The Mirage

by Naguib Mahfouz

  64

  I left the house without seeing any of those who lived there. After all, it wasn’t my house any longer, nor were its residents my family. As I stood at the door to the building, my gaze shifted over to the tram stop, the tram stop of memories. I looked back and forth between it and the balcony, then closed my eyes to see the procession of memories marching past in the twinkling of an eye. It was a true picture of life, one that brought together its joys and its tragedies. Then I took off down the street without any destination in mind as though I were running away as fast as I could. My heart had turned into a firebrand from which sparks of rage, misery, and hatred were flying in all directions. I figured that this world, so preoccupied with its own concerns, would forget its sorrows the next day and drown itself in talk about my scandal. At the same time, I still hadn’t gotten over my shock, and I kept wondering what on earth had prompted that crook of a doctor to confess the terrible truth. I’d been so defeated by cowardice that I’d concealed the truth, and in so doing I’d given him a chance to flee if he had wanted to take it. But instead, he’d jumped to his feet in a rage and, in that self-important, arrogant way of his, he’d let the truth come out through his own two lips: “Don’t ask him something he knows nothing about. She was a wife in name only …” My God! Why hadn’t I beaten him to a pulp? Why hadn’t I hurled myself at him and dug my fingernails into his heart? It was a memory that would sting me like a flaming whip till the day I died. But what had made him fling himself into perdition?

  Had his despair of being acquitted of one of the two charges led him to confess to the other? Was he so dismayed at the fate to which love had doomed his lover that he was moved in a moment of despair to share with her in her dreadful fate? Was it an uprising of the conscience, of the heart, or both? How could I possibly become privy to the secrets of that disdainful heart? At the same time, I became increasingly bewildered and wondered to myself: How could he have permitted himself to send her to the grave shrouded in disgrace? Wouldn’t it have been more fitting for him to seize the opportunity at hand to save himself and protect the honor of the woman he had loved, and who had loved him? Do you suppose he now regretted what he had said, or was he still holding his head high in arrogance and conceit? It was a puzzle to me then, and it always will be. My heart was so bloated with bitterness and rage that the fate that had been meted out to them—her in the grave, and him in prison—was a source of relief and joy to me.

  By this time my feet had carried me to Ismailiya Square. Finding no place better to flee to than the Qasr al-Nil gardens, I headed toward the bridge. I thought: If only I could disappear from Cairo for a whole year. It hadn’t even occurred to me to attend the funeral of this woman who’d been my wife. After all, I wouldn’t be able to face any of the people who knew of the tragedy. But had I really even married? It had been nothing but a long, drawn-out farce or, more properly speaking, a tragedy. My family were sure to be shocked when they learned that my wife had died and been buried without any of them being invited to the funeral. However, their shock would be quick to dissipate once they knew the truth, and it wouldn’t be long before they were too distracted telling jokes about it to think of anything else. Anybody who got hold of this story would be the life of the party. My heart shrank, and I felt a coldness flowing through my limbs. How badly I wanted to flee, just as I always had in such situations. Where could I find a distant land in which no one had ever set foot? And how could I cut off every tie that bound me to my odious past? If only I could be born again in a new world in which I wasn’t haunted by a single memory from this one! Indeed, I wouldn’t be able to carry on with my life as long as I was being followed about by my past like a heavy shadow.

  I spent the rest of the day wandering down streets or sitting like a vagrant in public parks. I felt no heat, no cold, no thirst. Then at last the sun announced its imminent departure and evening shadows spread over the treetops. I went back the way I’d come with heavy steps, and by the time I reached Ismailiya Square, darkness had fallen over the universe. I was gripped with uncertainty, not knowing where to go. Then suddenly, an image of the pub flashed into my mind. I heaved a deep sigh and my taut, frayed nerves uttered a sigh of relief as though I’d suddenly caught a glimpse of happiness after a long, oppressive ordeal. The very next moment, a taxi was taking me to Alfi Bey Street, but my relief was short-lived and soon replaced by anxiety, dejection, and indecision. Wondering whether I shouldn’t be heading somewhere else, I got out of the taxi in front of the pub, but didn’t go in. Instead I began walking slowly down the sidewalk with a heavy head and heart. Overcome by despair, however, I let it lead me back to the pub. After finding myself an isolated corner, I drank one glass, then another, and kept on drinking. My head was hardly responding to the liquor, but I suddenly felt ravenous, so I ate with an astounding, voracious appetite. And no sooner had I finished eating than I was overcome with a fatigue that enveloped my stomach, my head, and my entire body. It was as though the effort I’d expended in the course of the excruciating day, catching me in an unguarded moment, had come marching over me with its hordes and crushed me beneath their weight. I got up unsteadily, left the pub, and got into a nearby taxi that took me in the direction of Qasr al-Aini. Overwhelmed with fatigue, a numbness spread through my body, and a sudden feeling of apathy came over me. I looked with a mocking eye upon my tragedy, and for a moment it seemed as though it were someone else’s misfortune rather than my own, or as though it had been removed from my personal life and taken its place in the procession of shared human heartbreaks. The taxi continued down the road until we were within sight of the building through which the world had put me to the test. I looked toward it with open eyes and with a timorous, racing heart. I saw light emanating from the balcony and the windows, and in front of the building I could see two tall poles from which two large lights were suspended. So, it was all over.…

  65

  As I was going up the stairs to our flat, I remembered my mother and I was seized by a violent fear. At the same time I was gripped by a terrible rage as though it were Satan himself. What had made me so angry? I wondered what on earth I might say to her. Lord! What had brought me home in the first place? Did I really think I’d be able to spend the night in Rabab’s room and on her bed? Nonetheless, I continued up the stairs as though it were my ineluctable fate. As I entered the flat, my chest was tight and gloom was written all over my face. I could hear my mother’s voice as she asked anxiously, “Who is it?”

  I froze in place, furious and bitter.

  “It’s me,” I replied gruffly.

  In a tearful voice she cried, “Kamil! Come here, son!”

  My heart pounded violently, and I knew for a certainty that she’d heard about Rabab’s fate. I went to her room and found her sitting in bed.

  Sobbing, she reached out to me with her hands, and in a tear-choked voice, she said, “If only I could have died in her place. She should have remained alive for you!”

  I stood in the middle of the room, ignoring her outstretched hands.

  “How did you hear the news?” I asked her in a stiff, harsh voice.

  “How could you have forgotten to tell me yourself, son?” she cried in the same muffled voice. “From this I can see how grieved you are. My heart is breaking for you. If only I could have been the ransom for both of you. After all, I’m just a sick old woman. But this was God’s decree.”

  Her emotion didn’t make a dent on my hardened soul, and I made no reply.

  Then, as if I hadn’t heard what she said I asked again, “How did you hear the news?”

  “I’d been waiting anxiously for you to come home today, and when it got to be evening and you still weren’t back, I got scared. So I told the servant how to get to the building where her family lives and sent her there. Then she brought me the horrible news.”

  Looking at her suspiciously, I asked in a low voice, “Do you know how she died?”

  “No, son!” she replied, crying again. “I’m s
till completely in the dark about it. I feel so sorry about the poor girl. How could she have suffered such an untimely death?”

  Upon hearing her response, I felt a relief that soon grew tepid and lost its effect. Why deceive myself with false comfort when I knew that there was no power in the world that would be able to keep my scandal a secret? Her weeping annoyed me, since to me there was no questioning the fact that it was a phony show of grief of the sort that women sometimes put on.

  So I said rudely, “She died the way people do every day and every night. The way my grandfather and my father died, and the way all of us will die.”

  In my anger, I stressed the word “all.”

  Then I asked her wearily, “Why are you crying?”

  Looking at me dolefully through her tears, she murmured, “I wish I’d died in her place.”

  Too agitated to contain myself any longer, I said testily, “That’s a lie! No one would ever be willing to die in someone else’s place! Would you have said that if she were still alive?”

  She gaped at me in alarm, then looked down in pained silence.

  No one said anything for a long time.

  Then she broke the silence, murmuring, “May God send His peace into your heart.”

  “I don’t need prayers,” I said harshly, “and I hate hypocrisy. I’ll never forget that you hated her even before you’d laid eyes on her!”

  Looking up at me with a pained look on her face, she said, “Kamil! Have mercy on your mother! God knows I’m not being dishonest with you. You’ll hardly find a household anywhere that doesn’t witness the kinds of disagreements we used to have.”

  However, I showed her no mercy. At the same time, I don’t know what sort of force moved me to remind her of the unfortunate past as though I were really grieving over Rabab. I was so hard on her, you would have thought she was the cause of the catastrophe that had befallen me. And what made me even more bitter and angry was my sense that through her show of grief, she was concealing a malicious glee.

  Hence, I added furiously, “The fact is that you’re beside yourself with joy! I know you as well as I know myself, so don’t try to deceive me. You’re hiding your joy with these crocodile tears of yours!”

  “Kamil!” she groaned. “Don’t be cruel to your mother! Don’t say that! God knows I didn’t hate her! And whatever grieves you, grieves me!”

  I let forth a cold laugh like the cracking of a whip in the air, and said, “And in case you’re not happy enough yet, let me tell you that she didn’t just die. She was killed!”

  She gaped at me in terror and, perhaps fearing that I’d gone mad, murmured, “God have mercy.”

  Then I shouted with the nonchalance of a madman, “She was killed when the doctor was performing an abortion on her.”

  “An abortion!” she cried, striking her chest with her hand. “Was she pregnant? Lord, I didn’t know that!”

  “Neither did I! She hid it from me because I wasn’t the child’s father.”

  “Kamil!” she cried in distress. “Have mercy on yourself, and on me! You don’t know what you’re saying!”

  “I know more than you’d expect me to. I found out in one day more than what someone like me would normally find out in a generation. As I told you, she’d hidden the matter from me. Then she went to the child’s father to perform an abortion on her, but he made a mistake and killed her.”

  “Have mercy, O Most Merciful of the merciful!”

  “Is He still the Most Merciful of the merciful? Farewell, since I won’t be worshipping Him from now on. As for you, you may be saying to yourself with a strange sort of satisfaction, ‘The sinful woman has gotten some of what she deserved. I had a feeling something like this might be happening from the very beginning. But you didn’t listen to me!’ ”

  My mother heaved a miserable sigh. Then in a voice that sounded more like a moan she said, “What you’re saying grieves me no end. You’re killing me without mercy.”

  In reply, I screamed at her like a lunatic, “Revel in your malicious glee all you like! But don’t you dare imagine that we’ll live together. The past is over, with its good and its bad, and I’ll never go back to it as long as I live. I’ll be alone from now on. I won’t live with you under one roof. I’ll ask the ministry to transfer me somewhere far, far away, and I’ll live there for the rest of my life.”

  With tears glistening in her eyes and pain tying her tongue, she sat there looking at me in terror and speechless indignation.

  Then, as if what I’d said already weren’t enough, I seethed, “Go to my sister or my brother, and from now on, consider me dead.”

  Then I turned my back to her and left the room as her sobs rang in my ears.

  66

  It never once occurred to me to go to my room. In fact, that was the farthest thing from my mind. I even avoided looking at it. Instead I went to the sitting room and flung myself on the sofa, exhausted and depressed. The night passed slowly and heavily, and the only sleep I got was in the form of intermittent naps permeated with nightmares. Then a faint light began filtering in through the shutters, heralding the break of day. Heaving a sigh of relief, I stretched wearily, then got up and left the room with the urge to flee and disappear from sight. I came up gingerly to the outer door and placed my hand on the doorknob. However, once there I froze in hesitation and moved no further. Instead I retreated quietly toward my mother’s room. Ever so carefully I pushed on the half-open door and stuck my head in. I could hear the servant’s rhythmic snores, and on the bed lay my mother in a deep stillness.

  Hardly able to make out anything but the upper half of her face, I cast her a quick glance, then retreated and headed again for the outer door. As I closed the door noiselessly behind me, I heard—or at least I thought I heard—a voice calling me. I thought she’d awakened despite the care I’d taken not to disturb her, and she seemed to be calling to me. I paused, my hand on the banister, and my heart softened toward her. But I was in a state of such despair that I wasn’t handling things well, so I shrugged my shoulders indifferently and went down the stairs. It was still early morning and the street was abandoned, or nearly so, and a cool, damp breeze wafted over my face. I stood there for a while hesitantly, not knowing where to go, then I headed for the gas station where the taxi stop was and caught a taxi to Ismailiya Square. On the way I cast a glance at the other building. Enveloped in silence, its windows were closed, and the two lights hanging from the pole outside had been turned off. I arrived at the square, then went to a milk vendor’s and sat at a table at the far end of the place. After having a simple breakfast, I was suddenly overcome with fatigue. I spread out my legs, and an overwhelming drowsiness advanced like an army over my entire body. No longer able to hold my head up, I surrendered to its dominion and before I knew it, I’d fallen fast asleep. When I woke up again, I found myself leaning over the table with my head resting on my forearm. I lifted my head and looked around me feeling disoriented and embarrassed.

  I left the place without daring to look at the other people sitting there, and when I looked at the clock in the square, I found to my astonishment that it was past two in the afternoon! I’d slept for eons, absent from my gloomy world, and how delectable it would have been to sleep forever! I headed in the direction of the Qasr al-Nil gardens, painfully aware of how unkempt and shabby I looked. As I walked briskly along, I asked myself what I was going to do with my life. However, in keeping with my usual tendency to avoid dealing head-on with serious problems, a voice inside me suggested that I postpone that decision till later.

  Then I found myself thinking about Rabab. I felt a rage toward her that refused to leave me, as though it were some sort of permanent handicap. How I wished she could be resurrected, if only for a minute, so that I could spit in her face! Will I ever forget that I rejoiced over her death with the spiteful satisfaction of someone filled with bitterness and rage? That’s the way I am, and there’s no point in hiding the fact. At the same time, I was sufficiently calm by that tim
e that I could think about things rationally. The strange thing is that despite my extreme self-centeredness, I never begrudge an opponent a fair hearing. This isn’t because I’m so fond of fairness, but I’ve grown accustomed to making excuses for my opponents as a way of concealing the fact that I’m too weak to get even with them. And this is why I made excuses for Rabab in her tragedy. I said to myself: I was wrong to believe her claim that she didn’t enjoy making love. Rather, it was my inadequacy that cast her into the arms of temptation. At the same time, how could I have doubted that she’d loved me sincerely? Memories went wafting over my imagination as fragrant breezes go wafting over a blazing fire, memories of shared glances, the unforgettable encounter on the tram, the way she resisted her first suitor in preference for me, and the enchantment that was the most joyous gift of ephemeral happiness I’ve ever received. It had been a sincere love, but it had been exposed to an icy wind that pulled it up by the roots and deprived it of the water of life. So hadn’t I been an accessory to her murder? At that moment, I called upon God to hasten Judgment Day and, in His mercy, to deliver human beings from life’s ordeals. My love for Rabab had been a God-given bliss. However, it had passed away, leaving hatred and rage in its wake. But had it really passed away? Suppose that, by some miracle, what had happened to me had been nothing but a bad dream. Wouldn’t my love have been brought back even more powerful than it had been before? Of course it would have. So, then, it was still there under the wreckage of hatred and loathing. A limb that’s been severed never grows back. Hence, it no longer has any real existence. Similarly, a love that returns must never have really gone away. But, I thought, What’s the use of all this agonizing rumination? And with that I furrowed my brow as if to frighten away the memories that were assailing me.

  I made up my mind to flee from my memories, even if it meant facing up to the critical problem that I’d been running away from just a short while earlier, namely, the problem of what I was going to do with my life. I mustn’t leave things to chance, I said to myself. I’d find a way to get rid of Rabab’s furniture, then move to a new neighborhood. But did I really want to move somewhere far away? How badly I wanted to flee, but I was too weak to leave Cairo. This was how I felt; it was a certainty for me. And would I really abandon my mother? Would I be capable of abandoning her? For a long time the desire to leave her had come to me in the form of vague dreams. But could I actually do it? It was a critical step, one that I was well-advised not to take without serious thought and consideration. Why had I been so cruel to her? What was I avenging myself on her for? I knew for a certainty that the mere thought of her could well send me flying back into her arms, weeping and repentant. What an odious love it was, a love from whose grip I didn’t know how to free myself.