Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

My thoughts during that time focused on my heart, with its sorrows and its hopes, its fears and its joys, and I felt a tremendous need for someone who could give me counsel and advice. My mother was the only friend I had in the world. But I didn’t go to her with my crisis, of course, since I sensed that my heart’s desires would be met with hostility on her part. However, in some of the magazines my grandfather read I found pages devoted to readers’ questions, and I hoped that here I might find the advisor I lacked. To one of them I sent a question that had been keeping me awake at night: “From an unlikable man: Is there no hope that his beloved might love him in return?” The magazine’s reply was: “Love is a mystery that has nothing to do with likeability or unlikeability. Love may be blind to ugliness and unattractiveness, so don’t worry about your own unlikeability! And if we might be allowed to speculate concerning the woman’s nature, it may be accurate to say that she’s charmed by strength and valor!” I was happy with the reply’s opening, but when I got to the conclusion, I felt let down. I wondered what the writer meant by “strength.” Oh! I thought, I’m not strong anyway, and if the truth be told, my addiction to a certain despicable habit has turned me pale and made me thinner than I ought to be. When I thought of valor, I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly as I enumerated all the things that frightened me in this world, from people and places to mice and cockroaches. And my heart was wrung with despair.

But I didn’t lose hope. After all, the fire that blazed in my soul was too hot to be extinguished by a blow from despair’s icy hand. I wrote back to the magazine with the following question: “How can I attract the girl I love?” And the reply was: “Go to her father or her legal guardian and ask for her hand, and I guarantee that she’ll love you.” Lord! I thought, how cruel can you get? The people at the magazine don’t know that I’m still a student and that I have four, or possibly eight, years to go before I’m on my own. Besides, they don’t know that it would be easier to storm the gates of hell than to knock on my beloved’s door and ask her father for her hand. Don’t they know what it means to be shy? I guess I’m doomed to go on living with an undeclared, unrequited love while my sweetheart is just a step away from me!

Then something happened to me that may have been trivial in itself, but that changed the course of my life. My academic life was a never-ending battle between my slothful mind and my itinerant soul. It was a battle that yielded — as it had in the past — acute suffering but very little fruit. My mind’s tendency to wander had become a dominant character trait that had taken over all my mental faculties. I’d even begun worrying that I might be thirty-five years old by the time I graduated from university! At the same time, of the critical things I’d learned about what the study of law involves, there was one thing I hadn’t realized I would have to face. This thing — to which other students hardly attached any importance, and which they actually took to with gusto, viewing it as a kind of sport — was the study of rhetoric. Once a week in a large lecture hall, all first-year students attended a lecture on public speaking. During the first two months we heard lectures on the theoretical aspects of the art, after which the practical training was to begin. The professor began inviting students to give extemporaneous speeches on various topics. They would speak fluently, with stentorian voices, courage, and aplomb, and I would listen to them with a mixture of amazement and profound admiration. I was taken by their glibness and guts, and astounded at their ability to handle such a frightening situation in front of such a huge gathering. Hence, I volunteered to be shy in their stead, so much so that my forehead would be dripping with perspiration.

Then one day what should I find but that the professor was calling my name: “Kamil Ru’ba Laz!”

I was sitting in the very back row — my favorite place, since no one would notice me there — and when I heard my name I rose to my feet in a reflex reaction.

The sound of my name aroused derisive attention and one of the students whispered, “That’s Lazughli’s grandson.”

Another asked, “Is ‘Lazughli’ a noun or a verb?”

Meanwhile, I stood there in a state of shock, my heart pounding wildly.

“Come up to the podium,” said the professor.

I froze in place, however, too flustered to move. I wanted to apologize, but the distance between the professor and me would have required me to raise my voice loud enough for everyone to hear me, so despite my desire to speak, I kept quiet.

Looking at me in bewilderment, the professor said, “What are you just standing there for? Come to the podium!”

Heads kept turning in my direction until I felt as though I were going to burn up under their stares.

As the professor urged me to come forward with a gesture of his hand, I asked reluctantly, “Why?”

My question provoked quite a number of laughs, and the professor said testily, “Why? So that you can give a speech like the others!”

In a low voice that couldn’t be heard beyond the last two rows of the lecture hall, I said, “I don’t know how to give a speech.”

Since my voice had quite naturally not reached the professor, a student sitting nearby volunteered to relay the message.

“He says he doesn’t know how to give a speech!” he shouted sarcastically.

In an encouraging tone the professor said, “This is a training session, specially designed to help people who aren’t good at giving speeches. Come.”

So, seeing no way of escape, I moved my feet painfully and with what felt like a superhuman effort, as though I were being led to the gallows. I ascended the podium in a stupor, then stood there with my left side to the students, staring at the professor with a look that bespoke both resignation and a plea for mercy.

Seeing how ill at ease I was, the professor said kindly, “Look at your classmates, compose yourself, and speak as if you were all alone. One has to get used to these situations, since a lawyer’s life is full of them. Otherwise, it’s a farce. How will you stand in court tomorrow, as either a defense lawyer or as a prosecutor? Gather your courage, then deliver a speech to this audience, urging them to contribute to a particular charity.”

Everyone looked at me with rapt attention the likes of which even the most eloquent orators wouldn’t receive. I gazed into the faces looking at me without seeing a thing, and I was filled with such dismay and such a deadly faintness of heart I nearly swooned. I was enveloped by that acute sense of despair that grips one by the neck in nightmares, and not for a moment did it occur to me to think about the topic. I may have forgotten it entirely, and the only thing that went through my mind was the question: When will this ordeal be over?

Weary of waiting, the professor said, “Speak, and don’t be afraid of making a mistake. Say whatever’s on your mind.”

Lord, when would this torment come to an end? It was clear that no one was going to take pity on me. On the contrary, the students had started winking at each other and cracking jokes at my expense. One of them, as if he were warning the others not to look down on me, said, “This is how Saad Zaghloul started out.”

“And this is how he ended!” added another.

A third shouted, “Listen to the eloquence of silence!”

The place was filled with noisy clamor and laughter. My head spun and I started having difficulty breathing. Then, determined to put an end to the miserable situation, I left the podium and headed for the exit without paying any attention to the professor as he called me to come back. And all the while I was pursued by the demons’ loud clamor as their derisive laughter rang in my ears. I went out wandering aimlessly, frantic and delirious, till I ended up at the tram stop.