Telepathy

— 13 –

The shadow rose from his relaxed, half-reclining position, removed his slim reading glasses, making his eyes seem slightly smaller than before, and held out a hand that was firm despite the blue veins that spread across its surface.

He didn’t seem to notice Muzaffar, or perhaps he had but hadn’t shown that he had, because Muzaffar was certainly within his field of vision.

He remarked, “You look extremely elegant, Writer — as if you had come to propose to a girl.”

I was slightly perturbed by his sentence and heard Muzaffar say, “As a matter of fact, Mr Abd al-Qawi, he has come for that reason.”

The Shadow then noticed my companion, greeted Muzaffar with a bewildered nod of his head, and said to me, “I finished reading Hunger’s Hopes, luckily for you, and, as you can see, am now reading Invisible Cities, this amiable novel by the astonishing Italo Calvino. In my opinion, Hunger’s Hopes is an excellent novel that could support a sequel, which would begin with the tears of Ranim, who — as you wrote — emigrated and will, I hope, return from her hegira to become Yaqutah once more. She is weeping for her true love and recalling her days with him. This time you will write the novel yourself without telepathy, because your hero has died of cancer. By the way, what has become of him?”

I expected his arrogance. That wasn’t a problem, but a sequel for that damn novel was the last thing I needed. Ranim returns from exile and becomes Yaqutah again. Yes, she remained Yaqutah to the final page of the manuscript, but was this really happening? Was it possible that there would be one and the same ending for the real-life story and the fictitious one?

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely. Your opinion makes me very happy, and I will try to draft a sequel as soon as my inspirations coalesce. Nishan Hamza fled more than three weeks ago from the psychiatric hospital I checked him into, and unfortunately we haven’t found him yet. Even the police have done their best and failed.”

“I’m sad to hear that,” the Shadow replied. “Father Matthew completed the play An Elderly Demon in the Republican Palace down to the last line, but apparently you’re not so lucky.”

His voice changed suddenly, becoming monstrous and strident. “Why have you actually come to call, Gentlemen?”

I decided not to hesitate to embark on this adventure calmly, despite the less than welcoming sound of his voice and the facial expression which right then was that of a dyspeptic old man.

“Master, with your permission, I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage. This is the reason for our call.”

Now the Shadow sat straight up on the edge of his wooden bed. He placed his head in his hands, looking like any father caught off guard by an unexpected suitor for his daughter. I assumed that he was weighing the implications of accepting or rejecting my offer. At that moment I realized the faux pas I had committed. I hadn’t factored in my status and age — or my fame, which surpassed that of the Shadow and of all the members of his generation. It struck me that climactic moments occur in real life as well as in writing. I had been engrossed in the conundrum of Hunger’s Hopes and hadn’t liberated myself from it just to plunge into a new riddle. At that instant I wished I could turn back the clock a minute, back to when my mouth was closed and my tongue wasn’t spitting out outrageous proposals.

I was beyond the age when it would be seemly to sit smiling next to a woman decked out as a bride together on a pair of velvet chairs for a wedding party or to dance dizzily at the center of a circle of well-wishers.  Many details had defeated me, and now I was awaiting a major rout — expulsion from the Shadow’s home and friendship.

I turned to reassure myself with the expression of my suspicious brother, Muzaffar, but didn’t find him. He had doubtless fled the scene.

The Shadow didn’t throw me out. When he stood up and placed his feet in his black slippers, he did not appear to be planning to do that. He replied with a despondency I had never heard in his voice before. “Fine, Writer. You aspire to become part of the family. Let us go inside together and consult the girl to see whether she will accept or not. Please come with me.”

I replied in a faint voice, “You go, Master, and I’ll wait for you.”

“No,” he replied decisively.

I trailed after him, feeling a little agitated. We entered the door by which I had seen the girl with slim breasts and short, curly hair exit and enter. Dr Hazaz had also emerged from it.

The Shadow led me with noticeable feebleness down the narrow hallway, which had rooms on either side. The paint was peeling off the white walls and some inexpensive works of art had been hung here and there. One of these was a copy of a painting by the Italian painter Giovanni Boldini and portrayed a young girl embracing a cat with thick fur. Another, which symbolized nature’s wrath, was by the Ethiopian painter Simhan Zamzam, who had lived and died without achieving any recognition.

We stopped at the end of the hall, in front of a closed door. The Shadow did not knock. Instead he opened it cautiously and asked me to enter.

I was in a rather small room that was painted rose. Its walls were decorated with many objets d’art made from gold and silver embroidery on pasteboard. The skin of an animal — perhaps a jackal or a fox — hung on the wall opposite us. Several rose-colored wardrobes were placed in the corners, and a broad table covered with books also held what seemed to be a late-model cell phone. The bed in the center of the room was also painted rose.

The lighting was extremely dim, but I saw the girl who was lying on the bed and gasped.

This was by no means the woman I had sketched in my mind. She did not resemble any portrait a lover would try to draw. She was not even suitable for the fantastic imagery of dreams gone awry. Simply put, Linda the Shadow was a tragic girl with misshapen limbs and looked like a ragdoll. She was surrounded by medical apparatus and breathed oxygen from a gauze mask over her face. I remembered how distant her voice sounded; I had described it as a voice rising from a dream or the remnants of a dream. I remembered her intermittent, gasping breaths and understood that this was the halting respiration of a person struggling to stay alive, not the breathiness of a portrait pausing to inspire seduction. Feeling dizzy and weak-eyed, I twisted my face toward the door. I stumbled out, and the Shadow followed me. I heard his voice from very far away: “This is Linda, Renowned Author. She suffers from Becker’s Muscular Dystrophy, which is caused by mutations in the genes and affects remote muscles first and gradually progresses to the patient’s respiration and stops it. We discovered her condition when she was two years old. She has struggled together with us to learn and to educate herself. She does not have much longer to live now. Do you understand why she hasn’t come to talk to you face-to-face, Writer? Do you understand why she hasn’t spoken with you by telephone recently?”

Yes, I understood. I could have understood even better if the Shadow had begun to weep in front of me or had allowed me to weep to my heart’s content in his house. I looked at him. His face was rigid, and his features seemed chiseled from stone. In his eyes were what I imagined to be the larvae of tears his severity had killed.