He offered the water pipe to Samara, but she declined, and all his encouragement was in vain. Anis saw Sana snatching a furtive look at Samara from beneath her curls, and he smiled.
Mahfouz’s novels sometimes read like indictments of Egyptian society, but this one conveys the sense of what it is like for a essentially decent but troubled and drifting man to live in that society. Much of the story moves in and out of the dreamy, drug-blurred mind of Anis, slipping sometimes into a stream of consciousness, and the narrative shifts fluidly from the first to second to third persons. Little happens for most of the book, and the relationships among the characters are allowed to unfold gradually. Though their gatherings are sometimes roiled by political disputes or romantic misunderstandings, the friends are not really challenged to examine their lives until a new character arrives: Samara Bahgat, an elegant woman journalist whom Ragab the actor sees as “an alarmingly serious person.”ĭespite its brief length, Adrift on the Nile is unhurried and atmospheric. They have families and jobs - the group includes an actor, a lawyer, a translator, an art critic, and a writer of short stories - but their approach to life is essentially cynical and unserious. In the evenings Anis serves as master of ceremonies, tending the water pipe for a group of male and female friends who gather to smoke, banter, and flirt with one another. The novel’s main setting is a houseboat on the Nile where Anis Zaki, a bored and aimless civil servant, spends his leisure time in a narcotic daze induced by smoking kif (a mixture of tobacco and marijuana) in his water pipe, or using it to brew “magic coffee.” An educated man with an extensive library on the boat, Anis dreams of ancient times and imagines a whale that lives in the Nile and swims to his boat to visit him. Amid the current turmoil in Egypt it offers a glimpse of a more peaceful time.
Though its theme is familiar - the absurdity and emptiness of life in Cairo, and the yearning for a serious existence - Adrift on the Nile is marked by an unaccustomed sympathy, even tenderness for the characters. Translated from the Arabic by Frances Liardet, it was published by Anchor Books in 1994. Adrift on the Nile, one of the brief novels Mahfouz wrote in the ’60s after completing his massive Cairo Trilogy, is an exception to the rule and a good introduction to his work. The fiction of Naguib Mahfouz is marked by a clear, harsh view of modern Egyptian life, and his characters are frequently unsympathetic.
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