“The atom is the flood,” Shaikh As-Salhubi said with conviction. “Either we turn in truth to Almighty God, or else there will be ‘clear destruction’!”8

Isa tried hard to remember where he had come across that idea before, the idea of the flood. He forgot this philosophizing when he found four tens in his hand. He sprang into action so as to make up for his losses during the long night. He opened with twenty-five piasters to draw them into the round, but they all passed because they had such poor hands. His head was spinning. Then he showed his winning hand.

“Your luck’s worse when you’re winning than when you’re losing!” shouted Ibrahim Khairat.

“You’re undoubtedly lucky in love,” Shaikh As-Salhubi remarked.

Isa was about to boil over. Gambling can eventually become a deadly disease, he told himself. He started to reckon up what kind of crisis was waiting for him at home. Everyone stopped playing just as dawn was about to appear.

Abbas Sadiq stood up. “What fun would there be at Ra’s al-Barr,” he said, “if it weren’t for gambling?”

Isa went out into the street feeling like a candle with only the vestige of the wick left. Abbas Sadiq and Samir Abd al-Baqi walked one way, and he walked another with Shaikh As-Salhubi. A dewy breeze blew quietly, and the sounds of people sleeping happily resounded in a darkness broken only by the light of the stars and by the moon rising at the end of the month. From afar, the horizon echoed the roaring of the sea. Shaikh As-Salhubi yawned as he intoned the word “Allah.” “How beautiful it is at this time of night,” he murmured.

“Especially when you’ve won!” Isa replied with a laugh.

“I’ve left this evening session of ours with no wins or losses,” the Shaikh said with a laugh. “Abbas Sadiq is God’s own lighted fire.” Then, after a pause: “Isa, you’re a risky gambler, you know!”

“I lost,” Isa replied with a tone full of meaning, “even though I had a pair of aces in my right hand.”

The Shaikh realized what he meant. “That’s the way the world is,” he replied. “Do we deserve the things that happen to us? Let’s admit that we do make mistakes, but then, who doesn’t? How can this renegade nation have forgotten us? How can it forget the people who used to treat it as a sympathetic mother treats her only child?”