Cold windy evening, leaves scurrying on the ground, cold dust in the air. He parks his car in the basement and rushes to the auditorium which is at an incline. There's a crowd queuing up for the elevators. Slightly breathless, he enters, hastens down the aisles and settles in a corner seat in the front. He can't hear too well with his left ear, but nothing to worry, he is facing the lectern. Surely the author will speak from the lectern, one hand in his pocket to signal his confidence. There are two chairs and a coffee table at the centre of the podium. That could be for the man who is to introduce him. Hope this doesn't mean some guy conversing with him. Some inane question the fucker would ask. “When exactly did you conceive the idea of your sensational novel, sir, the first one, entitled The Crescent and the Thief? Does it not have an echo of the Barabbas story?”

What would the answer be like, he ruminated? “I heard of Barabbas barely three months ago. It was Eugenio Montale who told me the story, or let me think—was it Italo Calvino?”

“So it was spontaneous, as if the muse had suddenly flashed the idea across your mind.”

“With a flashlight.” The great author can be sarcastic. The crowd titters, that is, the ones who can hear him. A man from the audience gets up. “Sir, you live here in Cairo, but could you tell us why all your stories are sited in Ankara?”

“Istanbul,” the great man replies by way of correction. He is not used to wasting words.

“Could it be true, sir, as a newspaper in Ankara maintains, that you purloined the plot from The Thousand and One Nights, something about a maid from the caliph's harem wanting to steal the moon?”

The publisher gets up from the audience and says to the insolent questioner: “You are from Al Azhar, aren't you? Where did you pick up a word like ‘purloined'? Damn good, I must say.” The crowd titters.

The man who was meant to be in conversation with the novelist is fuming. “This is an outrage!” he exclaims. But the great man intervenes, answering sotto voce. “Read Burton. You won't find the story in The Thousand and One Nights. You may find it in ‘ A Thousand and Two Nights', though.” This ain't canned laughter. The hall erupts.

He is not happy. He has let his mind wander and fall prey to day dreams once again. He could kick himself. Imagine thinking up such stupid stuff. The Crescent and the Thief, indeed, and the caliph's harem! He finds that he hasn't noticed the great football commentator come and sit next to him. They were in college together. They shake hands. What shall I talk to him about, he wonders— Maradona's drugs or Zidane's head-butt? That's about all I know of this wretched game.

“You were lost in thought, Saqr bin Omar,” says the soccer commentator. “Plotting another novel, are you? What happened to the second one, incidentally? Did it see the light of day?”

“No, but it saw the shadow of night.” Odd answer, he realised, but then he is no charmer. You need a quicksilver brain for that. The great man and the guy who is to be “in conversation” with him, as the card declares, now stroll on to the podium heralded by a series of excited announcements, our version of kettledrums and a flourish of trumpets. The intro is brief—greatest novelist of the world, a shame he has been kept away from the Nobel, how after all can Scandinavians cowering under the aurora borealis appreciate the warm currents that stir the desert sands of the orient, etc. Applause. The mike is handed over to the ‘conversationalist', a thin reedy fellow with a thin reedy voice. His hands seem to flutter like the wings of a fledgling partridge attempting to fly. The great man discusses his novels one by one. Wants to sell them all, does he? reflects Saqr bin Omar.

He talks about his first novel, The Clay Urn. It is symbolic, he tells the audience. The first pot was fashioned after the female breast, he says, a mother's breast full of milk. Pot, mammary, symbols are all grist to his mill. The crowd is spellbound. The lower your intellect, the greater your chances of being spelbound, thinks Saqr bin Omar, a bit contemptuously. Then he talks of his second novel, The Runaway Wife. The novel has two sections. The first is about the wedding and the beautiful Munizeh entering the caliph's harem. (He lets the audience know that Munizeh was Afrasiab's daughter.) The second half is about how she finds things suffocating there, and slowly moves out. The disappearance is kept ambivalent. Suffocation? Escape? A novel doesn't have to register a perfect circle, he says. Good to leave something to the reader's imagination.

Saqr bin Omar starts imagining what the great man's love life is like. He read somewhere that he's not getting on well with his wife. He asks the football commentator a question but people stare rudely at him and the commentator declines to comment. The talk about the runaway wife starts haunting him and he switches off. He is not listening to the great man anymore.

The audience shouts that they want him to read from his novel. The great man says he shall read out a short story, “Last Moments of the Imperial Astrologer, Hoseyn Effendi.” He starts reading in an urbane though monotonous voice:

The three of them were so high up on the octagonal roof of the tower that swans in the lake beneath looked like quail, the lake like a pond. The view from here was tremendous, the perspectives profound, though as the Gaoler would have told them that mist could smear the landscape into a blur and sometimes cut it out altogether. So could an eye bandage. Two men walked in, on cue, standing on either side of the astrologer holding on to the two ends of a piece of cloth, the eye bandage.

He reads on.

The thought crossed his mind that what one can't see, simply isn't there. At the moment he could still view things around him. The hills ten miles away were clear as if painted on glass. The rolling plain seemed to lift itself up as it rose to meet the low line of hills. First the rolling downs, then the range of hills with large bald patches that pointed to excessive grazing, and further up rose the mountains black with pine.

Another thought—what on earth had happened to his last (rather desperate) prediction of a surprise enemy attack. The Mongols, he had said, on their smelly horses would be here. Where the hell were they?

The two men on either side of the Imperial astrologer were not fierce looking. They didn't sport big moustaches or furry mutton chop whiskers. There was no axe in their hands and their looks seemed to commiserate with Hoseyn Efendi. After all, nothing could be more pathetic than an astrologer who could not predict his own future. Such a one needed sympathy. They seemed aware that the future can ambush the finest of prophets.

In the streets it was known that he had erred thrice, had not predicted the treachery of a palace eunuch. Nor had he warned against the plague that ravaged Anatolia, and famine that followed; nor the boat sinking in the Bosphorus with the Imperial catamite at the helm.

A debate raged in the underground yellow press of Istanbul whether the eunuch who had turned a blind eye to the escapades of a princess, or the fate of the Royal catamite's capsized boat was what tilted the balance against the Imperial Astrologer. On both occasions he had been consulted. The appointment of the Imperial Eunuch of the royal harem had got the oracle's sanction. The journey of the Royal Catamite had been on hold for two months till the stars were considered favourable by him and the zodiac had smiled, according to his calculations. Now the silken smooth body of the catamite lay on the Bosphorus sea floor.

In slow motion the two men on either side of him advanced, holding one end each of the yard-long bandage. It was almost a slow march, the eye band held at eye level. The distance shortened and the first to disappear from view were the pine-clad hills. With another step the downs became opaque. Then the endless plains seemed to vanish as the taut band was held six inches from his eyes. He thought the future was shrinking and reflected that all this reality was real only because of the tiny retina; meadow and moor and hill were there because of the eye, about to be bandaged now. Those heathens beyond the Hindu Kush believed in something called Maya, the Imperial astrologer had been told by his mentor. He made an effort to look out for that Mongol troupe which was to thunder down. Surely he couldn't be wrong again. But they had now bandaged his eyes tight and they tied his hands behind him with leather thongs. When he complained they were biting into his wrists they loosened them a bit. They brought a wooden block and forced him to kneel. They waited for a signal. By now he could smell dust. With the wave of a green flag, the signal was given and the Imperial Astrologer, Hoseyn Efendi was executed.

But by now the dust and the clamour raised by the predicted Mongol horsemen had covered the octagonal tower.

Tremendous applause, such that the auditorium almost bursts .

As Saqr bin Omar is walking out with the crowd, people recognize him and make way. An American lady greets him. “Mr. Omar, we must have a sheesha together one day. What are you writing next?” Yes, sheesha seems a good idea, he answers. Writing? Easier to read than write. He guffaws at his own tepid joke. He curses himself for his hypocrisy. Sheesha indeed. Why can't they ask me to a glass of good whiskey, or rather a half bottle, he thinks.

The great man wouldn't have heard of him. The name ‘Saqr bin Omar' wouldn't ring a bell. He has noticed that the great man's mistress Shaaban was present in the hall. His wife wasn't. None of his concern. Morality is for petty writers. The big ones can sleep around and still go the next morning and meet the Mubaraks and the Assads, not forgetting Qadafi. What would they be offering a novelist, a Mahfouz or Pamuk? Turkish coffee? Surely not wine. And the conversation? ‘I read with great pleasure your trilogy, sir. Great experience. How ever did that plot come to you? “Black Book” ? You should have called it the “Green Book”, sir.' That would have come from Lockerbie Qadafi of course—fellow had to copy Mao. Wish he would get kicked out. Benghazi rather than Tripoli would do it, he thinks. His son has promised “rivers of blood.” A news channel has announced that he's flown to Venezuela. Allah alone knows the truth. Some of these chaps should be put in a laundromat and rolled around along with a poisonous detergent, he thinks.

Saqr bin Omar moves to the seedier part of the city—sheesha aplenty, some of it laced with opium; cheaper bars; hummus-and-salad eateries; kebabs smoking away on spits; garish neon lights buzzing away; litter on the sidewalks. He enters a bar, wades in among scruffy bearded people with pot bellies, loud laughter. A woman sitting alone at the table, high heels, western dress, slightly faded looks, but the remnants of beauty very much in evidence. Yes, that is her—Leila, the great man's wife. He sits at another table and flummoxes the barman when he orders a rare whiskey. People here holler for rum or a cheap brandy, but he doesn't want to stink when he walks up to her. He watches her twirl her glass around, and the wine bottle slowly empties. She is looking everywhere, at the cheap prints on the walls. One depicts crusaders surrendering to Saladin in chainmail, iron helmet and visor, their straight bladed swords on the ground. The crusaders are standing, their opponents on horseback.

He watches the pot-bellied barman walk up to Leila and say rather loudly, though politely, that he would not be able to serve her any more wine. She becomes tearful and argues, her voice rising in indignation. Barman tries to pacify her. Please lower your voice, madam, things to that effect. You think I can't pay, she screams, opening her purse to throw money at him. He refuses to touch it and some of it falls on the ground. When a waiter stoops to pick the bills the barman restrains him. Saqr bin Omar realizes that he is behaving with some dignity. She is not. Time to intervene.

He walks up to the table, introduces himself, tells her she has had enough, and orders a coffee for her. His voice is mild but authoritative, parent-to-child, and she obeys him unquestioningly. Why are you alone here in this seedy place, he asks?

“Alone? What a question! Bulging Belly, you don't seem to know a thing! Every kebab vendor and whore is aware I am bloody alone.”

For a moment he wonders whether he had done the right thing coming here. “Well I'll reframe my question. Why are you here at all?”

“You should re-frame yourself. You need a smaller belly, more hair on your balding head, and a better coat.”

He laughs. She is going to be unpleasant, like a wounded cat.

“Time does all this, you know, Bulge-Belly. Even you must have been good-looking once—or shall we say, passable. Look at you now. And look at me—a faded flower, my aunt called me the other day. Flower! I look more like cactus. Don't expect men to dance around cacti.”

“Your tongue is certainly sharp as cactus.” She laughs. “You asked me something just now—can't lay my hands on it.”

“Can't focus your mind on it, you mean.”

“You are a prig you know, grammarian, Professor, whoever you are. Metaphors seem to be beyond you. Yes, you asked me why I am here at all. Well, you know what, Big Belly? I walked out.”

Omar adds his two cents: “And when you walk out you are not particular about where you go.”

“If you have a place to go. I could go to my aunt, she of the faded flower quote. I seem to remember you. You write, don't you? Not as well as my man, not half as well, really, but you write. A plus factor, that; to be mediocre but still keep writing— ecrivant, the French call it—day after dreary day. Tenacity I appreciate. I heard you once. Don't you think that a remarkable feat of memory from a half-drunk woman?”

“Fully drunk.”

“You would not have said that if he was here.”

“Perhaps not. Small people remain small. Drunks have the luxury of becoming sober.”

“Interesting. But I am feeling sick.” Leila clutches her chest and starts walking towards the washroom. He signals to a maid who escorts her just in time before she can throw up on the floor. Her bead necklace clatters against the washbasin as she lowers her head to puke. Omar notices her appalled look as she stares into the mirror at herself, and doesn't like what she sees. Then she surprisingly giggles. She doesn't need support when she walks back to the table. He orders a salad for her, vine leaves, tomatoes, houmous, and of course coffee. He pays her bill, puts his arm around her and propels her to his car, where she slumps.

“Where do I drop you?” She doesn't answer. “I don't know where you stay, but I know your husband's house.” No answer again. He brings her a glass of water and she gets out of the car and splashes it on her face and even says shukran. “I am feeling better, thanks to you.” Then she adds, “I think that's a good idea.”

“What is?” he asks, clearly uneasy now.

“Leaving me where you said you would.”

She wouldn't take his name, he notices. What have I gotten myself into, he thinks. He gets behind the steering wheel and drives around the city. “Do you think you are ready to go there?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you in a fit condition?”

“Yes I am.”

“In a way, yes. Your speech is less slurred.” He drives along the river, turns after the Nile Hilton and reaches the tower where the great man stays. He parks the car where she directs him to. For the first time he looks at the tower, carefully trying to register the details, and finds it has eight sides. The octagonal tower of the great man's story, is it? he wonders. She has turned white.

“You okay?” She nods.

They walk up to the row of elevators and he asks, “Which floor?”

“Seventeenth.”

“Penthouse?”

“Semi.” The liftman salutes her and gives the stranger a smile. As they exit the lift and traverse the corridor, they can hear noise from the apartment. “There's a party on,” he ventures. She doesn't answer. He can see she is tense. The door is a few inches ajar—more guests are expected, obviously. They don't barge in and prefer to ring the bell. She could have walked in, he thinks.

Someone opens the door wide. “Come on in, what are you waiting for?” he asks, and then gapes as he sees her. Saqr bin Omar, small time writer with the protruding paunch, pushes past him, holding the hand of the great man's wife.

He lets go of her hand to wave a waiter aside as he slides a tray tinkling with wine glasses under her nose. He gets her an orange juice instead, looks around and takes a scotch for himself—neat. Some of the people around are known and rich. He even recognizes an over-the-hill belly dancer, recalls the faded flower bit and wants to move into a short rumination. But he spots a critic, someone who had even bothered to interview him once, but never made an effort to get the transcript published. They shake hands—the critic too seems to feel out of sorts. If you don't sport a Jaguar, you don't belong here.

He says to the critic, all this comes about from talent, God-given, and of course hard work. No one flukes their way into penthouses overlooking the Nile, with film stars for guests, not to mention belly dancers of past fame. The critic nods but keeps quiet.

A guest sidles up to Omar. He is from the corporate world, man by the name of Hashim. No greeting, no salaam alaikum, no Al Hamd-u-lillah. Why did you have to bring her? Didn't you know Shaaban would be here? She's not going to like it—and you know her temper. I don't, he says. The cheek! He expects me to know all about the mistress's tantrums. Next he'll expect me to know what lacquer she uses on her toenails. Instead he asks politely, where is she? In the toilet, damn it. And where is he? He's in the bedroom, changing. Why is she not in the bedroom with him, or he in the toilet with her, he almost wants to ask.

Takes him quite a while to change, does it? observes Omar, a bit insidiously. He is enjoying this. Hashim's temper is rising. “He lies down for a while after a reading. He relaxes. Didn't you know! The milkman knows! Vendors in the treet know that much.”

I am not a milkman, nor a street vendor, says Omar, quietly.

There are all types here, even a beautician from Abu Dhabi, blonde and about six feet tall. She is introduced to the drunk wife, Leila. “And what do you do love,” asks Leila simpering, “apart from scrubbing calluses from feet and dirt from nails?”

You could never know from her smile how venomous she intends to be. But the French lady is not put off. “I am into facial masks these days. You should see the dirhams people are willing to pay for one. Have just applied a face mask on Madame Shaaban.”

“Oh, is she here? And what have you put on her face? It does need a mask, if you ask me.”

“Seemple, a concoacsun—or shall I say decoacsun? Anglais is such a funny laanguage!—of honey, cream, yogurt, and the flesh of half an avocado. Her skeen will seemply glow!”

“So it's the mask that's keeping her in. I was told it was the loosies.”

Kebabs still on spits are coming in straight from the charcoal fires on the terrace. People are smoking away as if their lungs have no tomorrow. His eyes begin to smart. What is the difference between that seedy bar I just left, and this penthouse on the Nile, he wonders. His conscience doesn't have teeth but still it bites him. Is he making all these comparisons because he is envious? What could be more contemptible than envy, he reflects. Even writing badly could be preferable to jealousy, he thinks. Thank God, I envy only the great man's writing and not his beautiful mistress or the glittering penthouse and the wine.

The great man strolls in and is introduced to Saqr bin Omar. He shakes his hand warmly, saying: “I am glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Omar. I have read excerpts from your novel. You also wrote a piece on the Alexandrian library, didn't you?” No, he replied, that was another Omar. They stare at each other. The great man doesn't like being contradicted—he isn't used to it.

“But you'll agree that the Alexandrian library deserves to be written about—in fiction, I mean.”

“Even a factual account could bear repetition, sir. It would be so gripping,” says Omar.

“But don't you think a novel about the era could be as gripping?”

“If it is written by someone like you,” says Omar. The great man feels flattered. He is beginning to like this shabby old writer of the novel he hasn't read and whose title he has forgotten. But Omar is not going to let it go at that. Why can't I put in my knife, he thinks.

“But don't you think, sir, that whatever could be written about Alexandria poetically has already been written? I refer to Lawrence Durrell.”

The great man's face freezes. He's not used to controlling his emotions, that's something for second-raters. An American lady holding a champagne flute intervenes. “I am sorry, I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn't help hearing Lawrence Durrell mentioned. He was a darling wasn't he? That Quartet of his—simply mind-blowing isn't it?” she simpers. “And what characters—Justine, Melissa, and the way he begins a novel in landscape tones. He paints rather than writes about the Alexandrian landscape…”

She closes her eyes in ecstasy and brings her hand to her heart, spilling champagne on her shimmering dress. The great man takes a serviette from a waiter and tries drying her dress, brushing her chest with his hand. Serves her right, he thinks, not of her stained dress, but his hand slurring over her breasts. He has controlled himself. He'd been about to declare that Lawrence fellow didn't know a thing about Egypt, didn't know his left ball from his right kneecap, if you ask me, and things to that effect, when he had noticed the drink spilling over her dress. An outburst would have been suicidal, he reflects. He disengages from her. He notices Omar again and then taps his head. “Ah I remember. I read one of your short stories—the one about Neferteri getting lost in a pyramid, wasn't it?”

“Nefertiti it was and she gets lost in Tel Al Amarna. But you have a sharp memory, sir, to remember something by me.”

“I remember it for its style—floridly fragrant, if I may say so.”

“You have a taste for alliteration, I notice, more suited for poets. Prose is supposed to be drab, sir, isn't it? No matter who writes it.”

So this second-rate scribbler has handed me a putdown, in my house, drinking my whiskey! the great man reflects. Who invited this bastard? He must enquire. Doesn't look the type who'd gate-crash—lacks the chutzpah. One can't kick him out, would cause a scandal and ruin his evening. Suppose the press got hold of it? The press had got him by the balls of late, all the wrong bloody things they had printed: wife walks out, mistress walks in, was one headline, with his name unmentioned so he couldn't even file for damages, while the whole world knew he was the target; and not a frigging word about his latest book!

Then he spots Leila. Mother of God, how did she land here? This is going to be one hell of an evening! But he puts on a smile and proceeds to her chair sedately. “How nice to see you, Leila.” He notices her discomfiture, the look funny and disoriented, pupils dilated.

“I just dropped by. Hope you don't mind.”

“This has been your house, and is. But you are not looking too good. You need some rest.” He moves back and whispers, “How did she get in?”

The corporate honcho, Hashim, again edges up to Omar to say, “You better take her back. If Shaaban comes in now there'll be hell to pay.”

That very moment Shaaban steps in, looking radiant, till she sees Leila and puts on another facial mask—this time made from the flesh of guavas and rosewater, shall we say—and greets her effusively. “Fancy you being here, Leila darling, what a pleasure.”

“Thanks, Shaaban” replies the ex-wife. Then she sniffs. “But you smell of avocado, dear!”

Shaaban looks daggers at the French beautician, Charlene. “Try pears next time,” adds the ex-wife helpfully. “At the moment your face looks as if it's just been barbecued.”

“It's better than looking like a withered petal of a bad rose, honey.”

Hashim again moves towards Omar. “There's going to be one heck of a scene here. You don't know these women. Get Leila out!”

Now Omar can't be bothered. “It's no part of my duties to escort wives or mistresses. Let others handle this.”

Hashim looks stunned as Omar, his coat shabby and his belly protruding, walks out.