Naguib Mahfouz: The Seventh Heaven

Those were the last words ever to leave his lips.

Ifight my way through life — and it fights back. It’s the same way today that it will be tomorrow. From the boons of fortune, all I’ve gained has been the making of a family and the begetting of children. Then, as I’ve grown too weak to make them happy, I can no longer make myself happy either. If my own agony was not so uniquely like that of my country, then I would think only of myself, and not of my country. Instead, I have found that my family reflects totally the situation in the country, and that the country exactly mirrors the condition of my family. Both of them suffer from overpopulation, a shortage of resources, an imbalance between income and expenses, ever-increasing debt, and a bleak future. Yet I’ve never sought to hide the reality of our situation, nor promised to do anything beyond my power to perform. Due to my inability to improve my own condition, along with my impotence to help the nation generally, frustration has turned my hair white before its time. I have found nothing to help me escape into the solace of solitude except for one thing — dreaming.

Yes, dreaming is what hews a new path for me; it brings me all I could possibly crave. With the fullness of health, strength, and human intimacy, dreaming lifts me up to a new world entirely — one of exalted truth and perfect justice. Through dreaming I climb dazzlingly into the world of the Unseen. But sometime during the heat of battle between fact and imagination, the night of misery lengthened as I huddled beneath the bedcovers, all of my limbs trembling uncontrollably. My wife became worried, urging me to take more than one prescription of medicine. Still I longed for sleep, with all its powers to save me from distress and torment. Yet I could neither sleep nor ease the growing agitation that shook me so profoundly. Then, a surprise — and what a surprise! I rose like a bird, flying with calmness and dignity through the air of the room. I could not help thinking of all that I had heard about delirium and fever. I looked and saw my body prone on the bed; all were watching it with streaming tears. This had to be a fever, no doubt about that. All the motion and sounds that surged through the room had no meaning at all to me. I urged them to take hold of themselves, to calm down and keep quiet — but they did not hear. I observed them with complete placidity. Then my interest in them and what they were doing began to decline, and slowly, slowly to disappear. Their image began to sink into the depths, fading away until it had vanished completely. A long corridor stretched before me, whose floor and walls were covered in mist, and from whose distant end loomed the purest light. I walked through it with heavy, stumbling steps, staggering at times, longing for some sense of security. Finally, at the source of the light, my father and mother appeared to me. They stared at me with affection as I rushed toward them, my fears diminishing. Then I remembered the hurdle of death that stood between us. I halted in caution, whispering to them as though in excuse, “Maybe I’m dreaming!”

I heard their two voices as though they were one, “But now you are waking.”

They came toward me, arm in arm, wearing clothes made of clouds.

“Wake up! You have become one of us, with nothing standing between us.”

Dreams don’t have this kind of clarity, I said to myself. Then I whispered, “Yes, I’m completely awake.”

“That is good,” they replied.

“Yet I feel that a dreadful nightmare is going on inside me.”

“That will disperse once you have purged yourself of your sins.”

“You will help me …,” I said wishfully.

They answered as one, “Our mission here has ended. Rely upon yourself.”

In a flashing instant, they were gone. No sooner had they disappeared, than I found myself in my new world.

A new world indeed, which I have not the words to describe. A place, and yet not a place. Light, but yet not really light. Colors, yet not like any that I had known. Trees, but not actual trees. Houses that were not houses at all. Ground and sky shrouded in clouds, spreading outward without any bounds. Even the houses were made of clouds, ranged in even rows with vast spaces between them. The trees towered very high, resplendent in wholly unfamiliar shades of a deeply stirring kind. A steady, soothing light — neither dusk nor twilight — pervaded all. For a moment I imagined that I was alone in an existence that had no clear end. Yet the feeling of loneliness did not weigh heavily upon me, nor did it last long. For this existence that surrounded me was itself pulsing with hidden life. It was also alive and intelligent, regarding me with interest, as though wondering what I was going to do next. And within the homes were living beings absorbed in their own affairs. Their cries of “Glory to God” somehow reached my inner sense of hearing. Should I knock on one of those doors to ask for guidance from those inside? Yet, if even my own parents had abandoned me, then what could I expect from strangers? But where could I start, and where would I go?

Then I was met by a majestic personage whose garment trailed away as a cloud. He gazed at me with his luminous face, a miracle of radiance and beauty. With the look in his eyes, he commanded me to follow him until he stopped before a house.

“This is your dwelling,” he said.

I looked at the place as though to inspect it.

“Wait,” he warned, “you will not go inside until you have bathed.”

I pointed to my heart. “A nightmare is churning above my chest,” I told him.

“That is why you must bathe first,” he replied.

A disturbing idea flared within me. “It seems that an unceasing labor lies before me,” I fretted.

“The road is long, with many stations along the way,” he warned. “And its final end is unlike anything else.”

“Will you show me how to proceed, at least for the first step?”

“Rely on yourself, both first and last,” he bid me.

He took me by the hand and led me through a lush forest to a lake of light, and told me to immerse myself within its waves of rays. I complied with the order — floating for a few seconds, before beginning to sink, slowly and without pause, until I settled in the innermost depths of the lake. The waves penetrated deep inside my being, cleansing me thoroughly. A chain of sins and errors that I had committed during my life stretched out before my sight. Each time a sin or error would vanish, an accompanying pain would vanish with it. My weight lessened accordingly, so that I rose from my submersion little by little. This bathing went on for hours, or days, or years, until eventually I was floating once more upon the lake’s surface. Finally, I alighted on the land with nimbleness and glee — then entered my house.

Donning my robe of trailing clouds, I decided not to waste my time in idleness. For a long while I pondered what to do, until finally I resolved to begin with science to meet the needs of the traveler, in mastering navigation and the drawing of maps.

I threw myself into my work with a determination that knew neither weakness nor hesitation. I was aided by the unvarying climate, which was always mild, both by day and by night, not altering even with the seasons. There were no problems to sap one’s will, nor any hardships or despair. And from somewhere deep inside me, without any outside help, I had a vision of the great road ahead in all its daunting length and the many stops along its course. My heart was satisfied by the choice of mapmaking as my first field of toil, my elation rising to the enormous heights that I had conjured in my earthly dreams themselves.