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ship set sail with me
from Alexandria. I saw her far-away waving to me with her handkerchief then
drying her tears with it, her husband at her side, his hands on his hips; even
at that distance I could almost see the limpid blueness of his eyes. However I
was not sad. My sole concern was to reach London, another mountain, larger than
Cairo, where I knew not how many nights I would stay. Though I was then
fifteen, I looked nearer twenty for I was as taut and firm-looking as an
inflated waterskin. Behind me was a story of spectacular success at school, my
sole weapon being that sharp knife inside my skull, while within my breast was
a hard, cold feeling — as if it had been cast in rock. And when the sea
swallowed up the shore and the waves heaved under the ship and the blue horizon
encircled us, I immediately felt an overwhelming intimacy with the sea. I knew
this green, infinite giant, as though it were roving back and forth within my
ribs. The whole of the journey I savoured that feeling of being nowhere, alone,
before and behind me either eternity or nothingness. The surface of the sea
when calm is another mirage, ever changing and shifting, like the mask on my
mother’s face. Here, too, was a desert laid out in blue-green, calling me,
calling me. The mysterious call led me to the coast of Dover, to London and
tragedy.
    ‘Later I followed the same road on my return, asking myself
during the whole journey whether it would have been possible to have avoided
any of what happened. The string of the bow is drawn taut and the arrow must
needs shoot forth. I look to right and left, at the dark greenness, at the
Saxon villages standing on the fringes of hills. The red roofs of houses
vaulted like the backs of cows. A transparent veil of mist is spread above the
valleys. What a great amount of water there is here, how vast the greenness!
And all those colours! The smell of the place is strange, like that of Mrs
Robinson’s body. The sounds have a crisp impact on the ear, like the rustle of
birds’ wings. This is an ordered world; its houses, fields, and trees are
ranged in accordance with a plan. The streams too do not follow a zigzag course
but flow between artificial banks. The train stops at a station for a few
minutes; hurriedly people get off hurriedly others get on, then the train moves
off again. No fuss.
    ‘I thought of my life in Cairo. Nothing untoward had
occurred. My knowledge had increased and several minor incidents had happened
to me; a fellow student had fallen in love with me and had then hated me.
"You’re not a human being," she had said to me. “You’re a heartless
machine." I had loafed around the streets of Cairo, visited the opera,
gone to the theatre, and once I had swum across the Nile. Nothing whatsoever
had happened except that the waterskin had distended further, the bowstring had
become more taut. The arrow will shoot forth towards other unknown horizons.
    ‘I looked at the smoke from the engine vanishing to where it is
dispersed by the wind and merges into the veil of mist spread across the
valleys. Falling into a short sleep, I dreamt I was praying alone at the
Citadel Mosque. It was illuminated with thousands of chandeliers, and the red
marble glowed as I prayed alone. When I woke up there was the smell of incense
in my nose and I found that the train was approaching London. Cairo was a city
of laughter, just as Mrs Robinson was a woman of laughter. She had wanted me to
call her by her first name — Elizabeth — but I always used to call her by her
married name. From her I learnt to love Bach’s music, Keats’s poetry; and from
her I heard for the first time of Mark Twain. And yet I enjoyed nothing. Mrs
Robinson would laugh and say to me, “Can’t you ever forget your intellect?”
Would it have been possible to have avoided any of what happened? At that time
I was on the way back. I remembered what the priest had said to me when I was
on my way to Cairo: “All of us, my son, are in