Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

I was amazed to hear such words coming from the very person who had taught me to hate my father, but it didn’t occur to me to remind her of this fact. Then we returned home without either of us uttering another word.

I was no longer the indigent, destitute person I had been, and the burden of need and deprivation had been lifted from my shoulders. I now had a reasonable income in addition to the fortune that would begin coming to me within a month or two. Now, however, I’d been afflicted with madness of a kind I’d never known before — the madness of someone in love who isn’t rendered helpless by poverty. Poverty had been a deterrent that put a damper on my ambition and turned my love into a prolonged affliction locked deep in my soul. Consequently, I’d conceded defeat to my rival Muhammad Gawdat without even a show of resistance, then gone sobbing down the street like a little boy. However, now that poverty had been dealt the death blow, love was no longer an unattainable desire. So I put other obstacles out of my mind and was afflicted by a new kind of madness, namely, the madness of someone for whom happiness appears as a genuine possibility and for whom all that remains is to overcome his timidity, storm the gates, and try his luck.

The afternoon after my father died I lingered at the tram stop for an unusually long time. I looked up at the dearly loved window with fervent longing. I no longer saw my sweetheart, and I didn’t know whether what I feared had come to pass. If it had, then all I stood to gain from my fortune was so much deadly poison. If she appeared in the window, what would I do? Would I have the nerve to gesture to her in some subtle way? On the contrary, my heart shrank with fear and alarm. I wasn’t the type to do that sort of thing. If I’d had an iota of courage, I would have stormed the building without further ado, requested a meeting with my sweetheart’s father, and told him what was on my mind. Was such a thing dangerous enough to warrant such awful dread? Supposing, as a worst-case scenario, that he declined to meet with me: Why did I think of such an eventuality as a fate worse than death? Why was it that the minute I so much as thought of taking such an initiative, I broke out in a sweat and my heart nearly leaped out of my chest? O God! Didn’t scores and even hundreds of people get married every day? How did would-be husbands find ways to go after what they wanted? The only thing that stood between me and the object of my desire was to knock on that door. Once that was done, it would either be the bliss of hope or the solace of despair. So why hesitate and shrink from the task at hand? After all, it was a house, not a fortress, and I was a suitor, not a foe. Why was I so terrified? My aim wasn’t to invade a continent or even to go into battle. I wasn’t required to be Napoleon or Hannibal. On the contrary, all that was required of me was that I introduce myself and pose my question. In the meantime, I’d be surrounded by the solicitous attention that’s always afforded a guest by a gracious host. Then let the answer be whatever it was meant to be, since at the very worst, it wouldn’t be more than a polite refusal. This is what I told myself reproachfully, but the minute I imagined the concrete situation before me, my forehead would get hot, my heart would race, and I’d feel a shudder go through my limbs. Suddenly I had a flashback of the ill-fated rhetoric class at the Faculty of Law that cast me beyond the pale of the university, and I heaved a deep, hopeless sigh. It was too much for me. I might easily spend my entire life crying on this sidewalk, I thought, but as for crossing the street and knocking on that door, it’s more than I’m capable of. I worked up such a dread, in fact, that the anxiety that tormented me turned into a fever that burned both heart and head. A few days passed, days spent in a kind of delirium. I forgot about the fortune that had fallen to my lot, and my hope and enthusiasm for life were extinguished. My thinking focused instead on one thing and no other, and I danced around it over and over without daring either to approach it or to move away from it. My mother found me in a state of agony that I made no attempt to conceal, and I said to myself furiously, If I weren’t afraid of her, I’d ask her to go ask for the girl’s hand on my behalf and spare me this ordeal!

When will this misery come to an end? I wondered. And, indeed, I never would have seen an end to it if it hadn’t been for a certain fortuitous event. I was on my way home from Hilmiya and I got off the tram at Ataba at sunset. Then, as usual, I boarded the tram that goes to Giza via Roda. The tram car was packed with passengers, some seated and others standing, so I made my way through the crowd until I was able to rest my back against the door that led into the first-class compartment. Just after the tram had left the square, I heard a tapping on the door and realized that someone was asking permission to open it. I stepped back from the door slightly, turning on my heels to make room for the person getting on. And when the door opened, who should I find before me but my sweetheart, in the flesh! My heart jumped so violently, my whole chest quaked. I became oblivious to everything in the universe but the happy sight, which caused me to tremble all over in joy and fear. She happened to look into my face, so our eyes met for a brief moment. She seemed to hesitate slightly on the car’s threshold between the two compartments, but she had no place behind her to place her foot, so she had no choice but to come forward. She looked around behind me for a place to stand, but the car was packed wall to wall. People were standing so close together, there wasn’t so much as an inch of space unoccupied. Consequently, she was obliged to occupy the place where I’d been standing, and she rested her back against the door. Meanwhile, I stood in front of her — only a breath away — holding on to the door handle. There she was — she and no other — as though heaven had granted her to me as a balm to my soul. There are realities that are more wondrous than dreams, and this was the most wondrous of them all. What was I feeling? Was it joy, or fear, or a blazing fire? If it hadn’t been for the delicacy of the situation and my appalling timidity, I would have liked to cry! I was insensible to everything, and I no longer felt the people around me despite the fact that they were pressing on me from all sides. I don’t even recall what color dress my beloved was wearing or what she had in her hand. It seems that the heart has its own kind of vision that, when it focuses in on something, so obscures physical vision that one becomes blind even though one is sighted. I don’t know where I got the courage, but I stole a glance at her, and when I saw her, my heart fluttered mercilessly. It seemed to me that my presence was what had produced this charming friendliness and delightful discomfiture. I sighed in spite of myself, and a lock of her hair undulated under the force of my breath. She looked up at me, then quickly lowered her eyes in flight from my gaze. Ah! I’d finally found someone who ran away from me! An intoxication warmer and more delectable than wine’s flowed through my head. Gripped by a madness the likes of which I’d never known before, I fixed my gaze on her face with an extraordinary — and, for me, outrageous — daring. Suddenly I became conscious of a peculiar urge to give voice to what was pressing in on me, and I gulped with a violent nervous tension. Then, in a terrible, angst-filled uproar, I began making ready for the anticipated leap, aided by the madness that was churning inside me and propelled forward by the anxious longing and near-despair that I’d suffered in the preceding days. Then, possessed by a feeling similar to that experienced by someone who’s about to commit suicide as he gathers courage for the final leap, my lips moved with a sound that came out in a whisper as I said, “I want to tell you something.”