With a little water, Samir Abd al-Baqi washed down a mouthful of peanuts. “Even supposing we did do wrong,” he said, “couldn’t they find anything in our past records to compensate for our conduct?”

Isa closed his eyes to hear the past, its living heartbeats, the seemingly endless roar of glory, the rocketlike hiss and crack of soldiers’ truncheons. There had been self-destructive enthusiasm, then sedition sapping at aspirations, with apathy creeping forward like a disease, followed by earthquakes without even the uneasy howl of a dog’s warning. And the hollow-hearted search for consolation. And finally the buzz of the telephone line, the source of a void.

“We were the vanguard of a revolution,” Samir Abd al-Baqi said, “and now we’re the debris of one!”

“I say we should keep up with the procession,” said Ibrahim Khairat, as though in a general way he was trying to justify his own position.

A sorrowful look appeared in Samir Abd al-Baqi’s green eyes. “We’re fated to die twice,” he said.

“That’s true,” said Isa, endorsing his view, “and that’s why we’re fed on fish!”

They noticed the shoeshine man banging his box on the floor alongside them and resorted to silence till he had gone, when Samir Abd al-Baqi aroused their curiosity by laughing out loud. “I remember I once almost joined the military college!” he said.

They all laughed.

“How do you think I can feel so cheerful,” quipped Ibrahim Khairat, “when things are getting darker and darker?”

Offering condolences, Isa told himself, is not the same thing as being bereaved yourself. Leaving the café at about ten in the evening, wrapping his coat around him, he looked up at the sky and saw thousands of stars; he could smell winter in the clear air after the rain. The pavement looked washed and gleamed with grayish reflection. An invigorating wind, as cold as a gibe, brushed his face in staccato gusts. He felt very strange again and kept himself calm with the thought of the two years’ full salary and the remainder of the umdas’ gifts in the bank.

In Groppi’s,18 he sat down alongside Abd al-Halim Shukri and Shaikh Abd as-Sattar as-Salhubi, who was in the process of whispering the latest joke. They both asked him, perfunctorily, about the latest news. He expected the Pasha to disclose the results of the efforts he’d made to find him a job.

“Are you still happy the treaty was annulled?” the Shaikh asked ironically.

He realized that the Shaikh had an obsession with the question of the annulled treaty. All the calamities that had fallen on them stemmed from it alone.

“Events are striking our colleagues down like thunderbolts,” Abd al-Halim Shukri said, and then asked, “Is our turn coming?”

Isa sipped his tea and looked at the faces of people around him enjoying food and drink. Suddenly Abd al-Halim Shukri leaned toward him. “Anticipation is better than doubt,” he said.