“Are we really finished?” Isa asked him in turn.

“Most probably,” Samir replied, shaking his head in despair. “Things aren’t as they were in previous revolutions.”

Isa said nothing for a while, as though he were listening to the all-pervading silence. “We’re just like the Alexandria beach in autumn,” he said.

“That’s why I’m saying you should get a job.”

“We won’t be working, whatever job we take,” Isa replied, “because we’ve no role to play. That’s why we feel excised and rejected like a removed appendix.” He gave a smile, then continued. “I must confess that I have my own mystical beliefs. They keep me busy when I’m alone.”

Samir looked concerned.

“I’m thinking of taking up crime,” Isa said blandly.

Samir let out a long laugh. “That’s a novel form of mysticism!” he said, still chuckling.

“But you don’t kill your own body with it. Just other people’s.”

“I suppose you’ll choose some kind of sex crime.”

They both laughed.

“Thank God, there’s still a world that can laugh,” Samir said.

“We’ll laugh a lot more every time we take a look at what’s going on. It’ll all be worked out for us. But we won’t be participating in it. We’ll be like eunuchs.”

A gentle breeze blew. The pashas looked as though they were asleep. For no particular reason, Isa remembered the first speech he’d made in Parliament, when he was still a student at the university. “Our very history is threatened with extinction,” he said sadly.

“History is very long-suffering. It’ll defend itself when all the other combatants have disappeared.”

The Greek proprietor walked over to them, smiled at Isa, and asked him how he was and how things were going. Isa recognized the political import of his question immediately. “Just as you see,” he replied with a smile.

When he returned to his tall building near the tram stop, he was feeling depressed at saying farewell to Samir. As he walked through the high, dark entrance, he cursed Salwa, and as he entered the elevator, he told himself how much he needed a “tranquilizer.”

FOURTEEN