Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

When night fell and I closed the bedroom door behind us, I told myself with a sense of dread that had come upon me with the approaching darkness: Tonight it will happen, God willing. I’d had no previous experiences with women, and the only sexual life I’d known was the infernal habit from which I’d only recently escaped. However, I’d learned some things by way of hearsay at the ministry that, for all I knew, might or might not do me any good.

I saw my beloved standing in front of the mirror and combing her hair. Delighted by the sight of her tall, willowy frame, I came up to her and wrapped my arms around her. She turned around until I could feel her bosom touch my heart, and I drew her close in passionate affection.

This was love. I realized by instinct that I’d have to bring it down out of the clouds in order to do my duty by her. But how? She rested peacefully against my chest as though she were a sprite formed out of the fabric of pristine clouds, while I myself seemed like a pure, disembodied spirit. How was I to find my body? Suddenly my soul was permeated with feelings of agitation, tension, and fear, all of which were intensified by the previous night’s failure. I hadn’t thought of it as a failure until that morning, and during the day I’d come to the opposite conclusion, or nearly so. At that moment, however, the feeling returned with a hopeless certainty and resignation. Then, gripped by such a deadly shyness that my blood froze and my determination flagged, I was afflicted by a terrible fear of the bed. When I was in it, I could find no excuse for myself, although when I was away from it I could at least find a half-excuse of sorts.

These noxious thoughts went through my head while my beloved was still in my arms. I turned into a lifeless statue and the joy of all joys went the way of the wind. She sighed. She may have been annoyed by the fact that we’d been standing there for so long. Stung by her sigh, I couldn’t bear my inaction any longer. So, picking her up in my arms, I carried my precious bundle to the bed, laid her down gently, then lay down beside her. Filled with longing, I covered her lips, her cheeks, and her neck with quick, copious kisses. Feeling tender and affectionate herself, she encircled my neck with her succulent arm and we lay there next to each other for a long time.

Feelings of love, despair, enjoyment, and fear were doing battle in my heart as though I were in a blazing, trackless desert expanse with delirium tossing me to and fro among the phantoms of joy and the ghosts of fear. I was in a blissful dream, yet fear and hopelessness refused to let go of me. How was I to find deliverance when my body was dead and lifeless? My throat was parched with fear, and I stood bewildered in the face of my impotence and despair, wondering what to do. However, not for a moment did I think of retreating. After all, where was there to flee? On the contrary, despair moved me to take off her robe. My hand found its way to her belt clasp and undid it, and I could feel her bosom shudder beneath mine. I removed one side of the robe to reveal one of her breasts, and her lithe body appeared in a white silk gown that hardly concealed a thing. She made a move to bring the edge of the robe back over her chest, and I removed it again, causing it to reveal the translucent white gown. I gazed at the alluring sight of her body with eyes that agitation had nearly robbed of the ability to see. I was in a pitiful state, indeed. The torment of a dying person struggling desperately to cling to the life of his body couldn’t possibly have been worse than my torment in those moments. Yet in spite of it all, I stubbornly persevered, drawing on my despair and torment for strength, useless though it might be. The timid person doesn’t flee in the midst of the battle, since flight brings humiliation in the face of the enemy. It’s true, of course, that he avoids the battle to begin with and gets as far away from a confrontation as he can. However, once he’s on the battlefield and everyone’s eyes are upon him, flight — no less than the battle itself — becomes more than he can bear.

I brought my beloved into a sitting position and removed the robe from her arms, leaving nothing but her translucent gown and her exposed body. She turned her head away from me and hid it in the pillow. Little did she know that I was consumed with despair, and that this entire scene was nothing but a farce. I felt more pained and ashamed than ever. Even so, I reached out again as though I were still aspiring to some unattainable hope. As I spread her out on the bed, she was trembling with despair and cold.

“I’m afraid,” my beloved said in a whisper.

How outrageous! Who was she afraid of? Her whispered words stung me like a lead-spiked whip. Yet I didn’t stop. Nothing could make me turn back — neither reluctance nor resistance — till I’d seen all I’d hoped to see. What had come over me? It wasn’t just death I was suffering. It was something new, something frightening and disturbing. What had come over me? Lord! My beloved was beautiful and charming, yet ignorance and blind imagination were at work against me. I was blind and inexperienced, someone whose eyes had yet to see the light of life. I’d entertained all sorts of childish fantasies about it. Then when I saw the real thing, I failed to recognize it! It was a tragedy, though if it hadn’t been for the death I was experiencing, it might not have been a tragedy at all. This cruel experience was teaching me that love creates beauty just as beauty creates love. Be that as it may, alongside the despair and shame I was already feeling, I was stricken by panic as well, and there was no more hope. I froze, my beloved’s face buried in the pillow, placing herself at the mercy of her executioner. I froze, not knowing what to do or how to retreat, and in a certain terrible moment I nearly burst out laughing from sheer nervous tension. However, I got hold of myself. The very next moment I had the urge to cry, and if crying weren’t considered shameful, I would have poured out my tormented soul in a river of tears.

Finding my inertia as wearisome as it was frightening, I took her in my arms and kissed her as feelings of pity and grief — for both of us — flowed from my lips. It was a lamentation uttered with kisses. As the minutes and seconds passed, they felt like the teeth of a saw cutting through my neck. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Then the situation became tedious and exhausting. Extricating herself from my embrace with a sprightly motion, she covered herself with her clothes. Sleep seemed like a laughable conclusion to the situation. But what was I to do? My beloved lay down to rest without our eyes meeting, and I don’t know when slumber carried her away. As for me, I remained wakeful and weary, not knowing how I would face her in the morning. What demon had enticed me into marriage? Hadn’t the former torment of longing been more bearable than this? How could my body have let me down? Wasn’t it the same body that would consume fire when I was engaged in my infernal habit? How long would this despair go on? Meanwhile, my head was like a red-hot piece of iron, its thoughts like sparks flying in all directions.

My beloved was pure compassion and mercy. She greeted me the next morning with a bright smile, then went flitting gaily here and there. Consequently, I had no reason to doubt that she was a happy bride. If she’d seemed only to be pretending to be happy so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, I would have been unspeakably miserable. But she was acting out of an inborn simplicity that knew no such thing as affectation or pretense. I felt truly and sincerely that she loved me, and that hers was a big heart full of tenderness, compassion, and femininity. So I felt hopeful again. I told myself that we were still just starting out, and that countless joys awaited us once we’d taken this first, difficult step. We spent the day together, part of it talking and the other part looking at the drawings, games, and toys that she had skillfully prepared for her kindergarten class. In the evening we were visited by her family. We all gathered in the sitting room with my mother and talked for a long time, happily gobbling down chocolate and sweets. They tried to draw my mother into the conversation, but she, like me, wasn’t a skilled conversationalist, and she came across as reserved and distant. I suspected she wasn’t making a very good impression on them, and that Rabab shared their feelings. In fact, it wasn’t long before I’d come to share the same impression, and I found myself feeling ambivalent toward her. On one hand I wanted her to be with me, which was a feeling I knew well and which came naturally to me. On the other hand, however, I felt painfully awkward having her living with me as a married man. In fact, the minute I thought of her my forehead would break out in a sweat. Once the social gathering had broken up and night fell, a sense of foreboding came over me. No sooner had our bedroom door closed behind us than the well of contentment in my heart dried up, and the hope that had sprung up in response to the day’s happiness dwindled away to nothing. My sweetheart seemed to be suffering some of what I was suffering and to be feeling a distress that even her tact wasn’t sufficient to conceal. I replayed the events of the previous night in my mind, and in less than a second my confidence had gone the way of the wind. I wished we could just go to sleep without making another attempt, since I was certain of failure even before I began. However, I had to do what I had to do. So I repeated the attempt down to the last detail, including kisses, hugs, and failure. Indeed: failure, failure, and more failure! My poor sweetheart. In the beginning she surrendered more or less fearfully, but by the end she wound up picking herself up, bashful and uncomfortable. We finished at a late hour the way we had the first time, then she went to sleep while I remained wakeful and brooding.