The Mirage

18

In his efforts to find me a job in the Ministry of War, my grandfather sought the good offices of a high-ranking army officer who had once worked as a petty lieutenant under his command in Sudan. And his efforts were crowned with success. However, the officer informed him that I might be appointed to Salloum. When my grandfather mentioned this, my mother’s face clouded over.

“Salloum!” she cried in horror. “Don’t you know that Kamil wouldn’t be able to live by himself?”

She thought that Salloum was a nearby town like Zagazig, or possibly one as far away as Tanta. When she found out that it was really next to the border with Libya, she let a nervous laugh escape, thinking it was a joke.

“Find a job for him yourself!” shouted my grandfather in frustration. “Or appoint him to work in your lap and give me a break!”

However, continuing to spare no effort on my behalf, he approached old acquaintances of his who had been born in the nineteenth century and who had worked under his command many years before. They may have been touched by his venerable age and his long, active military career, not to mention the memories he stirred up in them, so they promised to do their best. And sure enough, they found me a job in the warehousing section of the Ministry of War’s general administrative office. The ministry was only three tram stops and a ten-minute walk from our house. Hence, my mother approved and was visibly pleased. The justifications for the appointment were presented, and I was seen by the general medical committee in keeping with routine procedures. In short, I became an employee of the government. The feeling I had as I left home for the ministry for the first time was a complex one: it included an element of pride, as well as a sense of delight over being liberated from slavery to both home and school. At the same time, it wasn’t without an element of anxiety of the sort that would come over me whenever I embarked on some new venture.

My heart aflutter, I proceeded toward the stop where I would see “my beloved,” since as of this auspicious day, our paths had become one, if only for a few stops. Even if the job had involved this alone, it would have provided me with sufficient happiness and well-being. Taking precautions on behalf of my cowardly heart, I stood at the far end of the sidewalk lest I faint from being too close to her. A short while later she came along, striding by with that dignified but lively gait of hers, and my heart received her with a jubilant throb. I kept my gaze lowered, though I was in a state of elation that turned the world around me into a chorus of heavenly praises. The tram arrived and we boarded together. It was the first time we’d been in the same enclosed place together, and the feel of it coursed through my body like electricity. I wished the tram would keep on going forever without stopping. When I got off, I crossed the street hurriedly to the sidewalk, then looked back at the ladies’ compartment, where I caught a glimpse of her back as she pored over a book she was holding. As the tram began to move again, she suddenly turned and looked behind her, and her eyes fell on me. Then she turned her back to me again. A rush of excitement went through me from head to toe. Frozen in place, my eyes clung to the tram until I could no longer make out any of its features. Then I proceeded on my way, oblivious to everything around me, intoxicated by the glance that heaven had so generously bestowed. Puzzled and amazed, I wondered: Why did she turn around? What would have prompted her to do that? Indeed, what could possibly have prompted her to do so but my spirit’s unspoken invitation? A radio picks up sound over the airwaves even from inside our homes. So what would there be to prevent someone from answering the summons of another spirit charged with amorous affection and desire? Enchanted by the thought, I jubilantly embraced the belief that my spirit had an effect on hers. But, Lord have mercy, how I’d trembled under the impact of that fleeting glance! Do you suppose she recognized me as the young man who had looked at her for a moment at the tram stop three months earlier?

By this time I was approaching the ministry, and I gradually began waking from my reverie. Then, as though I were bidding farewell to this passing moment of ecstasy, I said to myself: I love her! This is love, plain and simple.

Then I exited the world of amorous love to enter the world of government. I introduced myself to the director, who introduced me in turn to my nine office mates. This was a small number by comparison to the students I’d had to deal with. Besides, they were full-grown men, so I couldn’t possibly expect them to treat me with mockery or disdain. I hoped with all my heart that I was beginning a new, rich life, and since no work had been assigned to me that day, I had some moments in which to dwell on happy thoughts. So I pondered the freedom I’d been looking forward to and which I hoped would rescue me from the prison of home and the slavery I’d known as school, as well as the enchanting look my soul had managed to wrest from the depths of the spirit by dint of its strength and potency.

* * *

Embarking on my new life full of hope, I won the first type of friendship I’d ever known in my life, namely, what they term “office friendship.” It’s a kind of compulsory friendship that’s imposed on people by virtue of being coworkers in the same office. I delighted in it at first. After all, for someone like me who’d never had a friend in his entire life, it was the only way I could have responded to being in the midst of nine men who called me by name and who received me and bade me farewell in the friendliest of ways. But alas, my severe shyness stood as an impenetrable barrier between us. Then over time, experience demonstrated to me that it was a species of friendship that isn’t worth grieving over. It starts in the morning with a greeting and pleasantries, but by noon it may have been transmuted into some unpleasant incident that ends with a warning or a punishment. And the worst thing of all was that I had no real work of my own to do. Rather, there wasn’t a single one of them who didn’t assign me to mechanical work that I would carry out in servile obedience. It wasn’t unusual for them to spend most of the day chattering, smoking, and drinking coffee while I sat bent over a stack of papers in a kind of semi-slavery. Shrewd folks that they were, they’d no doubt picked up on the fact that I was inexperienced and unsure of myself, and they took advantage of my weakness in the worst possible way. So, within a month of the time I’d begun, I’d grown weary of the new life, and I concluded with a certainty that I’d gone from the frying pan into the fire.

To make matters worse, I discovered that my difficulty in keeping my mind on a task hadn’t left me. I made careless errors time and time again, as a result of which I repeatedly became the object of derisive criticisms and warnings from my supervisors. It was as though I were back in school with its students and teachers. The bitterness of my past life returned to haunt me, and I concluded that I’d never know true rest as long as I had to have dealings with a single human being. However, I nursed my wounds in secret, and never once did I rebel openly against anything that made me miserable. Rather, it was my wont always to obey with a bleeding heart filled with pent-up rage.

What made my suffering even more acute was the fact that I could see no way to change my life or any hope, even a distant one, of deliverance. When I was in school, I had sometimes derived the strength to endure my misery from the hope that it would be over some day and I’d become a free, independent man. Now, by contrast, I saw nothing before me but a dreary, harsh future from which the only escape would be death. I realized that relief would elude me for the rest of my life, and that I’d always be afflicted with a secret desire to flee. But where would I flee this time? The root of my misfortune lay not only in my helplessness in the face of obstacles, but also in my tendency to blow them entirely out of proportion. I’d pitted my mind against my soul in a terrible war of nerves. I’d never accustomed myself to living in reality or bearing up under its difficulties. Consequently, I knew nothing of the philosophy of being content with one’s lot or making light of one’s woes. Nor was I capable of living by the philosophy of power or revolution. Hence, whenever I was presented with something that was unbearable — and life in its entirety was unbearable as far as I was concerned — my sickly imagination would go and make a mountain out of a molehill. I faced difficulties with what appeared on the surface to be patient endurance. In reality, however, I would retreat within myself in a deadly state of misery and anxiety. Consequently, no place I went was without an enemy, whether real or imagined. The students and teachers had been my old enemies, and my fellow employees had become my new ones.

* * *

But she was my solace and delight! Life was a barren desert expanse, and she alone was the lush, green oasis in which the soul could find refuge. I swear to God, the only good thing about my job was the fact that its path led me to her doorstep. Every morning I would await her appearance the way one awaits the rising of the sun, and when I saw her approach with the sprightliness of a gazelle and the stateliness of a peacock, I’d retreat to the distant end of the tram stop in a near panic, asking God to calm my throbbing heart. Then I’d steal a glance at her while avoiding any direct eye contact between us, since that would have been an event of such moment that only the fittest would have been able to endure it. When the tram arrived, we would both board, though she had no idea what delight I took in its transporting us together. Then I’d get off as it took her to her unknown destination, attended by my prayers for the Lord to grant her happiness and protection. Thereafter her image would remain suspended in my mind’s eye, spreading over me a blanket of warmth and intimacy in the loneliness of my new prison. But how long would I be able to go on in this state? Anguish had assailed my heart, and waiting had become a torment.

My agony was made all the worse by the fact that I’d begun seeing her in the afternoons as well as in the mornings, since I’d leave home in the late afternoon the way many other employees liked to do without objection from my mother, who could no longer protest against my doing so. I would rush to my old tram stop across from her house, then stand there with longing in my eyes, waiting to see whether my “sunshine” would emerge over the horizon. Sometimes I’d see the mother, the father, the brother, or the sister, and other times I would see her in a simple but elegant house dress that would send tremors through me.

I could no longer see any hope for my life in anything but the prospect of an intimate companion. So I fell completely in love with her. I was possessed by a genuine, fervent desire for the happiness which, as far as I could see, would only be realized if I could lose myself in her, and she in me. Even so, I wasn’t unaware of the obstacles. (Indeed, had it ever been my wont to do anything but make too much of the obstacles in my path?) I hadn’t forgotten, for example, that I was still in the beginning of my career and that my salary was only seven and a half pounds a month. Then, to my dismay, I noticed that there were two other men who stood with us at the tram stop in the morning and who had a habit of regarding the girl’s face with marked attention. One of them, whom I would sometimes see coming out of the same building in which the girl lived, was around forty years old and had a dignified, serious look about him. He also had the air of a distinguished employee. As for the other, he was around thirty years old, rather obese, but well-dressed and prestigious looking, and his gestures and way of looking at others gave him an air of smugness and self-satisfaction. I was surprised to find them looking at her in this way. There was no reason for surprise, of course, but I had supposed — and what a laughable supposition it was! — that I was the first person ever to have discovered this treasure. Indignant and annoyed, I found the worm of jealousy writhing in the depths of my heart. She never looked to the right or to the left. Yet I wondered: Is she really as ignorant of them as she is of me? Especially of the neighbor who lived in her building? My heart shrank in alarm and despair, and I glared at her angrily as though she were responsible for people’s interest in her.

Meanwhile, my life followed its familiar rhythm, divided between a loathsome job and a peculiar, uncertain love.

At that time our household would have been considered a happy one, since the hearts of those who dwelled there had no reason to fear. After all, its aging patriarch had ceased his fretting, and my mother was content with the lot that had been apportioned to me and to her.

One day, though, my grandfather said to me derisively, “Have some shame, man, and buy yourself your own bed! Do you plan to go on sleeping in your mother’s arms forever?”

And in fact, I did buy myself a bed. However, I set it up in the same room — the room in which I’d come into the world — and which went on accommodating the two of us together.