Naguib Mahfouz: The Mirage

At the same time, I can’t say I took completely to our sheltered life. In fact, there were many times when I may have wearied of it and wished I had more freedom. Perhaps my impatience with the life we lived began to increase as I grew older. One sign of this was that my mother began keeping me constantly in her lap and frightening me with all manner of things in order to set me against the freedom and autonomy I’d begun to want. She so filled my ears with stories of goblins, ghosts, spirits, djinns, murderers, and thieves that I imagined myself living in a world filled with demons and terror. Everything in this world was something to be wary and fearful of.

That era is long gone now, but it still lives in my heart and flows in my blood. It was this that placed fear at the center of my soul, turning it into the hub around which my entire life revolved. In so doing, it destroyed my peace of mind and cast me into a state of unrelenting misery. I was nothing but a frightened spirit that, if it weren’t confined to a body, would flee in terror. I was afraid of people. I was afraid of animals and insects. I was afraid of the dark and the chimeras that stalked me there. I would have done anything to avoid being alone with a cat, and never in a million years would I have slept in a room by myself. Even so, fear ran deeper in my life than the things through which it manifested itself to me. Its long, thick shadow loomed over the past, the present, and the future, wakefulness and sleep, my way of life and its philosophy, sickness and health, love and hatred. It left nothing untouched. I lived most of my past life heedless and ignorant, not knowing the reason for my misery. Ordeals and afflictions later clarified certain aspects of my life to me, rending with their harshness the veils that had kept my distressing secrets concealed. Still, my sense of helplessness hasn’t left me. It’s a sense that rests, in truth, on my inadequate education and sophistication and a lack of confidence in my mental powers. My mother was the source of these torments. Yet, she was also my sole refuge from them, and I repaired to the shelter she offered without hesitation.

Among the memories I carry from that unforgettable era are the times when we — my mother and I — would stand beside my grandmother’s grave during certain seasons, crowning it with basil and reciting the Fatiha as we called down divine mercy upon her. We would talk often about the grave and those in the grave. How do they sleep? How are they received? What do they face by way of affliction and divine judgment? How do verses from the Holy Qur’an descend upon them as light that drives away their forlornness and gloom and alleviates their sense of isolation? Since it was my grandmother’s grave, I loved it intensely. When my mother wasn’t looking, I would rush over to one side of it and plunge my fingernails into its soil, then dig with a fury in the hope of catching a glimpse of the unknown that lay buried under the ground. It would distress me no end to hear her repeating, “To God do we belong, and to Him shall we return,” or, “To dust shall we return,” or, “Death is the final end of everything that lives.”

Once I asked her in astonishment, “Are we all going to die?”

Vexed by my question, she tried to distract me from it, but I refused to let it go.

“After a long life, God willing,” she said.

Eyeing her fearfully, I asked again, “And you, Mama?”

“Of course,” she replied, concealing a smile. “I’ll die some day.”

Pained by her words, I cried, “No! No! You’ll never die!”

She patted me affectionately on the head and said soothingly, “Pray for me to have a long life, and I’ll pray for the Most Merciful and Compassionate One to answer your prayer.”

So, holding my two little palms heavenward, I prayed to God from the depths of my heart, my eyes filled with tears.

Was I going to stay in her lap forever, as though I were part of her body?

I was all of four years old, and the time had come for me to want to play and have friends. I had nowhere to escape to in the house except the balcony, which overlooked the courtyard and the street beyond. The children of the family that occupied the first floor would play in the courtyard, and I would look wistfully down at them. Sometimes they’d look back up at me with an unspoken invitation in their eyes that shook me from head to toe, and one day I asked my mother’s permission to join them.

“What’s happened to your mind?” she asked me in alarm. “Don’t you see that they fight all the time? What would I do if they hit you or hurt you? Or if they took you out to the street where cars are passing by all the time? What will you learn from them but mischief and bad manners? As for me, I tell you stories, and if you want to, we go out together to visit Sayyida Zaynab. If you really love me, don’t leave me.”

Seeing the look of exasperation and resentment on my face, she continued, “I’ve been deprived of seeing your sister and brother, so you’re all I have left in the world. And now you want to leave me. May God forgive you!”

“I love you more than anything in the world,” I said, “but I want to play!”

However, she wasn’t about to give in to this desire of mine. When I found myself at my wits’ end over her unrelenting stance, I would cry or throw temper tantrums, pulling my hair and ripping my clothes. But there was nothing in the world that would have caused her to yield to my desire to distance myself from her. Apart from this one thing, however, she spared no effort to please me. She would buy me toys of all shapes and kinds, and when she sensed that I was cross or bored, she would invite one of the neighbor children to play with me under her watchful eye. But none of this was sufficient to satisfy my thirst for freedom. One day, taking advantage of a moment of inattentiveness on her part, I managed to slip out of the flat. As I fled, I was beside myself with joy, and I was received by the children in the courtyard with an incredulous welcome. Although we were somewhat acquainted with one another, I still didn’t know how to approach them. I stood glued to my place, flustered and shy. It wasn’t long before my mother looked down from the balcony and called to me in a sharp, angry voice. But the oldest of the children came up to me and invited me to play, saying, “Don’t pay any attention to her!” And for the first time in my life, I ignored what she was saying. I rushed forward into the circle of players and took my place with delight beyond measure. However, hardly had a few minutes passed before an argument broke out between me and one of the other children, and he slapped me in the face. I was stupefied, as it may have been the first time I’d ever been slapped in my life. I threw myself on his arm and plunged my teeth into it, whereupon, without hesitation, his friends fell upon me with blows and kicks. My mother shouted at them with angry threats, but they didn’t leave me alone until she’d threatened to throw a pitcher at them. By the time they’d finished with me, I was in a pitiful state indeed, panting and teary-eyed. She called me to come up to her but I was overcome with shame and embarrassment, so I stood there with downcast eyes as if I were pinned to the ground and made no move to answer her call. In fact, I didn’t budge until the gatekeeper came and carried me up to her, whereupon she washed my face and legs for me.

“It serves you right! It serves you right!” she said in an agitated tone. “This is what happens to people who disobey their mothers. God will forgive us for anything except defying our mothers. This is what it’s like to play with other children. So, how was it?”

I wasn’t pained by the beating half as much as I was by my defeat before her. Lying, I assured her that I’d been the one at fault, and that I was the one who had attacked the other boy first.