Abbas Sadiq began puffing at a nargila and blowing smoke, joining the orchestra of smokers already in the café. Smoke hung like fog around the lamps suspended from the ceiling. Isa surveyed the café, scrutinizing people’s faces and their different expressions, the daydreamers looking drowsy, the people playing games with looks of fierce concentration. Why was it his fate, he asked himself in dismay, to swim against the current of history, which has been flowing for eternity? He looked out through the windowpane onto the street, inundated by rain and light, and examined with lust a woman hurrying for shelter in the dark entrance of a building. “Winter’s beautiful,” he said, “but Cairo isn’t ready for it.”

“Don’t forget,” Ibrahim Khairat said to Abbas Sadiq, “that our men are scattered around on the boards of directors of several companies.”

Here he was talking about them and saying “our men” while at the same time writing articles attacking parties and partisanship and trying to rub out the old days altogether. Loathing reaches a very low ebb when it leads to utter disgust, but then disgust itself is an important element in loathing. The confusing exception was his own past life—and theirs—which had been marked by affection and magnanimity.

“Tell me what your feelings are,” Isa asked, “when you read your articles in the newspapers?”

“I ask myself why God willed Adam to appear on the earth!” Ibrahim Khairat answered quite calmly, ignoring everyone’s grins.

Abbas Sadiq raised his head from the mouthpiece of the nargila. He was pudgy, white-faced, his protruding eyes gleamed like a symptom of disease, and he was completely bald, with an overall appearance that would have led you to believe he was at least ten years older than he actually was. “We’ll all be unhappy,” he said, “till we see you both installed in two important posts with a decent company.”

Trying to penetrate into the minds of these people who were clustered for no apparent reason in this café, Isa let his own mind wander through past millennia, questioning their meaning, and was at first perplexed, then alarmed. He turned again toward the window. A beggar was standing outside, giving him an imploring look. The rain had stopped. “Just imagine,” Isa said to his friends, “these human beings are originally descended from fish!”

“But aren’t there still millions and millions of fish crowding the oceans?”

“That’s the real cause of our tragedy,” he replied firmly, dismissing the beggar with a wave of his hand. “Sometimes,” he continued, “it gives me great comfort to see myself as a Messiah carrying the sins of a community of sinners.”

“Are you sure of the historical facts?” Abbas Sadiq asked.

He’d been sure enough, he told himself, when that telephone was slammed down.

“This would be a good time for some brandy!” said Ibrahim Khairat.