She sang an Italian song, and for a moment he was impressed by her beauty. Then his own degradation made him feel sad. Everything of value except beauty comes to the same end, he thought; people barter shamelessly with freedom, humanity, and even religion, and they are all really a single tragedy. In the past, he himself had indulged in this futile pastime. He had stomached all kinds of corruption and taken part in it himself; his bank balance was still there to prove it. Why couldn’t purity prevail? What was it that had prevented it for so many centuries? Was there a single man anywhere on the face of the earth living without fear or blemish?

He began to amuse himself by following girls in the Cairo streets, especially young ones; it was as though some force were pushing him toward the sources of innocence. But these were mysterious and fruitless trips which brought no results. Every time the political storms blew up, and some idea or person from his past was thrown out, he reeled under the impact of the blow. Eventually there came a time when he wished that the Egyptians—like some other peoples—had a colony, in South America perhaps, where they could emigrate. The Egyptians were reptiles, he told himself angrily, not birds. The dream of some radical change in his life attracted him, but everything he did was just a waste of time. When he complained to his friend Samir Abd al-Baqi, his friend had replied, “Where’s your sail? You’re a boat drifting without a sail!”

One day at about four in the afternoon, the real estate agent came to say that some people wanted to look at the house. Two women appeared, an old lady in her seventies, and her daughter—at least that was what he deduced from their resemblance—who was in her forties or slightly younger. He took them from one room to another and answered their questions. The old lady was thin, with a white complexion, gray eyes, and thick eyebrows, and her expression ull of experience and self-confidence. Her daughter was of medium height and had a full figure and a round face; her eyes were like those of a cow and equally placid. He noticed the women’s amazement at the obvious discrepancy between the old house and the magnificent, contemporary furniture. This irritated him. After they had looked at the large courtyard, he invited them to sit in the reception room and offered them some coffee. The agent joined the group, and in his white gallabiyya16 looked at everyone with his narrow eyes. “The house covers a large area,” he said, “and one could add a building on two sides. The northwest corner is a magnificent site; the quarter around it is rapidly being modernized, as you’ve seen. Five new buildings are being erected at the same time, and that’ll raise its value.”