The Mirage

by Naguib Mahfouz

  When we went to bed that night, I was tempted to try again, but I hesitated. In fact, I hesitated for so long that fear got the better of me and I gave up on the idea. As much as I loved her, I’d begun to fear her body. As I pondered my life in the silence and darkness of the night, it seemed strange and disjointed, and the thought left me in such anguish that the only outlet I could find was tears. So I had a long cry.

  44

  Then it occurred to me to consult a doctor. The thought came unexpectedly. In fact, it may have been mere coincidence. I hadn’t considered consulting a doctor before due to my exceeding shyness on one hand, and on the other, my belief that a doctor wouldn’t be able to treat a condition like mine. However, one day as I was on my way to the ministry, my eye fell upon a large sign fixed to a balcony on Qasr al-Aini Street. The words “Dr. Amin Rida, Specialist in Reproductive Disorders, University of Dublin” were written on it in large script. I hadn’t seen the sign before, and suddenly I had the urge to consult a physician. Even so, I didn’t succumb to the idea without hesitation. The thought aroused my shame and fear, which nearly convinced me to change my mind. But this time, my longing for deliverance was more powerful than my shame, and I made up my mind to go that evening.

  When I arrived at the clinic, the doctor was busy examining a patient, so I sat down to wait. The waiting room was empty, which was a tremendous relief to me, though it caused me to think less highly of the doctor. I wasn’t kept waiting long, and a few minutes later I was invited into the examination room, which was impressive and pleasing to the eye: fully equipped, and fitted out with instruments so awesome that my confidence in the doctor was restored. He was sitting directly to the right of the entrance at a large desk covered with books and notebooks. A young man who couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, he was tall and slender with kinky hair, a dark complexion, delicate but distinct features, and intense eyes that gleamed from behind an elegant pair of spectacles. One noticeable thing about him was a bushy, coal-black mustache that covered his mouth and lent him a dignified appearance that caused him to look more mature than his years. I greeted him, and he returned my greeting rather tersely. As he did so, he shot me a questioning glance that struck me as condescending and arrogant. He seemed to possess a self-confidence that bordered on conceit, and I didn’t like him. Overall, his appearance was a disappointment to me, since I’d expected to find a distinguished-looking elderly man with a friendly smile on his face, like a certain doctor my mother had once taken me to many years earlier. Consequently, I felt offended, and wished I hadn’t led myself into this trap.

  “Have a seat,” he said calmly.

  I complied with his request, eyeing him apprehensively. He began looking at me as though he were waiting for me to speak first. However, my thoughts were scattered and my throat was dry, so I sat there without saying a word.

  “Yes?” he said inquiringly.

  I mustered the strength to speak, but all I said was, “I’ve come for an examination.”

  “What exactly are you suffering from?” he asked, sounding a bit puzzled.

  It was only after a prolonged agony that I managed to say, “I’m a married man.…”

  Then I stopped. Or, rather, my tongue was tied. However, I found my silence burdensome, and since the doctor’s intense eyes were urging me to speak, I confessed everything. At first the words came out confused and faltering. Then, encouraged by the earnest, staid expression on his face, I started pouring out my story without a break. I felt I’d cast a heavy burden off my shoulders, and as though henceforth, he was the one responsible for my recovery from the malady that had been afflicting me.

  “How long have you been married?” he asked me.

  “About a month and a half,” I replied.

  “And when did you start suffering this condition?”

  “From the first night,” I said bitterly.

  “Did you suffer this same condition before you married?”

  “I hadn’t had any previous experiences with women.”

  Then he asked me about “the other.” I hesitated momentarily, then answered him honestly. He asked me about some details, and again, I gave him a frank reply. Nor did I conceal from him the frightening excess to which I’d gone in my secret habit.

  “Have you engaged in your habit since marrying?”

  I was impressed with him for asking this particular question, which I saw as evidence of a special perceptiveness.

  “Yes, I have,” I said.

  “So,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s as if your response only changes when you’re with your wife.”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling bewildered and sorrowful.

  After a long silence, he said, “Now I’m going to ask you some explicit questions, and I ask you to answer them honestly. Do you love your wife?”

  “Very much.”

  “Does she have any sort of perversion, or natural frigidity?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Did you grow up together?”

  “She’s not a relative of mine.”

  After this he asked me questions that I found quite shocking. However, none of them applied to me, and I answered him with complete honesty. Then he got up and gave me a thorough, careful examination that I endured with a trembling heart and with a battle raging in my soul between hope and despair.

  We returned to our seats and he began recording his impressions and conclusions in a notebook. Then he sat up straight and said to me, “You’re physically sound. It’s true, of course, that you’ve harmed yourself through your pernicious habit, which has left effects that call for a special kind of cleansing. However, the problem you’re suffering from, as I see it, has nothing to do with this. Your impotence has no biological basis, and you may be going through a psychological crisis. Don’t you have psychiatric clinics in your country?”

  I couldn’t make any sense of this last question. I was also amazed by his use of the phrase “your country,” as though he were a foreigner.

  “You would know more than I do about such matters, Doctor!”

  “The fact is,” he said with a smile, “that I haven’t been back home for very long, and I only opened this clinic of mine a few days ago.”

  Now I understood why I’d found his clinic empty, and why I hadn’t seen his sign before. However, I also realized that the trouble I’d put myself through had led nowhere, and I went back to feeling hopeless and despondent.

  Then he went on, saying, “You’ve got nothing wrong with you. You’re fully capable of having marital relations, and you’ll do so one of these days, so don’t give in to despair. This is something that happens frequently to newly wed young men, but it isn’t long before they’re back to normal, though the problem may last longer with some than with others. Rest assured that your day will come. Meanwhile, I encourage you to come to me for cleansing to get rid of the slight prostrate congestion you’re suffering from.”

  I listened to him with rapt attention, and with hope and despair still competing fiercely for the upper hand. When would my day come? And would it really come? The doctor had finished saying and doing all that he could say or do. However, I made no move to get up. Instead, I clung to my seat, my eyes fixed on him like someone pleading for help.

  Then I asked, “What did you mean by ‘psychiatric clinics’?”

  “Ah,” he said. “They’re a new type of clinic which I don’t think is available in our part of the world. However, don’t worry about what I said. I don’t think you’re in need of one.”

  “You said I might be suffering from a psychological crisis. What did that mean?”

  “I told you not to worry about what I’d said. I was overstating the case. At any rate, I’m not a psychiatrist, so I shouldn’t go into areas with you that might do more harm than good. Your healing lies within your own power, so don’t despair or lose confidence in yourself. Overcome your fear and anxiety, then expect recovery with full assurance.”

  My last question to him w
as, “Is your opinion conclusive?”

  “Yes,” he said confidently.

  I left the clinic better than I’d been when I went in, and I went home feeling hopeful. I said to myself: Doctors don’t lie or make mistakes. And with that I was transported with joy. I returned home on foot, and on the way I passed the building where my wife’s family lived—the building of reminiscences—and my imagination carried me far away. Then, all of a sudden, my enthusiasm waned and I was gripped with anxiety, and before long I’d reverted to a state of sullenness and gloom. However, I kept repeating out loud to myself the things the doctor had told me, searching wherever I could for the confidence I lacked.

  45

  In spite of my perpetual anxiety, I cherished the hope of recovery. And as we carried on with our platonic married life, I was spurred on by this expectation. When I felt particularly anxious, I would steal a glance over at her, wondering to myself whether she was really as happy as she seemed, and whether she still loved me. As for her, she did truly appear to be happy and content, loving and devoted. By this time she’d stopped mentioning her mother, though I didn’t know whether the woman had stopped asking her questions, or whether my beloved was keeping from me the conversations that would take place between them. But God, how I loved her! Our shared life together hadn’t lost its magic for me. On the contrary, it had found a place in the deepest parts of my being. I would go into raptures over her as she sat next to me on the long seat or lay beside me in bed no less than I did in the days when she would appear on the balcony or in the window. And it was a miserable thing indeed that ill fortune had tainted those early days of our marriage, filled as they were with the most wonderful opportunities for happiness and bliss.

  And as though ill fortune weren’t content to afflict me through myself, it had come to afflict me through my mother as well.

  Despite her courtesy, my mother was no good at hiding her feelings. If her tongue didn’t give her away, her eyes did, and if her eyes didn’t give her away, her feelings made themselves known by the peculiar, passive way in which she was conducting herself. She’d become withdrawn, making her bedroom into a prison that she rarely left, and she seemed to have devoted herself entirely to prayer and worship. Nor was this prolonged estrangement lost on Rabab. As any other woman would have done, she—despite her gentleness and mild-mannered nature—would respond to my mother with irritation and anger. She never tired of saying to me, “Your mother hates me!” My mother, unwilling to change her behavior, would justify herself by saying she wasn’t good at mixing and social niceties anymore. Yet if I went to sit with her she would receive me graciously and with a smile, and speak to me with meekness and resignation. So it wasn’t long before I realized that there was something amiss, and that a thick barrier had gone up between us. I could see that I was dealing with a different person than the mother I’d known throughout my youth. Whenever I mentioned to her that my wife was upset by her aloofness, she would say to me testily, “Your wife doesn’t like me, and that’s all there is to it.”

  As for me, I practiced being patient and forbearing even though pain was tearing me apart and my spirit was weighed down with sorrow.

  Once my mother went to spend a couple of days at my sister Radiya’s house. Then, seemingly happy there, she stayed a third day and was about to stay a fourth. These were the first days we’d spent apart, and her absence weighed heavily on my heart. In fact, I felt an unbearable forlornness with her not in the house. Hence, I went to my sister’s house to bring her back, and she didn’t resist my overtures.

  While we were on our way back I told her affectionately, “I couldn’t bear to let you stay away from home.”

  Her lips parted in a limpid smile.

  She was generally moved by a kind word with the innocence of a little child.

  However, she said to me, “It seems to me that my presence in your house is meaningless. In fact, it seems to bother the two of you.”

  Angered by her words, I said indignantly, “God forgive you for making such a false accusation! You’ve changed for no reason, Mama, and as a result, your perception of things has changed. All I can say is, God forgive you.”

  Looking at me strangely, she said with a calm certainty, “Your wife doesn’t like me. Consequently, she doesn’t want me in the house. I would have thought that whatever your wife wants, you should want, too.”

  I felt as though she was being deliberately unkind to me, and if it hadn’t been for my sincere desire to make peace, I would have lost my temper. Suppressing my anger, I said gloomily, “My wife doesn’t dislike you. On the contrary, she feels that you dislike her because of the cold, grumpy way you act toward her and your unwillingness to spend time with her. Shame on you for saying things that make my life miserable!”

  Looking disconcerted, she didn’t say a word. Lord, how she’d changed! Couldn’t she grant me that bright smile of hers rather than this anemic one? Would she never go back to opening her heart to me in the confident, assured way she used to do? And I wondered: Is the only way to get her to pardon me and go back to being her old self for me to confide in her about my own sufferings so that she’ll know that, in reality, I haven’t married and I’m the most miserable man alive?

  Then one day I came home from the ministry to find my wife in tears. Alarmed, I approached her feeling worried and pained. Sabah was present at the time, and she told me that she’d been working in the kitchen when my mother came in and hurled some scathing criticism at her. She said that my wife had intervened to put things right again, but that my mother had spoken to her sharply, and that she’d left the room in tears.

  The minute I heard what had happened, I headed straight for my mother’s room in a rage. But to my dismay, I found that she, too, had been crying herself red in the face. The minute she saw the frown on my face, she cried in distress, “So, did she send you to scold me?”

  Looking heavenward, I heaved a deep sigh and said, “Lord, take me! Deliver me from the earth and everyone on it!”

  “No, let Him take me!” she shouted back. “I’m nothing but a useless old woman. Wouldn’t it have been better for your wife to put off her complaining until after you’d had a chance to change your clothes and have a bite to eat? But no! She wouldn’t think of doing anything but follow her own stubborn, tyrannical whims!”

  Offended and furious now, I said, “She’s shedding bitter tears.”

  She shouted at me as though she’d lost her nerves, “She called me every name in the book! Then she met you at the door with those crocodile tears of hers to turn you against me, and she’s succeeded!”

  You’ll never get at the truth by listening to women! I’d worn myself out reasoning and arguing, and it had gotten me nowhere. On the contrary, I was helpless to make peace between the two of them. For a long time our lives were miserable, and a spirit of discord reigned in the house. Eventually I threw my hands up in despair, leaving it to the passing of the days to accomplish what I’d failed to do myself.

  Some time after this I began to feel an emptiness in my married life, and I was certain my wife shared the same feeling. It was no longer just the night hours that weighed on our nerves. Rather, the long hours we spent alone together during the day were something else we wouldn’t be able to endure forever. Consequently, I suggested that we kill time with various sorts of entertainment until school was back in session and she had other things to keep her busy. Pleased with my suggestion, she invited me to visit her numerous relatives, so we began going from house to house, and they would come to visit us as well. Then I suggested that we go to the cinema twice a week, and she agreed. I don’t know whether I was really looking for entertainment, or whether I was just running away from my empty life. In any case, I found a respite in going to the cinema even though, by nature, I preferred spending time alone. However, it wasn’t long before I’d grown weary of the visits, where I would lose myself and fall prey to my usual shyness, awkwardness, and inability to express myself. Consequently, I b
egan staying back from them, leaving my wife to go by herself.

  I could have persuaded her to stop going on visits as I had done. However, I didn’t want to deprive her of ways of entertaining herself and filling up her free time. Deep down, I may have started to fear that she’d find our time alone burdensome the way I’d begun to. I wanted with all my heart to make her comfortable and happy, and I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment to spend everything I had to please her. Rabab had become everything, and I was no longer anything to speak of.

  However, my mother seemed not to approve of this new life of ours.

  One day she said to me, “It isn’t right for you to allow your wife to spend so much time away from home.”

  Annoyed by her observation, I replied curtly, “Have you forgotten that my wife is a working woman?”

  “Even so …,” she retorted in that critical tone of hers.

  Concerned that an argument might lead to undesirable consequences, I said imploringly, “Mama, can’t you just live and let live?”

  Irritated now, she said, “If you came to my defense the way you come to hers, she wouldn’t have despised me and called me names!”

  I made no reply, hoping she’d drop the subject. However, she went on, saying, “She goes out roaming for no reason. What would you say if she were a mother?”