He also told himself that “government official” was still a vague concept inadequately understood. In the history of Egypt, an official occupation was a sacred occupation like religion, and the Egyptian official was the oldest in the history of civilization. The ideal citizen of other nations might be a warrior, a politician, a merchant, a craftsman, or a sailor, but in Egypt it was a government official. And the earliest moral instructions recorded in history were the exhortations of a retiring official to his son, a rising one. Even the Pharaohs themselves, he thought, were but officials appointed by the gods of heaven to rule the Nile Valley by means of religious rituals and administrative, economic, and organizational regulations. Ours was a valley of good-natured peasants who bowed their heads in humility to the good earth but whose heads were raised with pride if they joined the government apparatus. Then would they look upward to the ascending ladder of grades which reached right to the doorstep of the gods in heaven. To be an official was to serve the people: the competent man’s right, the conscientious man’s duty, the pride of the human soul—and the prayer of God, the creator of competence, conscience, and pride.

One day he went for an inspection tour of the Archives Section. There he saw Onsiyya, whose womanhood had now reached the stage of maturity. She had also moved up the official scale to become a supervisor, occupying the post which was made empty by her husband’s transfer to the Ministry of Education.

“A long time!” he could not prevent himself from saying as he shook her hand.

She smiled in unaffected shyness.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“I’m all right.”

“The ability to forget is one of fortune’s blessings,” he said, yielding to an irresistible impulse.

“Nothing is forgotten and nothing remains,” she said with friendly simplicity.

He thought about her words for a long time, and as he left Archives, he repeated to himself, “I loved you so much, Onsiyya, in the old days.”

He returned to his office to find on his desk a circular from the Public Relations Section. He could tell from its appearance that it was the kind which announced the death of an employee or the relative of one. The circular read: “Mr Isma’il Fayiq, the Head of Administration, died this morning. The funeral will take place…”

He read it a second time. He read the name over and over again. Impossible. Only yesterday he had been working in full health. Othman had had his morning coffee with him in his office. Indeed the man had said, giving voice to his familiar worries, “The country is awash with contradictory opinions,” at which Othman had smiled without comment.

“Everyone,” Isma’il had gone on, “believes he’s been sent by Providence.” Then he had shaken his head and said, “In what frame of mind can one begin to prepare the final accounts?”