The Mirage

by Naguib Mahfouz

  Her words stung me like a whip, and I burst into sobs. Then for days I was so ashamed and humiliated, I avoided looking her in the eye.

  10

  A miracle—or so my grandfather described it—took place when at last I passed my end-of-year examination. Consequently, I was promoted to the second grade after spending two years in the first.

  When my grandfather looked at the report card he said to me playfully, “If I were still in the army, I’d bring you the artillerymen’s band and have them give you a twenty-four-cannon salute in celebration of your success!”

  But although my grandfather hadn’t been able to give me a twenty-four-cannon salute, he managed—with the best of intentions—to drop a bomb on my life that nearly did me in. It so happened that one day he was visited by a fifty-year-old retired officer who had worked under his command in Sudan. After the man left, my grandfather came to join us on the balcony and began looking searchingly into our faces. He said nothing, but there was a look of joy and satisfaction on his face.

  Then, addressing my mother in a jolly tone, he said, “Follow me, Miss Zouzou. I’d like to have a word with you alone!”

  I burst out laughing at this charming term of affection. As for my mother, she followed him to his bedroom while I entertained hopes of pleasant things to come. My mother disappeared for an hour, then returned to me, and as soon as I saw her, I hailed her, saying, “Welcome, Miss Zouzou!”

  Then I burst out laughing again. Contrary to my expectations, however, she just smiled wanly, then sat down on her chair looking grave-faced and pensive. Feeling concerned, I leaned toward her and asked her what the matter was.

  “Nothing,” she replied tersely. “Just trivial things that are no concern of yours.”

  Her evasiveness only fanned the flames of my curiosity, so I pressed her to tell me what was on her mind. She sighed irritably, begging me to be quiet. So we sat for a long time without saying a word, then halfheartedly exchanged our usual conversation. When we were called to dinner, I only ate a few bites. As we got ready for bed, she stood for a long time in front of the mirror. Then she lay down beside me, placed her hand on my head and recited some short suras from the Qur’an the way she usually did until my eyelids grew heavy with sleep. During the latter part of the night, I woke up to the sound of what seemed to be whispers. When I listened closely, I realized that my mother was muttering, and I assumed she was dreaming. So I called to her until she woke up, and we remained wakeful till daybreak.

  The following day, my grandfather was visited by the same retired officer, and the events of the day before were repeated: he called my mother to his room, and the two of them remained alone for around an hour. When they came out to the balcony together, my mother was clinging to his arm and crying frantically, “No! No! It can never be! And I don’t want him to know a thing!”

  However, he seemed to take no notice. Then, turning to me, he said firmly, “I’m waiting for you in my room.”

  My mother began begging and pleading with him, but he just marched back to his room with me close on his heels, while my mother proceeded to our bedroom, indignant and irate. My grandfather sat down on his big, comfortable chair and instructed me to come near. I went to him feeling fearful and overwhelmed.

  Placing his lean hand on my shoulder and looking at me searchingly, he said, “Kamil, I want to speak with you about something very important. You’re still young, of that there’s no doubt. Even so, there are boys your age who take on men’s responsibilities. I want you to understand me well. Do you promise me that?”

  “I promise you, Grandpa,” I replied mechanically.

  He smiled at me kindly, then said, “The matter is that a friend of mine who’s an upright, wealthy man wants to marry your mother. I’m in agreement with his proposal, since I want your mother to be happy. After all, a woman needs a man to take care of her. I’m over sixty now and I’m afraid I might die before you’ve taken on your duties as a man, in which case she won’t have anyone to depend on.”

  He went on about the matter in great detail, but my mind grew weary and shut down, and before long I couldn’t make any sense out of what he was saying.

  As for the phrase, “marry your mother,” it buzzed cacophonously in my ears and exploded in my brain. My eyes wide with astonishment, dismay, and revulsion, I wondered: Does my grandfather really mean what he’s saying? It was true that my mother had told me the story of her marriage. But that was just a story, and ancient history. I’d never imagined it to be something that had really happened. Then I remembered the ousted servant girl and my heart sank.

  “My mother would never get married!” I gasped. “Don’t you understand what marriage is?”

  Laughing in spite of himself, the elderly man said with a smile, “Marriage is a way of life that God has established, and God prefers people who are married over people who aren’t. I married your grandmother, your mother was married in the past, and you’ll get married some day too. Listen to me, Kamil. I want you to go to your mother and tell her that you want her to get married just as I do, and that whatever makes her happy will make you even happier. You have to agree to what will bring her happiness. She’s suffered enough already for all of you.”

  I looked at my grandfather the way a felled animal looks at its captor, and my limbs started to tremble with agitation. Then I asked him in a trembling voice, “Do you want that man to take her?”

  He smiled and said to me, “Yes. But I want him to take her so as to take care of her and make her happy.”

  “And me?” I asked petulantly.

  Ever so gently he replied, “If you wish, you can go with her, or you’d be welcome to stay here with me.”

  Biting my lip fiercely to keep back the tears, I suddenly retreated and fled. I ran out of the room, ignoring his pleas to come back, and rushed to our bedroom, where my mother sat red-eyed from weeping. She opened her arms to me and I flung myself into her embrace, still trembling with emotion.

  “Don’t believe it,” she said. “I mean, don’t believe that anything he told you will happen. Don’t cry and don’t be sad. Ahhh … what torment!”

  Gaping at her in shock and reproach, I shouted, “Didn’t you tell me that this was shameful and forbidden?”

  She squeezed me affectionately, fighting back a smile. Then she said, “Perhaps your grandfather told you that he wanted me to marry. However, he surely didn’t say that I’d agreed to it myself. The fact is that I rejected the idea from the very start, and without the least hesitation. I would have preferred that you not know anything about it. And when he offered me some time to think about it, I said.…”

  Interrupting her heatedly, I said, “But what he wants for you is something that’s disgraceful and forbidden!”

  She said nothing at first, but just sat gazing at me, looking startled and dismayed.

  Then, disregarding my objection, she continued, “I told him it was no use giving me time to think it over, since I wasn’t willing to consider it. And I said that for your sake. For your sake alone. So, don’t you be sad or angry. And don’t think bad things about your mother.”

  Her words had brought me out of the darkness of despair. Even so, I went on repeating my objection until, after some hesitation, she said, “I never said that marriage was something evil or forbidden. On the contrary, it’s an honorable relationship that God blesses. What I condemned were other things.”

  My tongue was tied with shame and timidity. Then, patting me consolingly on the cheek, she said with a tinge of reproach in her voice, “What an ungrateful child you are! Don’t you think this sacrifice of mine deserves a word of thanks? Do you think you’ll remember this in the future? Of course not! On the contrary, you’ll get married yourself someday and leave me all alone!”

  With an angry grimace I cried, “I’ll never leave you as long as I live!”

  She reached out and stroked my hair with a smile, though her lovely eyes betrayed solemnity.

  11

  M
y school life proceeded with such slowness and tedium it was almost cause for despair. By the time I reached third grade I was fourteen years old. My grandfather used to say to me in exasperation, “When are you ever going to apply yourself to your studies? When will you ever realize your duty? Don’t you see that if you keep on at this rate, you’ll be retirement age by the time you finish!”

  My mother was pained no end by this bitter sarcasm, and she would always ask him not to throw it in my face for fear that it might discourage me and make me even duller.

  Or she’d say to him, “Intelligence is from God, and his good character is more than enough to make up for what he lacks. You couldn’t find anyone more bashful or better mannered!”

  It then happened that my life underwent a critical development. I don’t recall when or how it began, and I fear that imagination may have distorted my memory of some aspects of it. A strange sort of restlessness began to course through body and soul. It flowed through my limbs as a kind of disquiet and turmoil, and when I was alone I was accosted by new sorts of dreams. When I was at school, I would be absented from my surroundings by a tendency to daydream that would focus all my sensations on myself. As the carriage took me home from school, I would gaze up at the heaven’s horizons, wishing I could soar up among its mysterious-looking blue particles. Enveloped in melancholy and gloom, I would console myself by crying my heart out. I’ll never forget the vague longings, the unnamed fears, the hushed groans, and the sprouting hairs. Lord! I thought: I’m a creature that’s bringing forth some bizarre, terrifying life force whose demons make sport of me day and night, whether I’m waking or dreaming.

  I discovered on my own—under the pressure of this life force—that fiendish boyhood pastime. No one lured me into it, since I was without friends or companions. Rather, I discovered it the way it must have been discovered for the first time in the life of humanity. I received it with wonder and delight, and in it I found a fulfillment the likes of which I found nowhere else. Finding in it a panacea for my weird loneliness, I gave myself over to it to the point of addiction, while my imagination selected womanly images with which to adorn my imaginary table of love.

  The strange thing is that in its ardor, my imagination never went beyond the realm of the servant women in Manyal who went about laden with vegetables and fuul. Nor was this merely a passing phenomenon. Rather, it was a hidden secret, or rather, a hidden malady, as though I’d been destined to love unattractiveness and squalor. If I saw a bright, lovely face that emanated light and beauty, I would be filled with admiration, but my animal instincts would grow cold. If, on the other hand, I was confronted with a robust but homely face, it would arouse me and take utter possession of me, and thenceforth I would include it within my store of fuel for solitude’s dreams and amusement. I went to excess as one does when ignorant of consequences, and in that consummate ignorance of mine, I imagined that no one but I was familiar with such a practice. Then one day when I was in the school’s courtyard, I heard some of the students accusing each other of it in the most shameless manner. Terribly upset, I was seized by an unbearable chagrin. From that moment on, torment was my constant companion, and my erstwhile placid waters were roiled by a troubled conscience. That didn’t keep me from persevering in the habit, however. Rather, I would spend my solitude in wild, but short-lived sensual delight followed by lingering misery.

  Those monotonous days of ours would be brightened every now and then by visits from families who were either neighbors or relatives. These would include married women and girls of marriageable age, and on occasion one of the women might lightheartedly introduce her daughter, saying, “Here’s Kamil’s bride!”

  My mother would receive such banter with a notable lack of enthusiasm that was lost neither on the woman addressing her, nor on me. Consequently, I felt increasingly timid, estranged, and fearful, especially toward women. Add to this the fact that once the lady visitors had departed, my mother would never fail to criticize their scandalous, decadent remarks. Meanwhile, I went on with my forlorn, friendless life, feeling restive under its constant pressure, yet doing nothing to change it. I would seize upon its covert pleasures in a state of disquiet and despair, then have nothing to show for them but a bitter sense of guilt. Trapped in an isolation that distanced me from life’s other spheres, I wondered in anguish how I would ever break free. At the same time, I was vaguely aware that there was a wider world beyond my narrow horizon. I would overhear snatches of other students’ conversations about politics, the cinema, sports, and girls as though I were listening to inhabitants of some other planet. How I wished I had a share of their expressiveness and joie de vivre. How I wished I could penetrate the solid, thick wall that barred me from their world. I would gaze at them in dejection, like a prisoner looking out through the bars of his cell at those who enjoy their freedom. Yet not once did I try to break out of my prison. After all, I wasn’t unaware of the cruelty and humiliation that awaited me in the world of freedom. Indeed, even when I was safely behind bars, as it were, I was vulnerable to a certain degree of harassment, mockery, and aggression. I said to myself: This is my prison, so let me be content with it. Here was where I found my pleasure and my pain, and here was where I found safety from fear. It was a prison with an open door, but there was no way to cross its threshold. The only release I found, I found in dreams. As I sat in class, I’d be absent from everything around me while my imagination worked miracles: warring, slaying, and vanquishing, mounting the backs of steeds, flying airplanes, storming fortresses, whisking beautiful women away, and inflicting the most grisly, humiliating punishments on the other students. There would even be times when such daydreams would betray themselves in the movements of my head and contortions in my face, while reflections of those phantoms would cause my head to rise smugly, crease my brow in a merciless glare, or evoke a menacing wave of my hand.

  My dreams weren’t confined to the realm of humanity, but ascended to the realm of the Creator as well. Primal and firmly rooted, my faith filled my heart and spirit with the love and fear of God. I’d begun performing the rites of my religion from an early age in imitation of my mother. Given the unaccustomed sense of guilt produced by my secret pleasures, my religious sensibilities intensified, and along with my faith I experienced a powerful longing for God and His mercy. Never once would I finish a prayer without lifting my palms heavenward and seeking God’s forgiveness. My longings knew no bounds and were transformed into an aspiration to know God. I wished with all my heart that God had made it possible for His servants to see Him, beholding the ubiquitous divine majesty that surrounds all things.

  One day I asked my mother, “Where is God?”

  “He’s everywhere,” she replied in astonishment.

  Casting her an uncertain look, I asked fearfully, “In this room?”

  “Of course!” she rejoined in a tone of incredulity. “Now ask His forgiveness for that question of yours!”

  So I asked His forgiveness from the bottom of my heart. Bewildered and fearful, I looked about me. Then I remembered with a pained heart the fact that I would indulge in sin under His watchful eye. The thought caused me intense suffering and I was filled with remorse. Even so, I continued helplessly in its grip.

  The ongoing struggle was so grueling, I began thinking seriously of committing suicide. I was seventeen years old at the time, and I was preparing for the primary school final examination for the third time after having failed it two years in a row. I was gripped with panic and despair, both of which were even more overwhelming when I thought of the oral examination. I had no speaking ability, nor did I have the heart to face the examiner. During the previous year’s test, the English examiner had asked me about the landmarks I’d visited in Cairo. Whenever he asked me about one of the city’s archeological sites or attractions, I would reply that I wasn’t familiar with it. Thinking that I was evading his questions, he failed me. Fear overcame me, ushering me into the terrifying chambers of desolation. For the first time ever, I
found myself taking a kind of bird’s-eye view of life. Tracing its overall trajectory from beginning to end, I no longer saw anything but the start and the finish while disregarding everything in between. Birth and death: this was the sum of life. Birth had passed; nothing was left but death. I’m going to die, I thought, and everything will end as though it had never been. So why go through all this suffering? Why should I have to endure fear, distress, loneliness, exhausting effort, and examinations? My head was swarming with distressing memories from the life I was living: a test that was too much for me to handle followed by failure and bitter ridicule, deprivation of the pleasures in life that other students enjoyed, and being called dumb and disagreeable. One day a student standing near the door to the school mosque saw me coming. He cupped his hand over his ear as though he were going to utter the call to prayer, then in a sing-song voice he shouted in my face, “Hey, disagreeable!” against a background of raucous laughter. I remember how a certain teacher had wanted to test our general knowledge one day. When it was my turn and I stood there in a daze, not answering any of his questions, he asked me what the name of the prime minister was. I didn’t say a word. So he bellowed at me, “Where do you live? In Timbuktu?” There were innumerable opportunities to go on strike, but during those days, I’d never taken part in a single demonstration. One day the entire school declared a strike and every single one of the students went out on a demonstration—every one of them but me, that is. I stayed behind in the schoolyard, flustered and afraid on account of my being one of the oldest students. I was seen by a teacher who was known at that time for his nationalist views. When he saw me, he rebuked me sternly, saying, “Why did you break with the consensus? Isn’t this your country, too?” As a consequence, I was torn between the suffering caused by the teacher’s rebuke and the instructions I received every morning from my mother and which she adjured me to follow without question.