Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

I’d noticed that, what with her work at school and visits to her relatives, Rabab was spending all day and part of the night away from home. I’d gone with her in the beginning despite my reclusive nature, but when it became a hardship for me, I withdrew and stopped accompanying her on more than the occasional visit. My mother went back to making her embittered, sorrowful comments on the situation, while I came tirelessly to my wife’s defense even though, somewhere deep inside me, I agreed with the criticisms. In the past I’d encouraged my wife to make such visits to help her get her mind off what I felt was lacking in our married life. Now, though, there was no reason that I could see to go to such excess in this regard.

Hence, after gathering my courage, I said to her one day, “It seems, sweetheart, that you’re boycotting our house. Wouldn’t it be possible for you to cut down on the number of visits you make?”

Looking at me suspiciously, she asked with a sharpness I wasn’t accustomed to, “So, does she still busy herself criticizing me?”

I realized that she was referring to my mother, and it pained me to see that she harbored such a negative attitude toward her.

“My mother doesn’t interfere in what doesn’t concern her,” I replied soothingly. “This is my request and no one else’s. The fact is, I can’t bear our house when you’re not in it.”

“Let’s go out together, then,” she said, having recovered her composure. “Why don’t you like to be with people?”

“That’s just the way I am,” I said gently.

I don’t know what changed her after what I’d said. However, she said testily, “Well, this is the only way life is bearable for me.”

Ah, my love! I thought to myself. Your gentle-heartedness wouldn’t allow you to speak this way! What’s happened?

However, that wasn’t all there was to it. After all, my heart would sometimes see things that my eyes missed. I had to rend the curtain of blindness and meet the truth face-to-face, bitter though it might be. It seemed to me that Rabab wasn’t as happy with my recovery as I was. It was a bizarre reality, and one that had me completely baffled. But how long would I go on deluding myself? She seemed to be afraid for night to come and want to avoid it. As soon as we found ourselves alone together, she would be gripped by torment that I could see in her limpid eyes. And particularly of late, she’d begun making all manner of excuses, from tiredness to feeling ill to being desperately sleepy. And when she did yield to me, she would do so in a way that made it seem like a joyless capitulation. Then she’d wrest her body away from mine as though she were offended and angry. For all these reasons, she was no longer the smiling, cheerful, serene girl I’d once known her to be. Her laugh was tainted with affectation, her cheerfulness had grown tepid, and her affection had turned to flattery. Far be it from me to say that she openly declared any bitterness or resentment or that she behaved discourteously. After all, my sweetheart was above such things. However, I could sense her anxiety with my heart, and I picked up instinctively on her ambivalence. God knows, the whole world wouldn’t have amounted to a hill of beans as far as I was concerned if my beloved was in pain. But what was bothering her? I missed her, but couldn’t find her. And I had to find her lest I die of sorrow.

My misery reached its limit. Her seeming aversion to me had affected me deeply, making its way into the inner recesses of my being. It provoked a recurrence of my old malady, and the magical recovery I’d experienced went the way of the wind. Not even liquor did the trick anymore. I was so grief-stricken, I came close to losing my mind. Was impotence to be my lot again? Was I to be doomed once more to that deadly despair?

Once I said to her despondently, “What’s wrong, Rabab? You’re not the sweetheart I’ve always known.”

She made no reply. Instead, she just lowered her eyes with a look of consternation and uncertainty on her face.

Imploringly I said, “My heart doesn’t lie to me. So please, tell me what’s changed you.”

“Nothing,” she whispered with a somber look in her eyes.

“But there is something!” I cried. “In fact, there’s more than one thing. I’m your husband, Rabab, and I’m all yours. So don’t hide anything from me. Oh, Rabab, how I grieve the happy days we once knew!”

She sighed, and a look of pain and embarrassment came over her face. Then she murmured tremulously, “So do I.”

Stunned, distressed, and utterly confused, I asked her, “How could that be, Rabab? I don’t understand a thing. Shouldn’t our life be happier than this?”

The look on her face indicated that she was as confused as I was, a fact that stunned and baffled me even more. I wanted her to reveal to me what was causing her distress and, in so doing, to relieve me of my own. I waited fretfully until I began to suspect things that struck terror in my heart and, if true, would plunge me into humiliation and despair.

When I could bear to wait no longer, I said, “Why don’t you tell me honestly what you’re thinking?”

She wanted to reveal what was weighing on her delicate heart, but she either didn’t know how, or didn’t have the courage.

As for me, fear and despondency tightened their grip on me until my anguish knew no bounds.

“Rabab,” I said. “You’re not comfortable with the new development in our lives, are you?”

She looked at me strangely, then lowered her glance and began nervously chewing her fingernails. The cat was out of the bag now. However, her silence had started to disturb me, and with a feeling that bordered on exasperation I asked, “Isn’t that so?”

She looked at me as though she were begging me to have pity on her.

Then, in a voice that was barely audible she said, “Shall we go back to the way we were before? It was a nice life.”

I looked down in humiliation and dejection as though I’d been slapped in the face. This wish of hers could have given me a convenient excuse by which to conceal the impotence I’d begun suffering anew. Even so, my only response to it was to feel utterly mortified.

As though she saw the pained look on my face, she said gently, “I don’t mean to upset you. It’s just that I miss the life we had before. It was a pure, happy life.…”

As if to finish her statement for her, I said, “… and there was nothing in it to disturb your peace of mind?”

She blinked her eyes, and in them I could see a look of sympathy.

“We were happy, weren’t we?” she said gently. “We lacked nothing at all.”

I don’t know why, but her gentleness caused me pain.

Then I remembered some of the things I’d heard from my fellow employees at the warehousing section and I said, “But that’s the only thing that will make a woman happy!”

Blushing, she assured me hastily, “No! No! You’re wrong about that!”

I looked at her in bewilderment. Is she really telling me the truth? I wondered. But what reason would she have to lie? I was nothing but a gullible, ignorant fool, and you won’t find an easier prey for words of assurance than gullible, ignorant fools. Hence, I was moved profoundly by what she said.

Again I thought: Should I disbelieve my beloved and believe the harebrains at the ministry? Didn’t this statement of hers express a belief that I myself had held before I was persuaded otherwise by my coworkers’ bawdy remarks? Add to this the fact that now that she’d spoken this way, and now that I was impotent again, I couldn’t have relations with her anymore.

So all things considered, I pretended to be relieved.

Feigning a smile, I said with resignation, “There’s nothing I want more than your happiness, Rabab.”