The Mirage

13

One day during the week that followed our meeting with my father, we received a visit from my brother Medhat. When I took a good look at his face this time, I could see that he was the spitting image of our father, and I wondered with some alarm what his lifestyle and morals would be like. Would he resemble his father in those areas the way he did in his physical constitution? I gave him a strange look that day that no one took any notice of. At the same time, I loved him dearly, just as he loved us. When my mother chided him for not visiting us more often, he said to her, “You, of all people, know what madmen’s morals are like!”

His quip sent me into gales of laughter, and I looked over at my brother with gratitude.

Then he turned toward me and said regretfully, “I heard about what happened during your last meeting with our father.”

“Did he tell you about it?” asked my mother with interest.

“No,” he said with a laugh. “Uncle Adam the gatekeeper did.”

“The gatekeeper!” I cried censoriously, feeling quite indignant. “Was he eavesdropping?”

“No,” Medhat assured me. “He has no need to, since my father fills him in on every little thing that happens to him. Uncle Adam is father’s long-time confidant and hears everything that’s on his mind, though most of the time he’s the butt of his sharp tongue. I can’t tell you how badly I feel about the attitude he took toward Grandpa. I wish I could have seen him here today so that I could kiss his hand and apologize to him.”

We went on talking for a long time. Medhat was a skilled conversationalist who knew how to communicate with ease and warmth. His laugh was loud like his father’s, though without his father’s coldness or harshness. Hence, it wasn’t long before I’d come to love and admire him, and I wished I had some of his joviality and ease of expression. Eventually the conversation came around to the subject of his future. He’d completed the Intermediate Agricultural Certificate in the summer of that year, and he said, “I went to see my uncle in Fayoum in hopes that he might help me find a job through one of his acquaintances, but he didn’t take to the idea of my looking for work with the government. Instead, he proposed that I practice on his farm for a high wage with the idea that he would rent out some land to me in the near future. I saw his offer as a way to start making a good living through agriculture, so I accepted it.”

As for my mother, she wasn’t so sanguine about the idea.

“Wouldn’t it be more respectable to get a job with the government?” she objected.

My brother let forth a long laugh, then said, “My diploma doesn’t qualify me for a decent job. But my uncle can give me valuable work opportunities and the chance to make a fortune.”

“And live the rest of your life in Fayoum?”

“It’s a suburb of Cairo!” he replied consolingly.

“For so long I’ve hoped for the day when you could be on your own and we could live together!”

He kissed her hand gently and said with a smile, “You’ll see me so often, you’ll get sick of me!”

Then he bade us farewell and departed.

Heaving a deep sigh, my mother said forlornly, “He spent the first half of his life in that madman’s house, and he’ll spend the latter half off in Fayoum!”

After a moment’s reflection, she said as if talking to herself, “His uncle didn’t make that offer just because he happens to like him so much. He must be planning to marry Medhat to one of his daughters.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” I asked ingenuously.

In response, she cast me a strange look. More than once she began to speak, but thought better of it and held her tongue.

My mother’s hunch proved correct. It wasn’t long before we received a letter from Medhat, informing us of his engagement to his paternal cousin, telling us the wedding date, and inviting us to attend. Scandalized that he would have become engaged without consulting her first, my mother made no attempt to conceal her indignation.

“Do you see how that madman’s brother has gone and stolen my son?” she asked my grandfather furiously.

We didn’t attend because I fell ill not long before the wedding and was bedridden for two weeks. Hence, my mother forgot all about the wedding with its joys and sorrows. And thus it was that Medhat’s nuptials were attended by neither his mother nor his father.

Commenting sardonically as usual, my grandfather said, “God created this family as one of the wonders of mankind. Every family is a unit except this one, which is scattered this way and that and never comes together. O God, Your pardon and good pleasure!”

* * *

The summer drew to a close and it was nearly time for the schools to be back in session, so my grandfather enrolled me in Saidiya. We went there together, and on the way he said, “If you were really a man, you wouldn’t need me to come with you, but you’re seventeen years old and you still don’t know the way to Giza. Memorize the route we take to get there. I was an officer at your age!”

My grandfather was putting on a show of discontent and offense. However, in my heart I sensed that he was happy, even overjoyed, and I could feel his affection wrapped about me. Consequently, it shamed me to think of all the trouble he was going to for my sake even though by this time he was a seventy-year-old man.

When we came home, he thumped me gently with his cane, saying, “You’re now a student at Saidiya, so do your best and make us proud. I want to see you an officer before I pass away.”

And I prayed with all my heart for him to be granted length of days.

He fell silent for quite some time. Then, without any apparent occasion, he said, “Back in my generation, a primary school certificate was a great thing. In fact, it was rightly considered the equivalent of the highest degrees they give out these days.”

Then he continued with a nod of his head, saying, “Those were the days! And we were real men!”