Naguib Mahfouz - Voices from the Other World

I was awakened again from my fantasies when I heard the crude voice of Shaykh Jadallah shouting “Hush!” I turned toward him, hopping with rage — the least whisper at that time gravely affected my nerves. But then the shaykh blurted idiotically, “A sparrow!”

“What sparrow is this, O shaykh! Is this the time for jokes?” I rebuked him.

“I saw a sparrow fluttering its wings over the sarcophagus,” he insisted.

We looked at the sarcophagus but saw nothing there. It would have been ludicrous to question the servants, so I told the obsolete holy man, “Spare us your delusions, Shaykh Jadallah.”

Then I laughed, exclaiming to the Pasha in French, “Perhaps it was the ka —the soul of the deceased — come to pay him a visit with us.”

I returned to perusing the boxes and the walls, which conversed with my heart in a silent language that only I could comprehend. Yet I could not give them my complete attention — for I soon heard the voices of the servants shrieking in terror, “Your Excellency — Pasha!”

We looked over at them quickly with wrath and exasperation — but only to find them in a bizarre state of horror, each grabbing onto the other. Their eyes widened and bulged wildly out of their heads, gazing stiff as the dead in the direction of the sarcophagus. Shaykh Jadallah was frozen where he stood, his hand trembling on the lamp, his eyes never moving from the same object. I looked at the sarcophagus and forgot my ire — for I saw its lid rising, and the mummy lying before us in its wrappings. .

What is this? How was the sarcophagus opened? Have I been so influenced by my long residence in the Orient that my eye has been traduced — to this absurd degree — by its illusions and sleight of hand?

But what sleight of hand is this? I see the mummy in front of me — and I am not the only one to see it. And how the Pasha has turned into a statue! And how these three men seem about to die with extreme fear and fright! What hallucination is this?

The truth is that I feel shame each time that circumstances compel me to tell what happened next — for I normally recount it to rational, well-educated people who have studied Taylor and Levy-Bruhl and Durkheim. But what can I do? Descartes himself, if he were then in my place, would not have dared to dismiss his own senses.

What did I see?

I saw the mummy stir and sit up in his sarcophagus with a swift, nimble movement that would be impossible for a drunken man or one heavy from sleep, to say nothing of a corpse just roused from the world of the Dead. Then he bounded with a smoothly athletic motion — and stood erect facing us before the coffin.

My back was to the servants and Shaykh Jadallah, so I did not observe what was happening to them. But the light that illuminated the room was shaking with the hand that held it, while I fell into a state that beggars all description. I confess that my limbs rattled in a manner that I cannot convey — prey to a fear that I had never in my life experienced. Next to it, I cannot even recall the terror I felt in those harrowing days I spent on the Eastern Front and at the Battle of the Marne. How astonishing! Is that not a mummy there ahead? Or is that a corpse to which life has been restored by mysterious means? Or is that an Egyptian general who quivered with awe and submissiveness whenever he crossed the threshold of Pharaoh’s palace?

Is it possible that such thoughts possessed me at that time? Nevertheless, I resisted this possession with all my might — for how can one be rightly guided by terror? I was mortally afraid. Yet my eyes were able to see even as my memory was able to preserve what my eyes saw.

I did not find before me a mere mummy, but a whole living man — complete in his manliness and vitality. His form reminded me of those images that one sees on so many temple walls. He was garbed in a white robe and a short loincloth, his great head covered with an elegant cowl. His broad chest was hung with many glittering honors. He was dignified, dreadful, of an imposing height. But, with all of his daunting splendor, it seemed to me that I had seen him before. I remembered the Sa‘idi that the servants dragged to the Pasha and accused of stealing the dog Beamish’s food. The resemblance was unnerving, but it was confined to his stature and color, not to his spirit and liveliness. Yet if this being right before me did not display such majesty and nobility, then perhaps I would be seized by doubts.

All the while, Hor fixed the Pasha in a cruel glare that he did not lift from him, as though he saw nothing but him.

What should I say, gentlemen? Yet I heard him speak — my God, Hor spoke after a silence of three thousand years. But he spoke in that ancient language that Death had enfolded for more than a millennium. I will forget everything in the world before I forget a single word of what his tongue uttered.

He said to my luckless friend, the Pasha, in a voice whose equal in augustness I had never heard before — for I have not yet had the honor of conversing with kings:

“Do you not know me, slave? Why are you not falling on your knees before me?”

From the Pasha, I heard not a sound, nor could I shift my rigid stare toward him. But I heard the Mighty One, possessor of the overpowering voice, speak once more:

“I did not feel the troubling captivity of Death until my soul saw the astounding things that take place in this world, while I was bound with the shackles of Eternity, unable to move. Nor could I go to you, because my life had ended, as Osiris had decreed. But you came to me on your own two feet. I am bewildered at how you could seduce yourself into doing this foolish thing. Madness and vanity have overtaken you. Do you not praise the gods that Death had intervened between us? What did you come to do here, servant? You aren’t satisfied with robbing my sons — so you have come to plunder my tomb, as well? Speak, you slave!”

But the poor man could say nothing. . for he understood nothing. . he appeared struck by paralysis. Life had stolen back into the long-dead mummy — as it abandoned the living Pasha.

The mummy, meanwhile, resumed his reproach:

“What’s the matter with you — why do you not speak? Am I not Hor? Are you not my servant, Shanaq? Do you not recollect that I came to you in your northern country, during one of my victorious raids? Do you pretend not to know me, slave? Your white skin, which is the mark of servitude, gives you away — no matter how much you may deny it. What are these ridiculous clothes that you have on? And what is this false pride that you hide yourself behind?”

Hor evidently believed that the Pasha deliberately refused to reply — so he shouted, his veins swelling, his face scowling with anger:

“What has befallen you? What has befallen the earth that the lowly are made lords and the lords are laid low? The sovereigns are reduced to slaves, and the slaves raised to sovereigns? How can you, slave, own such a palace, while my sons sweat there as your servants? Where are our inherited traditions? Where are the divine laws? Is this some sort of mockery?”

Hor’s rage intensified. His eyes turned a furious red. Sparks flew out of them, as he railed with a voice like pealing thunder:

“How could you be so insolent with my son, you slave? Indeed, you humiliated him with a harshness that proves the slave-like nature that your soul exudes. You struck him with your stick because he was hungry, and forced his brothers to beat him, as well. Do Egypt’s children go without food? Woe unto you, abject one. . ”

Hor had not quite finished his rant when he advanced, roaring like a lion, upon the Pasha — intent to make him his prey. But the hapless Pasha did not wait for him — he had lost his power to endure. He fell motionless upon the ground, while Hor’s menace spread a new terror throughout the chamber that shattered our last shred of composure. Shaykh Jadallah instantly prostrated himself on his face, the lamp going down with him — extinguishing its light, sending the room back into gloom. I recoiled in shock, as if expecting a deadly blow, without knowing from what direction it would strike my head. I stared into the darkness, shivering with panic and alarm. My strength deserted me, while, to my good fortune, I lost all consciousness — and absented myself from the world. .