I went back to the square a little after three in the afternoon, and I found myself remembering Alfi Bey Street with my usual enthusiasm. Not far from the tram stop I glimpsed a colleague of mine from the ministry, but I ignored him. However, he happened to see me as well. Coming up to me with a solemn, concerned look on his face, he extended his hand and said, “I’m so sorry to hear of your loss, Mr. Kamil.”
A tremor went through my body and I wondered anxiously: How did he hear about it? And what does he know about it?
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
The man squeezed my hand and said, “Excuse me. I’m going to get a bite to eat, then come back to attend the funeral.”
My Lord! I thought the funeral had been held that morning or even the day before, and that my predicament had passed. However, I was still expected to attend, and they’d placed the obituary in the newspapers! What sort of predicament still lay in wait for me?
In a low voice I asked him, “Did you read the obituary in al-Ahram?”
“No,” he said, looking bewildered. “I don’t think it appeared in al-Ahram. Otherwise we would have found out about it at the ministry. I read about it in al-Balagh.”
He slipped the newspaper out from under his arm, opened it up and pointed to a column, saying, “Here’s the obituary.”
Discomfited and embarrassed, I took the newspaper and scanned the following lines: “Daughter of the late Colonel Abdulla Bey Hasan passes away. She is survived by her son, Medhat Bey Ru’ba Laz, a prominent member of the Fayoum community, her son Kamil Effendi Ru’ba Laz, employee at the Ministry of War, and her daughter, the wife of Sabir Effendi Amin.”
I gaped into my friend’s face like a lunatic. Then I reread the obituary, my entire body trembling.
“That’s impossible!” I shouted. “This is a lie!!”
I went running like mad toward a nearby taxi, threw myself inside it and told the driver to get me to my destination as fast as he could. It was a lie, a story somebody had made up! I’d find out what had really happened, and then I’d know how to punish whoever it was that had played this ridiculous joke on me! The taxi went speeding along, my neck craning toward the road. Then there appeared a large tent that had been set up in front of our house. When I saw it, my chest heaved and my limbs began to tremble. The taxi stopped and I got out, hardly able to see what was in front of me. I wasn’t grieved or pained. I was crazy. I saw my uncle sitting at the entrance to the tent. Then I saw my brother Medhat coming toward me. I rushed up to him in a frenzy and grabbed his necktie.
“How could you keep the news from me?” I screamed in his face.
Freeing himself with difficulty from my grip, my brother cast me a worried, disturbed look. Then my uncle came up to us and said, “Where have you been, Kamil? We looked all over for you, and couldn’t find you.”
I looked back and forth between the two men. Then I looked strangely at the tent and muttered, “Is this real?”
“Get hold of yourself and be a man,” my uncle replied.
In a fearful whisper I asked my brother, “Did she really die?”
“I received a telegram at nine o’clock this morning,” he replied glumly. “This is God’s decree. Where have you been? I was scared to death we might to have go out for the funeral procession without you.”
“And what’s all the hurry?” I shouted angrily. “Why didn’t you put off the funeral till tomorrow?”
“The doctor said that the death had occurred at midnight last night, so we decided to have the funeral today.”
My feverish body shuddered and I muttered in dismay, “Midnight last night? But I saw her sleeping in bed this morning!”
A look of sadness flashed in Medhat’s eyes.
“She wasn’t asleep,” he said mournfully. “It was her heart, Kamil.”
My limbs quaking, I conjured an image of the despondency I’d seen in her face, and I strained my memory to recall what I’d seen. And I asked myself: Was it really the face of a dead person?
Feeling I was about to collapse, I said in a feeble voice, “I want to look at her one last time.”
Placing his hand on my shoulder, my brother said, “Wait a little while till you’ve pulled yourself together. Besides, the room is full of women now.”
However, I shoved him out of my way and went rushing pell-mell into the building, then took the stairs in leaps with my brother close on my heels. As I went into the flat, my ears were filled with the sounds of weeping. To my dismay I found myself surrounded by women on all sides. My eyes stopped focusing and I was overcome with fatigue and awkwardness. However, just then my brother caught up with me, grabbed my arm and led me toward the bedroom, saying, “Don’t resist. You need to be alone for a while.”
He sat me down on the long seat and closed the door. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed in front of me and said sadly, “Be rational, Kamil. We mustn’t be overcome by grief like women. Wasn’t she my mother, too? But we’re men.”
My mind began swinging like a pendulum in a frenzied kind of concentration between two things: the ill-fated argument I’d had with my mother the day before, and my seeing her that same morning. Then suddenly a memory flashed through my mind and I cried, “The doctor lied! She didn’t die at midnight! I heard her calling me as I was leaving the flat this morning!”
With a look of incredulity on his face, he asked, “And did you answer her call? Did you speak with her?”
Heaving a miserable sigh, I said, “No, I didn’t, because I was angry with her! I was so rude and cruel to her!”
Then we both fell into a grieved silence. My head was about to explode with pain and fever.
Then, as though I were talking to myself, I said, “I killed her, there’s no doubt about it. Lord! How could I have allowed myself to say what I said to her?”
My brother looked at me despondently.
Then he said to me in a menacing tone, “Don’t you dare give in to thoughts like that!”
My head spinning like mad, I said stubbornly, “I was only saying the truth. I killed her. Don’t you understand? If you want to verify the truth of what I’ve said, just call the public prosecutor and the medical examiner.”
Groaning, Medhat said uneasily, “You must be delirious. Otherwise, get hold of yourself, because if you don’t, I won’t let you march in the funeral procession.”
I let forth a cold laugh and said, “Our family is afflicted with the ‘parent-killing syndrome’! Our father tried to kill our grandfather and he failed. Then I tried to kill our mother, and I succeeded. And thus you can see that I was more successful than my father.”
With a worried look on his face, the young man got up. Then, looking me hard in the face, he said, “What do you intend to do with yourself? The funeral is just an hour away.”
“What?” I said in amazement. “You’re going to let the funeral proceed without conducting an investigation first? What a merciful brother you are! However, duty comes before brotherhood. Call the public prosecutor. I’ll tell you where the office is, since I found out myself yesterday. Tell the district attorney that you’re calling on him to interrogate the person who called on him yesterday to investigate his wife’s murder.”
Looking like someone who’s just remembered something distressing, my brother cried, “How awful! Why didn’t you send me a telegram, Kamil! The servant told me about it today, and I could hardly believe it!”
In near delirium I said, “Believe it, brother. If you don’t get yourself used to believing tragedies like this, you’ll leave the world the same way you came in: gullible and ignorant. I killed my wife, too. But I had an accomplice, namely, her lover.”
Clapping his hands, Medhat cried, “There’s no way you’re going to leave the room when you’re in this condition!”
Shaking my head angrily, I rose to my feet and said, “Let’s go.”
But no sooner had I finished speaking than I fainted.
67
I know nothing about the long hours I
spent in a complete coma. However, there were other times in which I would grope about in a darkness that lay somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. It was a strange, shadowy world interspersed with dreams. I would get the feeling I was alive, yet so weak and helpless, I was more like the living dead. I don’t know how many times I struggled, miserably and desperately, to move a part of my body, only to be so exhausted by the effort that I would surrender to the stifling pressure and vague fear that never seemed to leave me. At other times I would have the illusion that I wasn’t far from regaining consciousness. I would almost be able to make out familiar voices and see faces I knew well, and I would cry out to them to hurry and save me. I often called out to my mother, and I would be infuriated and bewildered at her failure to respond to me. Strange dreams would go through my feverish head. I would see myself riding on my mother’s shoulder as she carried me back and forth the way she used to do when I was a little boy, and at other times I would see myself grabbing hold of my brother Medhat’s collar in a noisy, violent struggle as he shouted at me, “Don’t kill me!” I imagined that I’d had many other dreams too, but that they’d been swallowed up by the darkness.
My unconsciousness went on for such a long time, I thought it would never end. But then I opened my eyes and returned to the light of the world. Heaving a deep sigh, my glance fell on a mirror that reflected my image. Feeling someone at my head, I looked in that direction and saw my sister Radiya sitting on the bed with her hand on my head. Our eyes met and her features brightened while a look of pity flashed in her eyes.
“Kamil,” she murmured tenderly.
I tried to smile, and as I did so she let forth a fervent sigh, saying softly, “I bear witness that there is no god but God.”
She uttered the testimony of faith in a voice that bespoke the fear and torment that had now left her. She didn’t take her hand off my head, but the next moment, however, I felt something under her palm.
In a feeble voice that sounded to my ears like a muffled shriek I asked, “What’s this thing on my head?”
Someone else’s voice then came to me, saying, “A bag of ice, sir.”
Turning in the direction from which the voice had come, I saw my brother Medhat sitting on the long seat. It was at that moment that I realized where I was, and I was assailed by the memories from which I’d fled through this heavy coma. Life peered at me with its ashen face once again. I looked over at the alarm clock, whose hands indicated that it was a bit after ten, ten in the morning judging by the sunlight coming into the room. So, then, I’d spent the dismal night in a deep sleep!
Looking at my brother brokenly, I asked, “Is the funeral over?”
He looked back at me for a long time, then said tersely, “Of course.”
After another long silence he continued, “Perhaps you don’t realize that you were gone for three whole days.”
I peered at him in disbelief. Then I closed my eyes in consternation and murmured woefully, “So, I was destined to escort neither my mother nor my wife to her final resting place.”
I looked over at my sister, whose eyes were filled with tears, and I was enveloped by an eerie melancholy that caused life to look like death. At that terrible moment, life looked utterly alien and empty to me, and I felt a terrifying void. The house was empty, my life was empty, the entire world was empty. When my mother was alive, I’d had a steady source of serenity, and deep in my heart I knew that no matter how miserable the world became, I had a room to go to that always glowed with smiles and affection. But now, I was like a boat that had been cut loose from its moorings in a stormy, raging sea. Even my sister, who was caring for me with such tender affection in my illness, was bound to tell me tomorrow or the next day that she needed to return to her house and her children, and I would be left alone. Lord, was I—the pampered child—made for this kind of life?
I cast my sister a long look of gratitude and affection. I gazed into her face with a longing of which she wasn’t aware, drawn to those aspects of it that resembled my mother’s. My chest heaved, overflowing with affection and profound grief. I cast an uncertain look at my surroundings, and found Rabab’s furniture staring at me in a weird sort of way.
Feeling anxious and dejected, I said, “I’ll never be happy staying in this house. I’ll live with you, Sister.”
“That’s what I’d decided myself,” came her earnest reply. “You’re most welcome.”
Then I whispered sorrowfully in her ear, “Take me to her room so that I can look at it.”
Her eyes clouded over and filled with tears as she murmured, “You can’t get out of bed now. Besides, there’s nothing left in it.”
I pictured the empty room: four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. How like my own life!
I sighed dejectedly and murmured, “I’m so miserable.”
To which Radiya replied imploringly, “Why not put off grieving until after you’ve gotten well?”
I was bedridden for about a month. Radiya stayed with me for a week, after which she had to return home. However, she visited me every afternoon, and she wouldn’t leave me until sleep had closed my eyes. Medhat also went back to Fayoum, but he would spend the weekends with me.
By the time I entered the recovery phase, the fever had left me nothing but skin and bones. The only life I had left was in my imagination, whose vitality flourished, and which became so vigorous and active that it nearly became an obsession. There wasn’t a waking hour when I wasn’t plagued by feelings of loneliness and fear. Consequently, life seemed too arduous and terrifying to endure, and my ears were filled with that old voice which—whenever I found myself faced with afflictions—would urge me to turn tail and run away. But where would I run to? If only I could be remade as a new person, sound in body and spirit, who didn’t have fear and alienation nesting in the corners of his soul. Then I could cast myself into the midst of life’s hustle and bustle without embarrassment or feelings of aversion. I would love people and they would love me, I would help people and they would help me. I’d find pleasure in their company and they’d find pleasure in mine, and I’d become an active, useful member of their grand, collective organism.
But where was I to find such happiness? And on what basis could I hold out such false hopes? I hadn’t been made for any of this. Rather, I’d been made for Sufism. It was strange to find this word inadvertently coming to mind. Yet it wasn’t long before I’d taken hold of it, albeit with astonishment and uncertainty. Sufism? I wasn’t even sure exactly what it was. However, I did know that it involved solitude, abstention, and contemplation. And how badly I needed those things. Strange … hadn’t I complained of too much solitude throughout the time I’d been bedridden? The fact of the matter, however, is that I hadn’t been complaining about the kind of solitude I’d been accustomed to throughout my life. Rather, the kind of solitude I was suffering from most recently was the forlorn sort of loneliness that had been left by the loss of my mother. As for the solitude I’d been familiar with before, I craved it badly. First of all, though, I would have to cleanse my body both inside and out, then devote my heart to heaven. For in reality, I’d been created a Sufi, but life’s desires and attachments had led me astray. I imagined myself in an extraordinary state of purity, my body being bathed in fragrant water and my spirit being lifted up, transparent and serene, with my sights set on nothing but heaven, and no thought springing up in my soul but the thought of God. These were the nightingales of paradise singing their sweet melodies in my ears, and this was the stillness of peace coming to rest in my heart. My imagination had been active in the past, but it had often been traitorous. It would lift me up to that plane only to abandon me without warning, and I would find myself plummeting from the heights, then returning once more to my old anxiety and chronic fear.
One morning during the final phase of my recovery, the elderly servant came and said to me, “A lady is here who would like to see you, and I’ve let her into the reception room.”
Looking up at her
in astonishment, I asked, “Don’t you know her?”
She replied with a shake of the head, “I’ve never seen her before, sir.”
A certain apparition flashed through my mind, causing my feeble heart to tremble until it was pounding so hard that I became short of breath. Lord, might it really be her? Had she found the courage to storm the house? And hadn’t she taken thought for the consequences?
Looking at the servant hesitantly, I murmured, “Invite her into my room.”
I scrutinized myself in the mirror, then picked up a comb and hurriedly ran it through my hair. Feeling terribly self-conscious, I looked toward the door, wondering: Will my suspicion be confirmed? How could she have vanished from my memory all this time, as though she lived only in the healthy blood that had dried up? Then I heard footsteps approaching, and the visitor’s face looked in at me with a smile of longing and compassion.
When I saw her, I exclaimed in what sounded like a cry for help, my voice betraying the emotion that had welled up in my heart, “You!”
The Mirage Page 38