I smiled into her face— a smile the outcome of which I knew not, except that I was determined that it should not go to waste. I also laughed lest the surprise in her face should turn to animosity. Then she smiled. I stood beside her for about a quarter of an hour, laughing when the speaker's words made her laugh— loudly so that she might be affected by the contagion of it. Then came the moment when I felt that she and I had become like a mare and foal running in harmony side by side. A sound, as though it were not my voice, issued from my throat: 'What about a drink, away from this crowd and heat?' She turned her head in astonishment. This time I smiled— a broad innocent smile so that I might change astonishment into, at least, curiosity. Meanwhile I closely examined her face: each one of her features increased my conviction that this was my prey. With the instinct of a gambler I knew that this was a decisive moment. At this moment everything was possible. My smile changed to a gladness I could scarcely keep in rein as she said: 'Yes, why not?' We walked along together; she beside me, a glittering figure of bronze under the July sun, a city of secrets and rapture. I was pleased she laughed so freely. Such a woman—there are many of her type in Europe— knows no fear; they accept life with gaiety and curiosity. And I am a thirsty desert, a wilderness of southern desires. As we drank tea, she asked me about my home. I related to her fabricated stories about deserts of golden sands and jungles where non-existent animals called out to one another. I told her that the streets of my country teemed with elephants and lions and that during siesta time crocodiles crawled through it. Half-credulous, half-disbelieving, she listened to me, laughing and closing her eyes, her cheeks reddening. Sometimes she would hear me out in silence, a Christian sympathy in her eyes. There came a moment when I felt I had been transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive creature, a spear in one hand and arrows in the other, hunting elephants and lions in the jungles. This was fine. Curiosity had changed into gaiety, and gaiety to sympathy, and when I stir the still pool in its depths the sympathy will be transformed into a desire upon whose taut strings I shall play as I wish. 'What race are you?' she asked me. 'Are you African or Asian?'
'I'm like Othello— Arab-African,' I said to her.
'Yes,' she said, looking into my face. 'Your nose is like the noses of Arabs in pictures, but your hair isn't soft and jet black like that of Arabs.'
'Yes, that's me. My face is Arab like the desert of the Empty Quarter, while my head is African and teems with a mischievous childishness.'
'You put things in such a funny way,' she said laughing.
"The conversation led us to my family, and I told her— without lying this time— that I had grown up without a father. Then, returning to my lies, I gave her such a terrifying descriptions of how I had lost my parents that I saw the tears well up in her eyes. I told her I was six years old at the time when my parents were drowned with thirty other people in a boat taking them from one bank of the Nile to the other. Here something occurred which was better than expressions of pity; pity in such instances is an emotion with uncertain consequences. Her eyes brightened and she cried out ecstatically:
'The Nile.'
'Yes, the Nile.'
'Then you live on the banks of the Nile?'
'Yes. Our house is right on the bank of the Nile, so that when I'm lying on my bed at night I put my hand out of the window and idly play with the Nile waters till sleep overtakes me.'
Mr Mustafa, the bird has fallen into the snare. The Nile, that snake god, has gained a new victim. The city has changed into a woman. It would be but a day or a week before I would pitch tent, driving my tent peg into the mountain summit. You, my lady, may not know, but you— like Carnarvon when he entered Tutankhamen's tomb— have been infected with a deadly disease which has come from you know not where and which will bring about your destruction, be it sooner or later. My store of hackneyed phrases is inexhaustible. I felt the flow of conversation firmly in my hands, like the reins of an obedient mare: I pull at them and she stops, I shake them and she advances; I move them and she moves subject to my will, to left or to right.
'Two hours have passed without my being aware of them,' I said to her. 'I've not felt such happiness for a long time. And there's so much left for me to say to you and you to me. What would you say to having dinner together and continuing the conversation?'
For a while she remained silent. I was not alarmed for I felt that satanic warmth under my diaphragm, and when I feel it I know that I am in full command of the situation. No, she would not say no. 'This is an extraordinary meeting,' she said. 'A man I don't know invites me out. It's not right, but—' She was silent. 'Yes, why not?' she then said. 'There's nothing to tell from your face you're a cannibal.'
'You'll find I'm an aged crocodile who's lost its teeth,' I said to her, a wave of joy stirring in the roots of my heart. 'I wouldn't have the strength to eat you even if I wanted to.' I reckoned I was at least fifteen years her junior, for she was a woman in the region of forty, whose body— whatever the experiences she had undergone— time had treated kindly. The fine wrinkles on her forehead and at the corners of her mouth told one not that she had grown old, but that she had ripened.
Only then did I ask her name.
'Isabella Seymour,' she said.
I repeated it twice, rolling it round my tongue as though eating a pear.
'And what's your name?'
'I'm— Amin. Amin Hassan.'
'I shall call you Hassan.'
With the grills and wine her features relaxed and there gushed forth— upon me— a love she felt for the whole world. I wasn't so much concerned with her love for the world, or for the cloud of sadness that crossed her face from time to time, as I was with the redness of her tongue when she laughed, the fulness of her lips and the secrets lurking in the abyss of her mouth. I pictured her obscenely naked as she said: 'Life is full of pain, yet we must be optimistic and face life with courage.'
Yes, I now know that in the rough wisdom that issues from the mouths of simple people lies our whole hope of salvation. A tree grows simply and your grandfather has lived and will die simply. That is the secret. You are right, my lady: courage and optimism. But until the meek inherit the earth, until the armies are disbanded, the lamb grazes in peace beside the wolf and the child plays water-polo in the river with the crocodile, until that time of happiness and love comes along, I for one shall continue to express myself in this twisted manner. And when, puffing, I reach the mountain peak and implant the banner, collect my breath and rest— that, my lady, is an ecstasy greater to me than love, than happiness. Thus I mean you no harm, except to the extent that the sea is harmful when ships are wrecked against its rocks, and to the extent that the lightning is harmful when it rends a tree in two. This last idea converged in my mind on the tiny hairs on her right arm near to the wrist, and I noticed that the hair on her arms was thicker than with most women, and this led my thoughts to other hair. It would certainly be as soft and abundant as cypress-grass on the banks of a stream....
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