Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

“It was a letter,” I insisted angrily, “and I won’t back down until you’ve confessed everything to me.”

She stepped back with a groan and leaned on the wardrobe mirror.

Then in a plaintive voice she said, “I beg you not to think ill of me. There’s nothing at all for you to be angry or suspicious about. Please, don’t look at me that way!”

However, I went on looking at her sternly and cruelly, my soul yearning to know the truth. It was either deliverance, or death. Lord! I thought. I’m having a nightmare! Could I ever have conceived of taking such a stance toward her in anything but a nightmare?

Then she said breathlessly, “Don’t look at me that way! I really did make a mistake, but it’s your fault that I made it! You took me by surprise, and I got flustered. Then I fell into a needless lie.”

Lord, how I needed to be delivered. How badly I longed for a drop of rain to wet my parched being.

“It was a letter,” I said in consternation.

“Yes, it was!” she rejoined hurriedly. “It had seemed trivial to me until you got suspicious over it. You got an angry look on your face, thinking that this trivial thing was something serious, so I tried to get out of the situation by lying. And then what happened, happened.”

More confused than ever now, I asked her, “If it was a letter, then who sent it?”

“I don’t know.”

Sighing in exasperation, I said, “What sorts of riddles are these?”

Getting over her fright little by little and heartened by the fact that my anger had abated, she said hopefully, “Let me tell you the story of this ill-fated letter in a nutshell. I received it at school this morning, and I was shocked, since I’m not used to getting letters from anybody. When I opened it I found that it was unsigned and that all it was was shameless nonsense. So it had been written by some vulgar person! I was really angry at first, but after that I didn’t let it bother me. I decided to keep it so that I could show it to you, since I thought I’d let it be a surprise that would give you a good laugh. But after you came home I changed my mind, since I was afraid it would cause you needless offense. So I hid it from you until I thought you’d left the house, then I got it out of my purse and reread it. I’d been intending to tear it up, but you took me by surprise when I was reading it. I realized the delicate position I was in, and it wasn’t possible anymore for me to admit the truth. So, as I told you before, I fell into a lie, but I’m being punished for it in a way I don’t deserve.”

I listened to her with my undivided attention. However, when she came to the end of her story, I stood motionless and ambivalent. I feared the potential consequences of the madness that had overtaken me, yet it wasn’t easy simply to believe her and let it go. I was in the grip of a deadly uncertainty. I prayed for God to deliver me from it, and to grant me the insight I needed to penetrate to the depths of this lovely soul that seemed to have been made to torment me.

Worn out with thinking and indecision, I said, half to myself, “Who sent it?”

As if the question had pained her, she looked down, her brow furrowed, and said, “I told you it was anonymous.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I exclaimed.

With a pained, miserable look on her face, she stamped her foot on the floor and said, “Are you accusing me of lying, Kamil, after I’ve told you the truth? I can’t take this!”

Pained by her distress, I said, “I mean, what good would it do the person to send you the letter if he didn’t give any indication of his identity? Had he sent you a letter previous to this one?”

“This is the first letter I’ve received.”

“And what did it say?”

“Silly things,” she said wearily as she looked down again.

I thought back suddenly to the sight of her hands as they tore up the letter, and I felt a pang of suspicion that caused my body to tremble with fright.

“Why did you tear it up?” I shouted. “Why did you tear it up?”

She let out a sigh of near despair, then remained silent for some time.

Finally she said in calm resignation, “I received this miserable letter at school. I don’t think you can possibly doubt this, since it would have been madness for him to send it to the house. And now, ask yourself this question: Why would I have kept the letter and brought it home if it contained something suspicious? Why didn’t I tear it up at school after reading it there?”

Silenced by the cogency of her argument, I think I regretted my wild shouting.

As for Rabab, she continued, “If I were guilty, you wouldn’t find me in this bad position, and you wouldn’t know a thing about it. I’ll never forgive you for thinking ill of me.”

Stung by her words and painfully embarrassed, I lowered my glance lest she see the signs of defeat in my eyes. Yet, pained though I was, I hadn’t forgotten the mysteries I wanted to resolve.

“What you’re saying is plausible,” I said softly, “but maybe the person who wrote the letter didn’t sign it because he thought it would be easy for you to guess who he is — somebody who stops you on the street, for example.”

My gentle tone of voice did nothing to mitigate the effect of my words. In fact, it may even have exacerbated it.

“It’s my habit when I walk down the street to look straight ahead and not pay any attention to anybody!” she said resentfully.

I knew well enough the truth of her words, having experienced it first-hand. However, in my mind’s eye I could see the two men who had shared my admiration for her in the past.

So I asked, “Might it not be your former neighbor, the one who asked for your hand? I mean Muhammad Gawdat.”

She replied without hesitation, “He’s a dignified man who would never lower himself to such vulgar manners. Besides, I found out from my family around a month ago that he’s about to get married.”

After some thought, I said uncertainly, “During the same period when I used to hover around you, there was a heavy man that would regularly devour you with his eyes. Isn’t it possible that he wrote it?”

She knit her brow in an attempt to recall the person I was talking about. Then she shook her head, saying, “I don’t know anything about him.”

I tried to remind her of who he was, but she seemed not even to have been aware of his existence.

So, feeling angry and desperate, I said, “I want to know who he is so that I can put him in his place.”

In a tired-sounding voice she said, “Who cares who it was! If I hadn’t been so flustered that I tore it up, we’d be sitting here now reading it and laughing about it! So why don’t you just forget about it? It’s caused us enough grief as it is!”

I bit my lip and said nothing, still feeling angered and defeated.

Then she continued, “It’s a trivial matter. In fact, it’s too trivial for us to be getting so concerned about it.”

Heaving a sigh, I said mechanically, “If only you hadn’t torn it up!”

“Are you still suspicious of me?” she asked me sharply, her eyes flashing with anger.

“No,” I replied hurriedly, “but I won’t find any peace until I can teach him a lesson!”

Irritably she replied, “But we don’t know who he is, so what can we do?”

I was angered by what she’d said, but I avoided expressing how I felt lest I make her angry too. Apparently exhausted from standing, she moved over to the chair by the dressing table and sat down. At the same moment I felt a pain in my back, so I went over and sat on the edge of the bed. She was innocent and telling the truth, and the matter really was trivial. If only I could erase the memory of her tearing up that letter! Maybe the culprit was just some curious bystander who watched her coming and going. If only I didn’t fall prey so easily to jealousy. I knew myself well, and I knew that I could feel jealous of an illusion, that is, of nothing. So where could I find a far-away island on which no man had ever set foot?