“Possibly,” she responded as her head inclined to the right and a lock of hair, dyed dark brown, peeked out boldly from beneath her gray scarf.
“Possibly, but not all experiments are the same. Even in your narrative experiments, you certainly must have had successful experiments and others that were less so. Do you agree with me?”
I undoubtedly agreed with her. There certainly were novels I wished I hadn’t written, especially when I was first starting out and was stingy with my narration. I would pursue the rhythm of the sentences breathlessly. I didn’t exploit some characters well; others I exploited in an exaggerated way, leaving them anemic. I had been candid in my reading of my personal experiments and greeted whatever was worth greeting in them wholeheartedly and blamed harshly whatever was blameworthy. I had striven industriously for many years to track down the maladies and defects in my writing’s corpus so I could treat them. Perhaps I have succeeded at that; perhaps I have failed. In any case, experimentation ultimately remains the author’s child, to be adopted willingly or not.
“Yes, I agree with you, but why are you asking these strange questions?”
I realized as I contemplated her more and recalled my meetings with her that I had never written about a character like this and that there would be no harm in my writing about such a person – I mean a woman who is awed by her own ideas and focuses only on them, who can exploit ugliness and transform it into beauty. Thus she sees the tortured moans of people harmed by her as disturbing her peace of mind, whereas her own moan is like a colored light that other people should be dazzled by and follow. Even cruel Salma, the police officer who made innovations in sexual torture and about whom I wrote in one of my novels – I have mentioned that I prolonged her life in the last two pages to allow her a chance to apologize to her numerous victims before she died – was, in the final analysis, a woman convinced that she was in a field of work that ended when the work day did. She would return home, embrace her husband, kiss her child, and light the stove to cook dinner. Najma was totally different; Najma was a one of a kind character. I swear that she had never swept a dusty courtyard, had never washed a dirty dish, and had never even turned off an alarm clock when she woke up. Now she aspired – in a frivolous manner – to assume the status of mother while lacking all the aptitudes.
But what man would grant her this honor?
I sensed genuine distress when I considered that she might want to marry me personally. If not, what was the point of these changes that she had adopted when meeting me? Why was she asking me about marriage at precisely this moment? I had known her for quite some time and she had never asked such questions before.
I forced myself to shake off my despair while I waited to hear what she would say.
“In short . . .” Najma replied as many burdens vanished from her face to be replaced by new gentle attractions. Two locks of her brown hair were now in clear view, and her breathing seemed more regular. A decorative fish tank stood on a shelf within my field of view, and it seemed to me that a sparkling fish inside it was swimming with a vanity quite unlike that of the other fish.
“In short, after profound thought and after sifting through all the men I know, whether or not they have proposed to marry me, I have chosen you to be my husband and grant me motherhood. It wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t claim that I would make you happy or compensate you for your former life, but I have an intense need to become a mother.”
I was not astonished, nor should I have been; this was the type of conduct that fit exactly the character I knew. Even if Najma hadn’t said that, I would have invented it myself and attributed it to her character, without any hesitation or sense that I was violating a woman’s rights.
This was the first time I had heard of a girl who wanted to marry in order to be fertilized. She would no doubt be the last, unless I was unlucky enough to meet other Najmas who carried the same germ.
When I inevitably first became acquainted with women and met a woman whom I loved and who loved me, a woman I married (even though we later quarreled), I met a female who bore the transparent inheritance of females. She would have felt it inappropriate to employ even her glances to express a desire. Now, feeling indisposed, I was confronted by a weird mannequin, but I would escape from her clutches.
I would not marry a girl who had devised for the late petition writer painful roads to follow till he died. I actually wouldn’t even contemplate marrying her.
The Juwana Café had begun to fill with young guys with long hair, ripped jeans, and shirts with pictures of the wrestler John Cena on them. They turned off the lights without permission or justification and lit colored candles on all the tables, even the table where I sat with Najma. I didn’t grasp the point of this until the coffeehouse was rocked by music that shattered my head and nerves. I decided that I had to terminate our meeting and terminate Najma, knowing she wouldn’t consider this a defeat and would endeavor to transform our abortive meeting into a flimsy victory that only she would be able to brag about.
– 11 –
During the two weeks after Najma upset me in the Juwana Café, I realized, for the first time in seven years, that I actually needed a woman, although definitely not Najma – because I considered her a scary nightmare, and that was the end of that – but some other woman I might seek once my life, which had been total chaos ever since Nishan appeared to throw that damn book at me and to cling to my neck, calmed down.
Without knowing it, Najma had drawn my attention to Umm Salama, the widow who attempted to straighten me out and tidy up my house, preparing food for me twice a week. She wasn’t really an excellent or a halfway proficient worker, and even her cooking wasn’t great or healthy. Her washing and ironing of my clothes were the worst I had experienced, and she always seemed in a rush. She complained about her adolescent sons and their costly dreams whenever she found me in the living room or knocked on the door of my bedroom to ask me something.
Najma had also alerted me to my emotional need for at least a minimal love interest suitable for a heart the age of mine. I hadn’t smelled fragrant incense from an ornamental brazier for ages. I hadn’t glimpsed a ribbed perfume flask or one shaped like a rose or a serpent – from Coco Chanel, Nina Ricci, or Yves St Laurent – leap from its repose on the dressing-table to a live body I could touch. I hadn’t seen new curtains at a window, an elegant comb, a hairdryer, or any other accessory related to beauty or enjoyment. I had been navigating a narrow corridor from uninterrupted dullness to uninterrupted dullness, from creative isolation to limited relaxation to seclusion again. I would write those erroneous novels that did not react against or link to an experience that might be more enriching if my life were better.
I shall no doubt curse Najma for making me notice the death I have been dying while assuming it was a life. I will write about her one day with cramps more severe than those that killed the wretched petition writer Hamid Tulumba.
Suddenly Linda the Shadow came to mind. Actually she herself did not come to mind; rather, it was the brilliant portrait I had worked hard to draw of her, guided by her breathy voice, as delicate as a whisper, and the warm compassion I felt surging from my phone whenever I spoke with her. I summoned the full portrait to my mind and began to regard it with intoxication.
Why shouldn’t I aspire to marry Linda the Shadow?
That might prove sheer insanity. I had never seen her and did not know the shape of her face or the look of her eyes. Was she as splendid as I had portrayed her or was she just a girl who read a lot and lacked any other traits that would justify a romantic adventure? Another insane aspect of this project was that I was at least twenty-seven years older, but that was definitely not a problem.
The girl who did not like face-to-face meetings, who did not appear anywhere that curiosity, cameras, or eyes were active, would perhaps prove an astonishing prize for a man so accustomed to confrontations that he could train a butterfly to stand still to confront the light.
Why not really? Lind
a the Shadow loved my writing and her opinions delighted me. Perhaps she loved me too and was waiting for me. I didn’t think the Shadow would reject having a writer for a son-in-law, since he himself was one.
I wished to keep this beautiful thought in my mind for the longest time possible, but it escaped, although I knew it would return. I went on Najma’s Facebook page to see what she had written since I fled from her brash advances in Juwana Café. As expected, I discovered that she had reworked the defeat and transformed it into a victory. She had posted a picture that clearly displayed her new femininity and was extremely inflammatory. Beneath the photo she had written: “Even if you brought the moon as my dowry, I would ask you for another moon that you created just for me. Then I would annul the marriage.” There were as usual a thousand “likes”, including mine, which I deliberately added, and a hundred comments. The most remarkable response came from Fattah, a poet known for his extreme generosity in examining web pages run by women and for posting hungry comments on each page. He had written: “Yes, Najma, but I actually possess three moons in my heart and will be happy to present them to you. Then I’ll go celebrate the annulment with my friends.”
With reference to the riddle that was Nishan, I can say I tried to forget it daily but never did, because Dr Shakir informed me one day, in an urgent exchange, that I needed to meet with him immediately. I thought the man had succumbed and returned to the state of angry stupor once more and committed countless offenses. The situation was quite different, however. When I met the elegant psychiatrist in his office, he told me what was troubling him. During his stay at the hospital, Nishan had met – either in his room or when he roamed in the courtyard and garden – many fellow patients who had recovered or were on the road to recovery. He had established a strong relationship with Tuba, a reclusive football player who was trying to train birds to play ball; Sihli, who was a former ambassador with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and who had been afflicted with schizophrenia when he was appointed ambassador to Burkina Faso; Abd al-Azim Tataqawi, who had spent forty years in the College of Medicine but hadn’t graduated yet; Sallah Aji, who called himself “Bespoke” and who was once a singer of some renown; and other patients who were all schizophrenics or manic-depressives whose conditions had improved to varying degrees. Nishan had goaded them to abandon their former worlds and to share with him his beautiful world in Wadi al-Hikma as soon as they were discharged from this burrow. They seemed convinced and responsive enough to his call that one now refused to meet his family when they visited the hospital, and another told his family candidly that he wasn’t related to them.
Seen from my point of view, the situation was phenomenal, because none of those well-to-do patients being treated in this private hospital could survive for even an hour in Wadi al-Hikma, even if they had no psychiatric condition.
I laughed profoundly, but Dr Shakir was not amused. He plunged into a headstrong discussion of the puzzle of schizophrenia, which remains a chronic condition to the end, leaving those afflicted with split personalities. The injections and pills that are prescribed as treatment are actually merely tranquilizers and do not effect a complete cure. He told me about the great danger that would loom over the residents of Wadi al-Hikma if it became a colony for mental patients, even if only for a day, before those patients were rounded up and returned to the hospital.
I did not join him in the gloom that saturated his phrases and asked him to discharge Nishan from the hospital if that was appropriate, because I wanted him for another matter. I would take him some place where all his glands could be checked to learn his chances of dying the way he did at the end of Hunger’s Hopes. At that moment, however, we received a big surprise. An alarmed nurse came to inform the director that Nishan Hamza could not be found in the hospital. No one knew how this patient had fled or where he had gone.
The psychiatrist, who had grown tense, asked him, “Did any other patient flee with him?”
“No, all the other patients are accounted for,” the nurse replied. Then he departed. I was left to contemplate, for some minutes, damnable possibilities that virtually leapt before me.
The worst eventuality would be for Nishan to consider me an enemy and try to do away with me. I realized that what the doctor had said about the possibility that schizophrenics would remain ill throughout their lives was true – if not, why would a man who had recovered, or nearly so, flee from what was a dream refuge, compared with his shabby, dirty, corrugated-metal hovel in Wadi al-Hikma?
I wanted to ask if he had received a telephone call from a woman, because an imaginary image of a woman was dancing in my mind: Ranim, who had emigrated and who had once been Yaqutah, might have returned from abroad suddenly in order to live out with us the ending of Hunger’s Hopes. I actually did ask, but no one knew. The doctor and I staggered through the hospital, questioning the nurses in the wards, the guards at the entries, and some of the patients who might shed some light on the matter. No one knew anything. Nishan had suddenly evaporated from a ward that not even a fly could enter without a permit. He may also have vanished while strolling in the hospital’s garden, although patients were also under a guard’s supervision during those hours.
I suddenly sensed that I needed my brother, Muzaffar. I wanted him to disrupt my isolation and my fear of solitude, which I knew would be haunted by various nightmares in the coming nights. I pulled out my phone and spoke to him. He seemed anxious and said he would come right away, taking the first plane he could book a seat on.
– 12 –
On that unforgettable evening, my brother, Muzaffar, and I were unexpected visitors to the home of the venerable playwright Abd al-Qawi the Shadow. The weather had started to moderate somewhat, and splendid breezes wafted past.
My brother had prolonged his unscheduled holiday a little for my sake. He was casually dressed in ordinary jeans and a floral-pattern shirt, but I was very elegant in a black suit, a blue silk shirt, and a dark red necktie, which I had purchased during one of my trips to Europe.
I had come to commit the insane act that I had sworn to carry out after sleepless nights and obsessive thoughts that were as far as possible from Nishan Hamza and instead were racing down another path. I was going to ask for the hand in marriage of Linda the Shadow, feeling confident that the portrait I had created of her could not lie.
The Shadow was reclining on his wooden bed with rope netting in the courtyard of his house, according to a habit unlikely to change, given his age. A stippled glass containing milk stood before him, the medium-size book he had been reading sat in his hands, and metal-rimmed reading glasses were perched on his face.
I suddenly saw Dr Sabir Hazaz, the doctor of reflexology, who was carrying a spiffy black leather bag, emerge from inside the house where Linda doubtless was with her elderly mother and the girl who had slim breasts and curly hair and who might be a relative or merely a servant – I didn’t know which. I knew that the Shadow’s only son, Luqman, had migrated to America fourteen years earlier and came back occasionally for a limited number of days, during which he wore embroidered shirts and trousers torn at the knees as he sauntered down the streets and through the markets in search of depressing local franchises of “Kentucky Chicken,” McDonald’s, and “Pizza King,” while he cursed the authorities, backwardness, and beggars stationed in the streets. Then he would return to America to complete his hegira. The Shadow had told me once how proud he was of his son, whose name had now evolved into Loco the Shadow or Loco with a Shadow. He was a professional rap artist in a group called The Gliders, which performed in public concerts and political campaigns and had more fans than our country had inhabitants. I actually hadn’t heard of this group and knew nothing about the culture of rap music, but didn’t debate this and shared the father’s delight with good conscience.
Dr Hazaz didn’t glance our way and did not even appear to see us. He headed to the door with energetic strides unusual for a man his age. Now I remembered seeing a red Hummer near the place; I hadn
’t, however, linked it to the reflexologist and definitely hadn’t expected to find him here. But I refused to allow myself to be distracted by curiosity about his presence in the Shadow’s house, especially when I had a portrait with missing features that I was attempting to complete and was on a romantic mission of supreme importance that could easily end well or badly.
The past few days, during an exhausting trip searching for Nishan Hamza – whom the long arm of the law was also seeking now that al-Nakhil Psychiatric Hospital had lodged a complaint, unnecessarily I thought – I had gone with my brother, Muzaffar, to Wadi al-Hikma, where the tale’s ember had ignited and where it had not yet died. Joseph Ifranji, who actually had changed his name to Beauty Spot Ifranji, didn’t accompany us, because he had been caught in an unlicensed bar and was currently being tortured in a factional militia’s camp and threatened with the disquieting possibility of deportation to South Sudan.
The broker at Nu‘man Realty had told me this after Ifranji stopped sending me text messages. He said he hadn’t mentioned my name to the authorities as the person who had rented the dwelling where Ifranji had lived to spare me any unnecessary anxiety. I thanked him enthusiastically and gave him back his house. I felt sorry for Joseph, who was helping me plot out future novels, which I could only imagine while he was gone. Perhaps when I roused myself from my anxiety and crises I would try to free him from that ordeal, if I found he was still in the country.
Imam Hajj al-Bayt wasn’t present in Wadi al-Hikma this time and actually wasn’t to be found in the entire country. Dozens of the people among those congregated around torn scraps of cloth – selling, buying, and haggling but not selling or buying – volunteered that Hajj al-Bayt had finally hit upon the chance of a lifetime and traveled to work as a muezzin in a remote village in the Sultanate of Oman. One of his relatives worked as a teacher in the village and was able to send him a work permit, a snappy outfit, and even a plane ticket on Fly Dubai, a new airline. His children would soon join him there.
Telepathy Page 9
