgotten, Muhammad Iffat interrupted her by crying out, "Have we assembled from the ends of the earth just to talk? The glasses are staring down at us, but no one's paying any attention to them. Fill the glasses, Ali. Tune your instrument, Zanuba. And you, the accused gentleman, make yourself more comfortable. Do you think you're at school and can't remove any clothing? Take off your fez and cloak. Don't assume that your interrogation is over, but first all the court officials must get drunk. Then we can resume the interrogation. Jalila insisted that we shouldn't get intoxicated until 'the sultan of good times' arrived. At least that's what she said. This woman esteems you as highly as Satan does a chronic sinner. God's blessing on your relationship with her and hers with you."
Al-Sayyid Ahmad rose to slip out of his cloak, and Ali Abd al-Rahim went to serve as bartender, as usual. A few discordant whispers were emitted by the lute strings as they were being tested. Zubayda crooned gently. With her fingertips Jalila smoothed the strands of her hair and the neck of her dress where it fell between her breasts. Eyes watched Ali Abd al-Rahim's hands with longing as he filled the glasses. Al-Sayyid Ahmad sat down again with his legs tucked beneath him. His eyes wandered over the room and the people in it until they chanced to meet Zanuba's. A smiling look of recognition lit up their eyes. Ali Abd al-Rahim presented the first round of drinks. Then Muhammad Iffat said, "To good health and good love."