The Mirage

17

Then something happened to me that may have been trivial in itself, but that changed the course of my life. My academic life was a never-ending battle between my slothful mind and my itinerant soul. It was a battle that yielded — as it had in the past — acute suffering but very little fruit. My mind’s tendency to wander had become a dominant character trait that had taken over all my mental faculties. I’d even begun worrying that I might be thirty-five years old by the time I graduated from university! At the same time, of the critical things I’d learned about what the study of law involves, there was one thing I hadn’t realized I would have to face. This thing — to which other students hardly attached any importance, and which they actually took to with gusto, viewing it as a kind of sport — was the study of rhetoric. Once a week in a large lecture hall, all first-year students attended a lecture on public speaking. During the first two months we heard lectures on the theoretical aspects of the art, after which the practical training was to begin. The professor began inviting students to give extemporaneous speeches on various topics. They would speak fluently, with stentorian voices, courage, and aplomb, and I would listen to them with a mixture of amazement and profound admiration. I was taken by their glibness and guts, and astounded at their ability to handle such a frightening situation in front of such a huge gathering. Hence, I volunteered to be shy in their stead, so much so that my forehead would be dripping with perspiration.

Then one day what should I find but that the professor was calling my name: “Kamil Ru’ba Laz!”

I was sitting in the very back row — my favorite place, since no one would notice me there — and when I heard my name I rose to my feet in a reflex reaction.

The sound of my name aroused derisive attention and one of the students whispered, “That’s Lazughli’s grandson.”

Another asked, “Is ‘Lazughli’ a noun or a verb?”

Meanwhile, I stood there in a state of shock, my heart pounding wildly.

“Come up to the podium,” said the professor.

I froze in place, however, too flustered to move. I wanted to apologize, but the distance between the professor and me would have required me to raise my voice loud enough for everyone to hear me, so despite my desire to speak, I kept quiet.

Looking at me in bewilderment, the professor said, “What are you just standing there for? Come to the podium!”

Heads kept turning in my direction until I felt as though I were going to burn up under their stares.

As the professor urged me to come forward with a gesture of his hand, I asked reluctantly, “Why?”

My question provoked quite a number of laughs, and the professor said testily, “Why? So that you can give a speech like the others!”

In a low voice that couldn’t be heard beyond the last two rows of the lecture hall, I said, “I don’t know how to give a speech.”

Since my voice had quite naturally not reached the professor, a student sitting nearby volunteered to relay the message.

“He says he doesn’t know how to give a speech!” he shouted sarcastically.

In an encouraging tone the professor said, “This is a training session, specially designed to help people who aren’t good at giving speeches. Come.”

So, seeing no way of escape, I moved my feet painfully and with what felt like a superhuman effort, as though I were being led to the gallows. I ascended the podium in a stupor, then stood there with my left side to the students, staring at the professor with a look that bespoke both resignation and a plea for mercy.

Seeing how ill at ease I was, the professor said kindly, “Look at your classmates, compose yourself, and speak as if you were all alone. One has to get used to these situations, since a lawyer’s life is full of them. Otherwise, it’s a farce. How will you stand in court tomorrow, as either a defense lawyer or as a prosecutor? Gather your courage, then deliver a speech to this audience, urging them to contribute to a particular charity.”

Everyone looked at me with rapt attention the likes of which even the most eloquent orators wouldn’t receive. I gazed into the faces looking at me without seeing a thing, and I was filled with such dismay and such a deadly faintness of heart I nearly swooned. I was enveloped by that acute sense of despair that grips one by the neck in nightmares, and not for a moment did it occur to me to think about the topic. I may have forgotten it entirely, and the only thing that went through my mind was the question: When will this ordeal be over?

Weary of waiting, the professor said, “Speak, and don’t be afraid of making a mistake. Say whatever’s on your mind.”

Lord, when would this torment come to an end? It was clear that no one was going to take pity on me. On the contrary, the students had started winking at each other and cracking jokes at my expense. One of them, as if he were warning the others not to look down on me, said, “This is how Saad Zaghloul started out.”

“And this is how he ended!” added another.

A third shouted, “Listen to the eloquence of silence!”

The place was filled with noisy clamor and laughter. My head spun and I started having difficulty breathing. Then, determined to put an end to the miserable situation, I left the podium and headed for the exit without paying any attention to the professor as he called me to come back. And all the while I was pursued by the demons’ loud clamor as their derisive laughter rang in my ears. I went out wandering aimlessly, frantic and delirious, till I ended up at the tram stop.

Over and over I said to myself with bitter resolve, “I’ll never go back, I’ll never go back.”

This resolve was the healing balm I needed for the wound I’d received that day. Indeed, I would never go back. They would never lay eyes on me again, and never again would I expose myself to their contemptuous grins. Besides, what was the use of going back to the Faculty of Law if a lawyer’s life was full of such situations? It would be better to draw the curtain altogether on the era of academics. I’d been a slave to torment long enough. My new resolve comforted me in the face of all the humiliation and embarrassment I’d endured. In fact, it was like a breath of fresh air to my suffocating heart, and it caused me to forget my pain and bitterness. I returned home with nothing on my mind but this same determination.

After lunch, I told my mother and grandfather about the affliction I’d suffered that day.

My voice choked with tears, I said, “This is an unbearable life, and I’ll never go back to the university.”

Shocked by what I’d said, my grandfather rejoined, “Are you really a man? If you’d been born female, you would have made the best of girls! Do you want to quit your education when you’re on the last lap just because you weren’t able to say a couple of words? I swear, if your mother had been in your place, she would have delivered a speech to the people there!”

My mother began clenching her right hand, then releasing it in a kind of spasmodic motion as she said, “They envied him. O Lord, they envied him!”

My grandfather tried to talk me out of my decision, sometimes with gentle persuasion and other times with threats, but desperation had entrenched me in my obstinacy, and I wouldn’t bend. When his patience had run out, he said, “So then, the whole year is a loss. There’s no point in enrolling you in some other faculty when we’re already more than two months into the school year.”

Fearful that I might be cast once again into the educational hellhole, I said, “There’s no use in my going on with my education.”

Interrupting me in a pained voice, my mother cried, “Don’t say that, Kamil! You will continue your education, whether in this institution or in another one!”

Clapping his hands together, my grandfather said, “He’s lost his mind. And this is the end of the pampering!”

However, I was like someone defending himself in the face of certain destruction. Knowing I no longer had it in me to cope with lessons, examinations and other students, I cried desperately, “I can’t! I can’t! Have mercy on me!”

A fierce argument then broke out which I handled with a strength I hadn’t known I had in me — a strength derived from fear and despair. Finally my grandfather fell silent, furious and exasperated.

After a period of enervating silence, he asked me, “Do you want to get a job with nothing but a high school diploma?”

“Yes!” I replied, without looking up.

When I stole a glance at him, he was calm, his brow was furrowed, and he was fiddling with his silver mustache. I then looked over at my mother, whose eyes were filled with tears. Even so, I felt certain that my grandfather’s opposition was only half in earnest, and that if he had really wanted to break my resolve, he would have had the last word. The fact was that the matter of our future occupied his thinking a great deal during those days, especially now that he’d entered old age, and he may even have been relieved at the suggestion that he help me find work, since in this way he could set his mind at rest concerning my mother’s fate.

Thus it was that my academic life drew to a close barely two months after I’d enrolled in the Faculty of Law. However, I didn’t find the happiness I’d dreamed of. It’s true, of course, that not for a moment did I consider going back to the cruel experience of academic life. At the same time, though, I felt an intense need to portray myself as an innocent victim, making up hollow excuses for myself for having withdrawn from the pursuit of knowledge and fled its institutions. Although this attempt of mine succeeded to some extent with others or, at least, with my mother — my true-blue friend for right or wrong — I just barely managed to convince myself. I was filled with a bitterness and discontent that triggered within me a desire to discipline and punish myself. This desire took the form of an offensive launched against myself, and I subjected myself willingly for the first time to an honest confrontation with my faults and shortcomings.

I saw my life as it was: childish, fugitive dreams, timidity and fear that put aspirations to death, and an utter self-centeredness that had doomed me to an isolation devoid of a single friend or companion and to an ignorance of the world and everything in it. There was no time and no place, no politics and no sports. As for the large metropolis in which I’d been born and raised, all I knew of it was a couple of streets, as though I’d been living in a cell in the desert. A heavy pall of gloom settled over me, and I mulled over my grief in a deadly, heartfelt loneliness. However, my mother didn’t abandon me for a single moment of those dark days, nor could she bear to stand opposed to me for long. Hence, it wasn’t long before she abandoned her opposition and came over to my side, pretending to be pleased and content.

One day she said to me consolingly, “The best thing lies in what God has chosen. Do we have the power to do anything for ourselves? Before long you’ll become a responsible man, and it will be your turn to pamper your mother and repay some of the debt you owe her.”

We spent long hours together in which I basked in her gentle, healing words. It was thanks to her alone that my ordeal passed, my heart was opened anew to life, and I ceased to labor under the weight of scruples, misgivings, and obsessive thoughts.