The Mirage

41

I awoke to find sunlight filling half the room beneath the open window. My glance fell on the mirror, and in a flash, memories of the previous night came back to me. I looked around the room and found it empty. Realizing that my beloved had left while I was still fast asleep, my heart welled up with affection and I sent her a greeting and a prayer. I told myself that the travails of engagement and nuptials had come to an end and that the future held nothing for me but unruffled tranquility. As I reviewed my memories of the previous day, my soul went roaming through a maze of intoxication and happiness. At the same time, I was aware that I hadn’t even begun yet, and that I had yet to record a single word in the huge tome of married life. I got out of bed and looked at the clock to find that it was past ten in the morning. I was appalled at how late I’d slept, and immediately thought of my mother. I wondered what she would think of such an extended slumber, and I felt pained and embarrassed. What made the embarrassment even more painful was that nothing whatsoever had happened to justify such a late start to my day, and my happiness was tainted with a touch of distress. It was as if I were realizing for the first time that the night before hadn’t been without its failures. Nevertheless, I resisted this treacherous feeling and, refusing to be alone with it, left the room. I was met in the parlor by the servant, Sabah, who had become part of our family. She congratulated me on “the morning after” and informed me that the bride was waiting for me in the dining room. I went there and found her sitting at the table like a rose in full bloom. Delighted to see her, I came up to her, my face beaming, and kissed her on the cheek. We had our breakfast, which consisted of tea and milk, eggs, and cake and as we ate we engaged in ordinary chitchat: I asked her what time she’d woken up, and she told me she’d gotten up at eight o’clock, explaining that she always woke up early no matter how late she’d gone to bed. My mother came in and congratulated us together, then sat with us for a while. Then we moved back to our room and spent the day in sweet conversation without either of us feeling the least bit weary or bored. The forlornness I’d felt earlier took its leave of me, and as I entered into the joy of being with her, I told her the story of my love from beginning to end. We punctuated our conversation with happy kisses, and I asked her when she’d first felt my presence in her world. She said she’d first noticed me hovering around her and looking up at the balcony a year or so earlier, and that her mother had noticed it at around the same time. It was then that I’d become the talk of the household. Whenever the young servant girl caught a glimpse of me from the window as I approached from Manyal, she would say with a laugh, “Here comes Miss Rabab’s groom!” whereupon she would get a stern rebuke. When I’d been slow to take a step, however, they’d become suspicious of me, and her mother had forbidden her to appear in the window or on the balcony at the times when I was at the tram stop.

“Didn’t you feel anything toward me?” I asked her anxiously.

She smiled gently and opened her mouth to speak. However, she sealed her lips again without saying a word. I felt a voracious hunger to hear something that would bring me some solace, so I pressed her to speak.

Then in a voice that was barely audible she said, “I don’t know.… I don’t know when I began to love you.”

With this there came over me a drugged feeling that I wished I could sleep on eternally. I took her face in my hands, drinking in the sight of her lips made fuller by the pressure of my palms. Then I placed my lips on hers and melted in a long kiss. I found my beloved captivating, her conversation sweet, her wit quick, and her intelligence astounding, so much so that my own conversation by comparison with hers sounded dull and insipid. She was so congenial and witty, I knew that her dignified bearing was simply a reflection of her good manners and modesty. For some reason I’d once imagined her to be a paragon of self-control — of aloofness, in fact. But in her kisses I experienced a warmth that would melt the heart, and in her eyes I glimpsed depth of feeling and refined sensitivity. She broke into a natural spontaneity more quickly than I had expected her to, a development that may have been encouraged by the exceeding shyness she saw in me.

When night fell and I closed the bedroom door behind us, I told myself with a sense of dread that had come upon me with the approaching darkness: Tonight it will happen, God willing. I’d had no previous experiences with women, and the only sexual life I’d known was the infernal habit from which I’d only recently escaped. However, I’d learned some things by way of hearsay at the ministry that, for all I knew, might or might not do me any good.

I saw my beloved standing in front of the mirror and combing her hair. Delighted by the sight of her tall, willowy frame, I came up to her and wrapped my arms around her. She turned around until I could feel her bosom touch my heart, and I drew her close in passionate affection.

This was love. I realized by instinct that I’d have to bring it down out of the clouds in order to do my duty by her. But how? She rested peacefully against my chest as though she were a sprite formed out of the fabric of pristine clouds, while I myself seemed like a pure, disembodied spirit. How was I to find my body? Suddenly my soul was permeated with feelings of agitation, tension, and fear, all of which were intensified by the previous night’s failure. I hadn’t thought of it as a failure until that morning, and during the day I’d come to the opposite conclusion, or nearly so. At that moment, however, the feeling returned with a hopeless certainty and resignation. Then, gripped by such a deadly shyness that my blood froze and my determination flagged, I was afflicted by a terrible fear of the bed. When I was in it, I could find no excuse for myself, although when I was away from it I could at least find a half-excuse of sorts.

These noxious thoughts went through my head while my beloved was still in my arms. I turned into a lifeless statue and the joy of all joys went the way of the wind. She sighed. She may have been annoyed by the fact that we’d been standing there for so long. Stung by her sigh, I couldn’t bear my inaction any longer. So, picking her up in my arms, I carried my precious bundle to the bed, laid her down gently, then lay down beside her. Filled with longing, I covered her lips, her cheeks, and her neck with quick, copious kisses. Feeling tender and affectionate herself, she encircled my neck with her succulent arm and we lay there next to each other for a long time.

Feelings of love, despair, enjoyment, and fear were doing battle in my heart as though I were in a blazing, trackless desert expanse with delirium tossing me to and fro among the phantoms of joy and the ghosts of fear. I was in a blissful dream, yet fear and hopelessness refused to let go of me. How was I to find deliverance when my body was dead and lifeless? My throat was parched with fear, and I stood bewildered in the face of my impotence and despair, wondering what to do. However, not for a moment did I think of retreating. After all, where was there to flee? On the contrary, despair moved me to take off her robe. My hand found its way to her belt clasp and undid it, and I could feel her bosom shudder beneath mine. I removed one side of the robe to reveal one of her breasts, and her lithe body appeared in a white silk gown that hardly concealed a thing. She made a move to bring the edge of the robe back over her chest, and I removed it again, causing it to reveal the translucent white gown. I gazed at the alluring sight of her body with eyes that agitation had nearly robbed of the ability to see. I was in a pitiful state, indeed. The torment of a dying person struggling desperately to cling to the life of his body couldn’t possibly have been worse than my torment in those moments. Yet in spite of it all, I stubbornly persevered, drawing on my despair and torment for strength, useless though it might be. The timid person doesn’t flee in the midst of the battle, since flight brings humiliation in the face of the enemy. It’s true, of course, that he avoids the battle to begin with and gets as far away from a confrontation as he can. However, once he’s on the battlefield and everyone’s eyes are upon him, flight — no less than the battle itself — becomes more than he can bear.

I brought my beloved into a sitting position and removed the robe from her arms, leaving nothing but her translucent gown and her exposed body. She turned her head away from me and hid it in the pillow. Little did she know that I was consumed with despair, and that this entire scene was nothing but a farce. I felt more pained and ashamed than ever. Even so, I reached out again as though I were still aspiring to some unattainable hope. As I spread her out on the bed, she was trembling with despair and cold.

“I’m afraid,” my beloved said in a whisper.

How outrageous! Who was she afraid of? Her whispered words stung me like a lead-spiked whip. Yet I didn’t stop. Nothing could make me turn back — neither reluctance nor resistance — till I’d seen all I’d hoped to see. What had come over me? It wasn’t just death I was suffering. It was something new, something frightening and disturbing. What had come over me? Lord! My beloved was beautiful and charming, yet ignorance and blind imagination were at work against me. I was blind and inexperienced, someone whose eyes had yet to see the light of life. I’d entertained all sorts of childish fantasies about it. Then when I saw the real thing, I failed to recognize it! It was a tragedy, though if it hadn’t been for the death I was experiencing, it might not have been a tragedy at all. This cruel experience was teaching me that love creates beauty just as beauty creates love. Be that as it may, alongside the despair and shame I was already feeling, I was stricken by panic as well, and there was no more hope. I froze, my beloved’s face buried in the pillow, placing herself at the mercy of her executioner. I froze, not knowing what to do or how to retreat, and in a certain terrible moment I nearly burst out laughing from sheer nervous tension. However, I got hold of myself. The very next moment I had the urge to cry, and if crying weren’t considered shameful, I would have poured out my tormented soul in a river of tears.

Finding my inertia as wearisome as it was frightening, I took her in my arms and kissed her as feelings of pity and grief — for both of us — flowed from my lips. It was a lamentation uttered with kisses. As the minutes and seconds passed, they felt like the teeth of a saw cutting through my neck. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Then the situation became tedious and exhausting. Extricating herself from my embrace with a sprightly motion, she covered herself with her clothes. Sleep seemed like a laughable conclusion to the situation. But what was I to do? My beloved lay down to rest without our eyes meeting, and I don’t know when slumber carried her away. As for me, I remained wakeful and weary, not knowing how I would face her in the morning. What demon had enticed me into marriage? Hadn’t the former torment of longing been more bearable than this? How could my body have let me down? Wasn’t it the same body that would consume fire when I was engaged in my infernal habit? How long would this despair go on? Meanwhile, my head was like a red-hot piece of iron, its thoughts like sparks flying in all directions.