“Are you serious about it,” Isa asked with some vestiges of laughter still visible on his face, “or is it just a question of amusement?”

Samir emptied a bottle of Coca-Cola into his glass. “It’s more than just amusement,” he replied. “It’s a real source of relaxation.” He drank half the glass and then continued. “The fact that you only look to it under the constraint of specific circumstances doesn’t negate its qualities. We may only go to Aswan in winter to cure an illness, but that in itself doesn’t discredit the benefits which Aswan can offer whether we’re sick or healthy.”

“But there’s obviously a difference,” Isa said mockingly, “between turning to mysticism during a political crisis and doing so quite spontaneously when things are going well.”

Samir smiled patiently, his green eyes glinting even more brightly than the candescent clouds. “Yes, there’s a difference,” he said, “but the lesson’s in the consequences. Sometimes a disaster will hit us in such a way as to lead us unawares along the right path!”

“Suppose, for example, that the world…” Isa stopped speaking suddenly, as though he’d stumbled on silence, caught up in an exchange of glances with the middle-aged woman who was sitting next to the old one. Then he turned back to his friend, thinking that if things had gone as he’d wanted, Salwa would have been his wife now for at least a year. If only…! “What is the mystical view of the particle ‘if only’?” he asked.

Samir did not understand his point, so Isa gave the answer himself. “ ‘If only’ is the particle of anguish which has stupidly hankered after some illusory ability to change history.”

“From the mystical point of view,” Samir replied simply, “it represents a denial of God’s manifest will in history. What it does is to imbue things with futility and irrationality.”

Salwa has not budged from your heart, Isa thought to himself, even though you despise her character. The mind may formulate specifications for the ideal woman however it likes, but love is an essentially irrational proceeding—like death, fate, and chance. Salwa’s behavior was typical of this world. You’ll still need girls, though; they’re wonderful tranquilizers for anxieties. Probably better than mysticism, he thought, remembering the question he’d broken off. “Suppose,” he said, “the world promised us we’d be appointed to the ministry again! What would you do with mysticism?”

Samir laughed so hard that his teeth flashed. “It isn’t difficult to do both at once,” he replied. “That’s what Ahmad Pasha Zahran used to do. Now you see me combining mysticism with commerce. It doesn’t stifle your energies, but gets rid of flaws.”

“It’s better than suicide, at any rate,” said Isa sadly.

The sun shone for a few seconds, then disappeared again. Samir asked him what he intended to do.