A heavy silence reigned until Othman spoke. “I didn’t understand any of it.”

Omar said, “And I didn’t say it was poetry, just hallucinations while I was in a morbid frame of mind.”

Mustapha observed, “But modern art in general breathes this spirit of rebellion.”

Othman said disdainfully, “It’s the whimper of a dying order.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” Mustapha said, “but speaking as a veteran artist, I see an artistic crisis as well, the crisis of an artist who is fed up with his subject matter and searching for a new form.”

“Why should he be fed up with the subject matter?”

“Because whatever subject he hits upon is hackneyed.”

“But the artist confers his own spirit on the subject which makes it new to a certain extent.”

“This no longer suffices in our era of radical revolutions. Science has ascended the throne and the artist finds himself among the banished entourage. However much he wanted to penetrate the lofty realm, his ignorance and inability prevented him, and so he joined the Angry Young Men, turned to the anti-novel and to the theater of the absurd. While scientists were compelling admiration through their incomprehensible equations, the silly artists strove to impress by producing obscure, strange, and abnormal effects. If you can’t attract the public’s attention with your profound thoughts, try running naked through Opera Square.”

Othman laughed loudly for the first time.

“Therefore I’ve chosen the simplest and most honest route, and become a clown.”

Why get involved, Omar concluded, in discussing matters of no concern to him?

* An ancient Arabic form of poetry.

SEVENTEEN

The dawn was speechless. On the banks of the Nile, on the balcony, even in the desert, the dawn was speechless. And nothing but a broken memory bore witness to its ever having spoken. There’s no point in continuing to look upward, burning the heart out, listening to its cries of yearning reverberate hopelessly in the heavens. The nagging rhymes, Margaret’s golden hair, Warda’s gray eyes, and the image of Zeinab leaving church. What are they but pale ghosts wandering in a hollow head? Mustapha laughs, tolling the death of hope, while Othman rages like a prophet of nihilism. I’ve spoken to the chairs, the walls, the stars, and the darkness; I’ve argued with the void, I’ve flirted with something which doesn’t yet exist, until I finally found comfort in the prospect of my complete annihilation. Everything has been demeaned, the very laws that rule the universe have been discredited, predicting even the sunrise is impossible. After this how can I peruse the case files or discuss the household budget?

I said to the four walls of my room, “What a mistake it was to accept this truce and return home.”

And I told the cat who was rubbing against my leg, “Your word is my command. I’ll leave this refuge, so full of emotions which disturb and inhibit.”