Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

One day I told my mother, who was the only beloved, friend, and companion I’d ever known, “I don’t have any friends. The other students despise me.”

In a fit of anger she cried, “Your shoe is worth a thousand of their heads! They only like people who go along with them in their silly pranks and bad manners. They envy you for your shyness and politeness. So don’t you be sad. There’s no virtue in getting close to other people!”

“I feel alone sometimes,” I said dejectedly, “and loneliness is hard for me to bear.”

Horrified by what I’d said, she looked at me reproachfully and said, “And where is your mother? How can you say such a thing when your mother is alive? Don’t I devote my life to your service and care?”

Indeed, she was devoting her entire existence to me, and she was everything in my life. But who did I have outside our home?

Meanwhile, my academic life hobbled sluggishly along despite being supported on the crutches of private tutors.

My grandfather suffered terribly whenever I failed an examination, and he no longer made fun of me the way he had before. Perhaps the fact that he was getting on in years had caused him to be more fearful than ever for our future.

He would say to me, “Why do you fail this way, Kamil? Aren’t you able to pass a grade in less than two years? Don’t you realize how anxious I am to see you working before I die?”

His words would fall like a heavy weight on my heart, and I would say, “There isn’t an evening when I don’t study till midnight.”

My mother would be quick to affirm the truth of what I’d said, whereupon he would shake his white head and mutter, “All things are in God’s hands.”

For this reason, I would anticipate test season with disquiet, dread, and bad dreams. For this reason also, I would be tempted by a combination of shame and conceit to feign exhaustion and illness during the months leading up to the examination so that I could use them as an excuse for my anticipated failure. As for my mother, she would visit Umm Hashim’s shrine, make vows, and tie protective amulets around my neck. I’ll never forget the time when, not long before my proficiency examination, she brought me a fortune teller, trusting in her ability to bring me success. The woman burned some incense in front of me, then propped a short stick up against the heater and instructed me to jump over it three times. I did as I’d been told, and she said to me confidently, “You’ll pass the test, God willing.”

When I failed the test, I said to my mother incredulously, “How could I have failed after jumping over the stick those three times?”

Yet in spite of everything, I kept on studying. And eventually I put the era of secondary school behind me and finished the baccalaureate when I was twenty-five years old.

Despite my successive failures, I felt proud and manly. Many government employees had nothing but a high school diploma. So, I thought: I’m a man worth his salt! I didn’t aspire to work for the government with it, but I did hope it would enable me to get out of the house. In other words, I hoped to be released from the lasso that had bound me so tightly, I feared it would crush me. Indeed, I was gripped by a headstrong feeling that caused my heart to yearn for renewal and release. No longer was I a boy who could be led around by his nose, and life was inciting me to rebellion and revolution. But what rebellion, and what revolution? Against what or for what? I didn’t find a clear answer to the question, and the truth is that I wasn’t thinking. The turmoil I was experiencing wasn’t an intellectual one. Rather, it was an emotional unrest that arose from somewhere deep inside me and longed for release, change, and the unknown. I didn’t perceive any particular purpose behind it, but I suffered a painful, nebulous yearning that, whenever it stirred within me, plunged me into sorrow and desolation. And whenever these feelings came over me I would fall prey to anger and lose my temper for the most trivial of reasons.

At that time my grandfather was approaching his eightieth birthday, and my mother was in her early fifties. My grandfather had become a lean old man, but he’d preserved his health and hadn’t succumbed to any serious illnesses. He still enjoyed an enviable share of his God-given vigor, and he hadn’t lost his kind spirit or his understated wit. He still retained his brisk, dignified military gait and his perfect posture. He did, however, find himself obliged to change his lifestyle, since he could no longer tolerate regular long evenings out. Instead he would go in the mornings to the Luna Park coffee shop to meet with a few of his friends, then go to the casino for a couple of hours in the evening and be home by ten.

As for my mother, she seemed older for her age than my grandfather did. She’d grown thin, and her temples and the part in her hair were visibly gray. She was in good health, however, and her face retained its beauty and radiance. There were times when she succumbed to the temptation to neglect her appearance, a development that caused me no little heartache and displeasure. It disturbed me so deeply that once I said to her, “Meet me looking the way you would if you were receiving guests.” And she didn’t disappoint me, since thereafter she would always appear at the door looking her best, which brought me gratification and joy.

My grandfather supposed that the time had now come to fulfill the hope he had cherished for so long, namely, for me to become an officer. I was now past the maximum age for enrollment in the military college. However, he figured that a bit of mediation could overcome this obstacle, and he approached numerous senior officers in this connection. Unfortunately, though, he was given to understand that the law allowed for no lenience on this point. Gravely disappointed, my grandfather said to me sorrowfully, “If you’d entered the military college, I could have guaranteed you a good future, and I would have set my mind at rest concerning you and your mother.”

Shaking his head bitterly, he asked me, “So what do you intend to do?”

I looked at him uncertainly and made no reply.

Again he asked me, “Don’t you have a preference for some profession in particular?”

I felt even more uncertain now. Thanks to my grandfather’s own influence and his faith in the rightness of my joining the military, I’d never felt a leaning toward any other profession. So I didn’t know how to answer his question.

“I’d been hoping to enter the military college,” I said. “Now, though, all professions are the same to me.”

“My choice is for you to study law, then, since it’s the best option we have left. I won’t tell you to be diligent, since it’s a disgrace for anyone to fail at the university. But God help us with its expenses!”

I regretted having missed the chance to attend the military college. However, I only realized the enormity of my loss when I saw that I’d have to go on studying for at least four more years, or eight years if I kept up the pace I’d been accustomed to during primary and secondary school. By nature I detested studying and school, so I looked upon the future with no little resentment. I didn’t know the first thing about university, but I thought it unlikely to be as odious as school. I said to myself: University students are adults, so they couldn’t possibly treat me as badly as certain brothers of theirs whom I’ve known in the past, and who left scars in my soul that have yet to heal. I also thought it unlikely that punishment would be a permissible manner of dealing with men, or those who were as good as men. I thus labored tirelessly to endear to myself my upcoming academic life, glossing over its potential difficulties in order to enable myself to endure it patiently. And in the summer of that year I was enrolled as a student in the Faculty of Law.