Alaa al-Aswany - The Automobile Club of Egypt

The man opened a pack of red Lucky Strike cigarettes. He held one with two fingers and then tapped it on the back of his hand, before putting it in his mouth and lighting it with a small lighter. He took a deep drag and said, “I am Kamel Gaafar, and this is my sister, Saleha Gaafar.”

“You can’t be!”

He laughed and spoke slowly, “I know that this is a difficult turn of events for you to absorb, but it is true. I am Kamel Abdel Aziz Gaafar and this is my sister, Saleha.”

I stared at his face and, suddenly angry, I snapped, “Listen. I am not going to let you waste my time.”

“Please stay calm until I have explained everything to you.”

“I don’t want an explanation, thank you very much. I have work to do.”

The woman smiled and said, “But we are part of your work,” and the man added, “Actually, we are your work.”

I could not answer. A shiver went through me. I could feel my heart racing. I was sweating and thought I was going to lose consciousness. Almost sympathetically, the man gave a friendly smile and continued, “Sir, please believe me. I am Kamel Gaafar, and this is my sister, Saleha. God alone knows how much we like you. My sister and I are products of your imagination and have come to life. You dreamed us up for your novel. Your imagination led you to write down the details of our lives, and at a certain point as you outlined our characters, we came into being. We have moved from the realm of imagination into that of reality.”

I could not answer. I carried on looking at them. The woman laughed and said, “I can guess just how much this surprise has affected you, but this is the truth. We have come from the realm of your imagination to meet you.”

I remained silent, and the man carried on speaking amicably, “We have to thank you. It’s our good luck to be your characters. I can only admire your dedication to your art. You spend years writing a novel, and it is so rare to find novelists who put so much effort into it.”

“Thank you.”

I uttered those words sotto voce while absorbed with the thought that I was getting used to the strangeness of the situation. I looked at each of them in turn. Saleha smiled and spoke in her mellow voice, “Please don’t look at me as if I were one of the wonders of the world. You’re a great writer, and you know that there are many inexplicable extrasensory phenomena. You sweated blood and tears to create living characters. And now we are actually alive and in front of you. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

In a loud voice, I said, “Let’s assume that you are speaking the truth, and even that you are Kamel and Saleha Gaafar; what do you want from me?”

Kamel smiled broadly, tapped the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray and said, “Ah. You see, sir. We have come here in all seriousness to stop you from printing out the novel.”

“By what right?”

“The novel is really rather good, but it is lacking a few things.”

“Such as…?”

As if by some prearranged plan, Saleha smiled and chimed in, “Some of our thoughts and feelings are absent from the novel.”

“I have expressed the thoughts and feelings of my characters quite well enough.”

“You have expressed them from your point of view.”

“Naturally. I’m the author.”

“Why don’t you let us speak for ourselves?”

“No one has the right to interfere with my work.”

Kamel remained silent for a few moments, as if he was looking for the right words, and then said gently, “Sir, please trust us. We know just how much effort you have made, but you can’t describe our thoughts and feelings by proxy.”

“That’s what all authors do.”

“But our case is different. We have come to life. It is our right to be able to speak for ourselves. We have got some important elements that need to be added to the novel.”

I rose from my seat and shouted forcefully, “Listen. It’s my novel. I wrote it from my imagination and experience. I will not allow anyone to add a single word that I haven’t written.”

Saleha also stood up and moved closer to me. I recognized that she was wearing “Nuit de Paris” perfume. She said, “I don’t understand why you are getting so upset, sir. We only want what is best for you. If the novel is published before we have a chance to add our thoughts and feelings, it will be a great loss.”

There was nothing left to say. I made up my mind, walked over and opened the door and told them, “If you don’t mind…”

“Are you asking us to leave?” cried Saleha, giving me a look of rebuke. Her green eyes were strangely affecting. “We haven’t done anything to deserve such heartless treatment.”

“Please leave the house immediately.”

Kamel got up first, followed by Saleha, who said, “You insist on humiliating us. All right. We’ll leave. But I want one thing from you.”

She opened her travel bag, took out a CD in a transparent cover and said, “This is a version of the novel in which we have recorded everything that happened in our lives.”

“For heaven’s sake, I am the one who wrote the novel!”

“You might have written it, but we are the ones who lived it.”

There was no point discussing the matter any more. I was almost at the end of my tether and on the point of doing something stupid. Saleha was standing there, smiling, her hand stretched out with the CD, but when she realized that I was not going to take it, she carefully set it down on the small table. They left, shutting the door gently behind them. I had no idea what to do. I lit a cigarette. Good Lord, what is going on, and who were these people? Were they con artists or simply mad? What were they up to, and how could they know the names of the characters in my unpublished novel, which no living creature apart from me had read? Could fictional characters really come to life? There is a whole science called parapsychology that seeks to explain otherwise inexplicable paranormal phenomena. The worry I’d had earlier resurfaced. I might be ill. Was I mentally disturbed and suffering from hallucinations? If I had been a drug user, I could have solved the matter with one drag of hashish. I had tried it once, but it left me feeling so dim-witted that I have avoided it ever since, and I have no idea how some authors manage to write at all while under the influence.

In my case, writing demands total concentration. I returned to my senses and realized that the two visitors must have been real and that, overwhelmed by the shock of it all, I had treated them badly. I should not have told them to leave. I should have made them stay until I had got to the bottom of things. I should have overcome my sense of amazement and listened to them. I opened the door and ran down the steps. Maybe I could catch up with them. I would apologize and bring them back to the chalet. I had to find out what was going on. They could not have gone far. I strode down the garden path, but when I reached the street, I became completely befuddled. Had they gone left or right? If I went the wrong way, I would lose them forever. I noticed one of the security guards, in his distinctive blue uniform, sitting on a wicker chair on the opposite pavement. I rushed over to him, and he stood up. I asked whether the man and woman who had just left my chalet had gone toward the sea or the desert road. To my utter astonishment, the guard said that he had not seen anyone.

I described them to him, but he reiterated that he had been sitting there for hours and had seen no one go in or come out of the chalet. I stopped trying to contradict him and started looking around, but I was only clutching at straws. I hurried off toward the sea, and then I returned and rushed off in the opposite direction, hoping that I would catch sight of them. But they had completely disappeared. I knew that my efforts were futile. I went back to the house, panting, and slowly walked up the steps, overcome by an unexpected anxiety. I must be sick. I was suffering from hallucinations. People were appearing before me whom no one else could see. I could feel the sweat dripping down my forehead and almost hear my heart beating. It occurred to me that there was only one way to find out whether this was merely a vision or reality. I unlocked the door and flicked the switch on the wall, flooding the sitting room with light. I blinked hard and looked at the table. The CD was there. Exactly where Saleha had left it. I relaxed. With trembling fingers, I removed it from its cover and slid it into the laptop. It took a moment for the laptop to recognize it, and then I started to read.