Telepathy

— 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? Linda 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.