The Mirage

7

For the first time in my life I had a fruitful year of study, sitting safely and placidly before my venerable teacher and being taught the principles of Arabic and arithmetic. Despite the fact that, as usual, the hours dragged on heavily and miserably, I was at last taking my first steps along the path of learning. In order to ensure that the teacher treated me well, I had my mother sit near the door to the teacher’s room so that I could summon her to the rescue if need be. And it’s no wonder that I felt as I did, since the memory of the two years I’d spent in Roda School — from the teachers’ blows to the pupils’ assaults — were still fresh in my mind. Up to that point, I had yet to comprehend the fact that education was an unavoidable duty that I’d spend a good part of my life fulfilling. Instead, I viewed it as a punishment that had been inflicted on me for some unknown reason, and I still held out the hope that some day my grandfather would relent and exempt me from it altogether.

As for my mother, she was no happier than I was. She was enduring torment of another, more brutal sort. She’d grown more dejected during those days, and the minute she found herself alone, she would break into bitter tears. Whenever she was with my grandfather, she would speak to him about the matter that was robbing her of sleep. In just a few months I would be nine years old, and once I reached that age, my father would have the right to reclaim me. In fact, he was certain to do so, just as he had my sister and brother before me. The same danger had loomed over us when I turned seven. However, my grandfather had written a letter to my paternal uncle, who was an influential farmer in Fayoum, asking him to intercede with my father and persuade him to leave me in my grandfather’s care until I was nine years old. By a miracle from heaven, the intercession yielded the hoped-for result. Now, however, I was approaching my ninth birthday, and I was sure to be wrested from my mother’s arms this time unless my father waived his right to take me back.

One day my mother began weeping in my grandfather’s presence. She said, “I lost Radiya and Medhat, and I haven’t set eyes on them for nine years now. Kamil is all I have left. He’s my only consolation in this life, and I don’t know what I’ll do if the man takes him away from me!”

My grandfather shook his gray head crossly, as this topic never failed to distress him.

“And what can I do about it?” he asked. “This is the ruling of Islamic law, and we have no choice in the matter. Besides, the man to whom you’re referring is his father, at least, and not some stranger.”

“His father!” she cried indignantly. “Do you call that monster a father? Poor Radiya and Medhat, living in the house that drunkard’s turned into a tavern! He doesn’t have a fatherly bone in his body. Kamil has grown up in my care and received my love and affection, and he doesn’t have any experience with perverse creatures like his father. If the man takes him, Kamil will perish there with him, and I’ll perish here alone!”

Choked with tears, she fell silent. After she’d caught her breath, she continued, “Baba, can you imagine Kamil being able to live away from his mother? It’s these two hands of mine that feed him, dress him, and put him to bed. He’s afraid of his own shadow. He’s scared out of his wits by the chirping of a cricket! How can Islamic law allow such a child to be taken out of his mother’s care?”

My grandfather knit his brow wearily, seemingly annoyed at her objection. However, his face wasn’t an accurate reflection of what he felt inside. There were many times when he would seem angry or displeased even though his heart was full of tender compassion. All he said at the time was, “That’s enough complaining and crying. If he’s meant to stay with us, he will, and if God wills for him to go to his father, there’s nothing we can do to resist His decree.”

This is what he said. However, what he did was something else altogether. One day, taking matters firmly in hand, he went to my father to negotiate with him over the matter of leaving me in his care. If the truth be told, my grandfather loved me deeply. He loved me because I was a companion to him in his old age, and because childhood has a way of stirring something deep in the heart of the elderly. He also loved me because he loved my mother, who had stayed by his side after her mother’s death, nurturing him with her affection, compassion, and tender, loving care. He went to my father and we stayed behind waiting, our hands on our hearts. Never as long as I live will I forget the agony my mother endured during that wait. Unable to sit still or concentrate on a thing, sometimes she would talk to me and sometimes she would talk to herself. At other times she would invite me to join her in making earnest entreaties to God, asking Him to crown my grandfather’s efforts with success. I observed her forlornly until, infected with her anxiety, I broke down and cried. We waited for a long time — or so it seemed to us — shrouded in a mantle of sorrow and worry, our eyes swimming with tears and our tongues uttering prayers of urgent supplication. Then at last we heard the ringing of carriage bells. We went rushing to the balcony and saw my grandfather crossing the courtyard with his usual heavy steps. Then we hurried back to open the door for him. He entered without saying a word, eyeing us with a look whose meaning we couldn’t divine.

He proceeded to his room, so we followed him, but my mother didn’t have the courage to ask him what news he brought.

“O Lord! O Lord!” she whispered in a trembling voice.

He took off his fez slowly and deliberately, all the while avoiding my mother’s eyes. He sat down on a large chair near his bed, gave us a long look, then said in that gruff voice of his as though he were talking to himself, “The man’s a criminal! And what do you expect from a criminal?”

My mother’s faced turned white as a sheet, her lips began to tremble, and there was a look of despair in her eyes. I began looking back and forth anxiously and fearfully between my grandfather and my mother. My grandfather left us in our misery for a little while. Then, taking pity on us, he removed his mask of gloom. Breaking into a raucous laugh, he said triumphantly, “Don’t kill yourself with grief, Umm Radiya. The old devil hardly put up a fight!”

We were speechless at first. Then our faces lit up with the glad tidings, and my mother’s eyes sparkled with joy. Kneeling before my grandfather and bathing his hand in kisses, she asked fervently, “Really? Really? Has God taken pity on my broken heart?”

My grandfather began twisting his mustache with satisfaction as my mother asked again with the same fervor, “Did you see Radiya and Medhat?”

He shook his head regretfully, saying, “They were at school.”

She uttered an impassioned prayer for them, her eyes filled with tears. My grandfather hadn’t been in the custom of visiting them, since he disliked my father and didn’t expect to be well received in his house. He then related to us how, when he met with my father on the veranda, the latter had had a bottle of liquor and a full glass in front of him. He told us that my father had received him with bewilderment and surprise, and that the only work he had left to do in life was to drink. Perhaps, my grandfather said, this deterioration on his part was what had caused him to go along with the proposal rather than clinging to his old stubborn ways.

A first he seemed skeptical, my grandfather said. However, when things became clearer to him, he laughed derisively, yet without obstinacy or anger, and said simply, “I’m in no mood to raise anybody or be a wet nurse all over again. Keep him if you want, but don’t ask me for a red cent. That’s an explicit condition! If I’m asked for a single penny in the coming days, I’ll take him away from you, and you won’t lay eyes on him as long as I live.”

My grandfather agreed to my father’s condition. In fact, he’d had a feeling even before going to see him that he would make this sort of demand. Even so, it came as a shock to him that the man expressed no interest in seeing his son, and that he didn’t even ask about me once.

Then my grandfather said, “Ru’ba Laz isn’t a human being anymore. The man’s finished.”

“Poor dear Radiya and Medhat!” muttered my mother glumly.

However, my grandfather said reassuringly, “Radiya is seventeen years old now and Medhat is sixteen. They aren’t children anymore.”

* * *

Thus, having been rescued from the fear that had loomed so large on our path, we went back to our usual peace and quiet. I carried on with my studies at home, plodding my way laboriously through them. Another year passed, autumn rolled around, and there was frequent talk of school, so I knew for a certainty that my return to prison drew nigh.

One day I said to my mother, “If you love me so much that you won’t agree to let my father take me back, why do you let school separate us?”

Laughing that delicate laugh of hers, she said, “For shame! How can you say that when you’re the perfect man? Don’t you want to be a high-ranking officer some day like your grandfather? If you leave school, what can you do but work as a fuul vendor or a tram conductor!”

My grandfather took me to the Aqqadin School in Heliopolis, and this time I passed the entrance examination. The academic year began and I began reluctantly attending school. The carriage would take me there in the morning and bring me home in the afternoon. Given this new arrangement, my grandfather forbade my mother to escort me herself as she’d done during my days at the Roda School. Hence, I returned once more to school and suffered anew the lessons, the regime, the teachers’ cruelty, and the other students’ derision. My entire school life was misery from start to finish. Moreover, my misery was reinforced by the fact that at home I was an undisputed sovereign, and at school a dutiful slave. Year after year I lived the confused, schizophrenic life of someone who at home is showered with affection, and at school is the target of his classmates’ ridicule and blows from the teachers’ rod.

I earned the teachers’ hostility thanks to my stupidity and dullness of mind. Some of them even dubbed me “the first-rate dunce.” Whenever my mathematics teacher finished explaining a lesson, he would ask me about it and keep after me until I’d given him a satisfactory answer. Then, with a sigh of relief, he would turn to the other students and say, “If Mr. Kamil has figured it out, then you must have, too!” And the class would roar with laughter.

As for the pupils, they made fun of me whenever they got the chance. My inability to make friends is a bitter reality of which there can be no doubt, since it’s something at which I’ve never succeeded in my entire life. The fact is that I’m no worse than a lot of people who enjoy happy friendships. However, I’m painfully shy, I love solitude and isolation, and I’m wary of strangers. What makes my disposition even more unhappy is the fact that by nature I’m withdrawn, unable to express myself without faltering and searching in vain for the right word. Never in my life have I been good even at talking, much less joking or playfulness. For all these reasons the other students accused me of being disagreeable. It so pained me to be described in this way that I asked my mother one day, “Mama, am I disagreeable?”

She stared at me in horror.

“Who said that about you?” she asked me tartly.

“All the other students,” I said hesitantly.

“Well, their tongues ought to be cut out!” she cried, furious. “They just envy you for your perfect manners and the carriage that takes you to school while they dawdle along on foot! Don’t you dare make friends with any of them.”

As if I were in need of such advice! Thus, I endured life at school alone, with hostility and hatred peering at me from all sides. If I’d taken part in the pleasures school afforded, it might not have been all that bad. However, my inordinate shyness forced me to boycott the various activities others were involved in, from scouting, to ball, to physical education. My mother wouldn’t even agree to let me go on field trips for fear that some harm might come to me. The other students would talk about the pyramids, the Sphinx, the Museum of Antiquities, and Fustat while I listened in on their conversations feeling bewildered and disheartened, as though I were listening to tourists relating stories about distant lands. I can hardly describe the embarrassment that came over me when I realized that all I’d seen of vast, far-flung Cairo — the only city I’d ever inhabited — were a few streets within walking distance of our house. My sole consolation during those days was to sit alone with my mother on the balcony or in our room, where we would talk for hours on end. Thinking of the teacher’s rod would remind me that there was a homework assignment I needed to do before going to bed. So I’d take to the book in loathing and disgust, studying wearily and without enthusiasm until, before long, I’d begin nodding off and sleep would dim my eyes.

* * *

One day in religion class the following verse from the Qur’an was recited to us: “At length, when there comes the Deafening Noise, that day shall a man flee from his own brother, and from his mother and his father.” I can’t recall ever being as upset by anything as I was by those words. I couldn’t bear the thought of fleeing from my mother on any day, no matter how horrible it happened to be, or of abandoning her to such a day’s horrors with her delicate, willowy frame and her gentle green eyes. Not realizing what I was doing, I interrupted the teacher, crying, “No! No!”

My interruption caused an astonished silence to fall over the classroom, since I usually didn’t utter a word, and no one understood what I’d meant. However, it wasn’t long before they broke into raucous laughter. Furious, the teacher held me responsible for disturbing the peace. Coming up to me in a rage, he gave me a forceful, exasperated slap in the face. I welcomed the slap as an excuse to cry, since I’d been fighting back the tears valiantly, but to no avail.

These words from the Holy Qur’an shook me to the core. They were the first portent to me of life’s tragedy.