Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

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.

It was a monotonous life, but I endured it despite my aversion to it. Even so, it wasn’t without its earth-shaking tremors. One evening my grandfather came home early. This worried my mother, since he generally didn’t come home before dawn. He burst into the room, his face full of foreboding. My mother rose, anxious to discover what the matter was, and I looked up from my book. But before she could ask him what was wrong, he struck the edge of his shoe with his cane and said brusquely, “Zaynab, there’s been a disaster in the family. It’s a scandal that will make us the talk of the town.”

“Lord have mercy, what’s happened, Baba?” cried my mother, her voice trembling and panic in her eyes.

His green eyes grew hard and he said crustily, “Your daughter … Radiya … has run away.”

Her face went pale and her eyes darted nervously about the room. Then she cast my grandfather a look of incredulity as though she couldn’t believe her ears.

“Ran away …,” she murmured in what sounded like a moan. “Radiya! That’s impossible!”

He stomped his foot on the floor until the corners of the room shook.

“Impossible?” he bellowed. “Well, that’s exactly what’s happened! It’s the naked, appalling truth, and it will deal the death blow to our honor!”

My mother made no reply, as though she’d lost the ability to speak.

His breathing slightly labored, my grandfather said as if to himself, “What sort of madness has robbed her of her senses? This corrupt, infernal blood doesn’t belong to us! Yet its rotten fruit points to its source. After all, her grandfather died calling down curses on her father’s head, and the curse has fallen on his children.”

“God, what a catastrophe!” murmured my mother in horror, swallowing with difficulty. “That drunken good-for-nothing has ruined her life! How miserable she must be!”

“Don’t make excuses for her,” my grandfather said indignantly. “There’s nothing in the world that could justify her doing something so disgraceful.”

“I’m not making excuses for her,” my mother murmured in a feeble, pathetic voice. “But she is miserable. There’s no doubt about it.”

A gloomy silence fell, and they sat there exchanging looks of grief, worry, and desperation. I listened to their conversation with rapt attention, understanding its more trivial parts while missing its true significance. It had to do with a sister of mine whom I’d never laid eyes on. But why had she run away? And where had she gone?

“Why didn’t she come to us?” I wondered aloud.

“Shush!” shouted my grandfather in exasperation.

Then he flung himself onto a chair and continued, “Her paternal uncle came to see me at the casino and told me the news. He said he didn’t know the details, but that Medhat had wired him, asking him to come immediately, and he’d come without delay. Then the young man had told him of his sister’s disappearance. As for that degenerate carouser, all he had to say was, ‘To hell with her.’ Then the uncle and I went to see a friend of his who works for the governorate. We informed him of the shocking situation and asked for his help.”

My grandfather paused for a minute, then went on, saying, “Damn that old sot! He’s the one who’s to blame for this tragedy, and I swear to God, I’ll go and bash his head in!”

My mother’s eyes flickered with distress.

“No, no!” she said fearfully. “That would only make our situation worse!”

“He should be repaid evil for evil,” insisted my grandfather.

“He’s no concern of ours,” said my mother imploringly. “Let’s just focus our attention on finding the girl in the hopes that we might be able to straighten her out.”

Eyeing her skeptically, my grandfather asked, “Why do you insist on preventing me from going to see him?”

“I’m afraid of things getting worse,” she murmured with a flustered look on her face.

Exasperated, my grandfather retorted, “Rather, what you’re afraid of is that if we have an argument, he might take Kamil away from you. You don’t care about anything but yourself. Damn the whole lot of you!”

Such a pall descended on the household after that, you would have thought it was in mourning. Black days came upon us and life turned cheerless. I nearly suffocated in that dismal atmosphere. Meanwhile, my grandfather changed his lifestyle. He abandoned his usual evenings at the casino and would stay out all day long without our knowing a thing about his whereabouts. As for my mother, she spent her days grave-faced or in tears.

Then one evening my grandfather came to us, and when he saw my mother he hailed her with the words, “We’ve finally found what we were looking for!”

“Really?” she cried as she came running up to him. “O Lord, have mercy on us!”

In a tone of joy and satisfaction he said, “The crazy girl sent a letter to Medhat informing him that she was living with her husband in Banha. She asked him to forgive her for the way she’d acted, saying that she’d had no other choice.”

Her eyes welling up with tears, my mother heaved a deep sigh and said, “Didn’t I tell you? Radiya is an upstanding girl, but she’s had miserable luck. Lord! Where is she now? Tell me everything you know!”

“Her uncle, Medhat, and I went to Banha,” my grandfather said calmly, “and we found her living with a kind, respectable family. We met her husband, a young man by the name of Sabir Amin who works at the Ministry of Justice. He told us he’d rented a flat on Hidayet Street in Shubra and that he’d be moving into it this week. Radiya said that her husband had asked for her hand, but that her father had turned him rudely away. She said that he’d also turned away another young man who had asked for her hand before this. Perhaps on account of the liquor, he seemed to have lost the last vestiges of his humanity, as a result of which he’d forgotten his duties and frittered away his income. So, overcome by despair, she’d eloped with the young man. They’d gone straightaway to his family, where the justice of the peace was waiting for them.”

As she listened to him, my mother wept hot tears, but they were tears of both sadness and joy.

Then she said, “I’ll go see her tomorrow.”

“You’ll find her at home whether you go tomorrow or the day after,” replied my grandfather reassuringly.

Then she wondered aloud, “Why didn’t she come to me?”

As if to apologize for the girl, my grandfather said, “Maybe she would have been embarrassed to bring her fiancé to us when she was running away from her father. In any case, let’s praise God for this happy ending, an ending happier than any we could have dreamed of.”