Naguib Mahfouz - The Mirage

He proceeded to his room, so we followed him, but my mother didn’t have the courage to ask him what news he brought.

“O Lord! O Lord!” she whispered in a trembling voice.

He took off his fez slowly and deliberately, all the while avoiding my mother’s eyes. He sat down on a large chair near his bed, gave us a long look, then said in that gruff voice of his as though he were talking to himself, “The man’s a criminal! And what do you expect from a criminal?”

My mother’s faced turned white as a sheet, her lips began to tremble, and there was a look of despair in her eyes. I began looking back and forth anxiously and fearfully between my grandfather and my mother. My grandfather left us in our misery for a little while. Then, taking pity on us, he removed his mask of gloom. Breaking into a raucous laugh, he said triumphantly, “Don’t kill yourself with grief, Umm Radiya. The old devil hardly put up a fight!”

We were speechless at first. Then our faces lit up with the glad tidings, and my mother’s eyes sparkled with joy. Kneeling before my grandfather and bathing his hand in kisses, she asked fervently, “Really? Really? Has God taken pity on my broken heart?”

My grandfather began twisting his mustache with satisfaction as my mother asked again with the same fervor, “Did you see Radiya and Medhat?”

He shook his head regretfully, saying, “They were at school.”

She uttered an impassioned prayer for them, her eyes filled with tears. My grandfather hadn’t been in the custom of visiting them, since he disliked my father and didn’t expect to be well received in his house. He then related to us how, when he met with my father on the veranda, the latter had had a bottle of liquor and a full glass in front of him. He told us that my father had received him with bewilderment and surprise, and that the only work he had left to do in life was to drink. Perhaps, my grandfather said, this deterioration on his part was what had caused him to go along with the proposal rather than clinging to his old stubborn ways.

A first he seemed skeptical, my grandfather said. However, when things became clearer to him, he laughed derisively, yet without obstinacy or anger, and said simply, “I’m in no mood to raise anybody or be a wet nurse all over again. Keep him if you want, but don’t ask me for a red cent. That’s an explicit condition! If I’m asked for a single penny in the coming days, I’ll take him away from you, and you won’t lay eyes on him as long as I live.”

My grandfather agreed to my father’s condition. In fact, he’d had a feeling even before going to see him that he would make this sort of demand. Even so, it came as a shock to him that the man expressed no interest in seeing his son, and that he didn’t even ask about me once.

Then my grandfather said, “Ru’ba Laz isn’t a human being anymore. The man’s finished.”

“Poor dear Radiya and Medhat!” muttered my mother glumly.

However, my grandfather said reassuringly, “Radiya is seventeen years old now and Medhat is sixteen. They aren’t children anymore.”

* * *

Thus, having been rescued from the fear that had loomed so large on our path, we went back to our usual peace and quiet. I carried on with my studies at home, plodding my way laboriously through them. Another year passed, autumn rolled around, and there was frequent talk of school, so I knew for a certainty that my return to prison drew nigh.

One day I said to my mother, “If you love me so much that you won’t agree to let my father take me back, why do you let school separate us?”

Laughing that delicate laugh of hers, she said, “For shame! How can you say that when you’re the perfect man? Don’t you want to be a high-ranking officer some day like your grandfather? If you leave school, what can you do but work as a fuul vendor or a tram conductor!”

My grandfather took me to the Aqqadin School in Heliopolis, and this time I passed the entrance examination. The academic year began and I began reluctantly attending school. The carriage would take me there in the morning and bring me home in the afternoon. Given this new arrangement, my grandfather forbade my mother to escort me herself as she’d done during my days at the Roda School. Hence, I returned once more to school and suffered anew the lessons, the regime, the teachers’ cruelty, and the other students’ derision. My entire school life was misery from start to finish. Moreover, my misery was reinforced by the fact that at home I was an undisputed sovereign, and at school a dutiful slave. Year after year I lived the confused, schizophrenic life of someone who at home is showered with affection, and at school is the target of his classmates’ ridicule and blows from the teachers’ rod.

I earned the teachers’ hostility thanks to my stupidity and dullness of mind. Some of them even dubbed me “the first-rate dunce.” Whenever my mathematics teacher finished explaining a lesson, he would ask me about it and keep after me until I’d given him a satisfactory answer. Then, with a sigh of relief, he would turn to the other students and say, “If Mr. Kamil has figured it out, then you must have, too!” And the class would roar with laughter.

As for the pupils, they made fun of me whenever they got the chance. My inability to make friends is a bitter reality of which there can be no doubt, since it’s something at which I’ve never succeeded in my entire life. The fact is that I’m no worse than a lot of people who enjoy happy friendships. However, I’m painfully shy, I love solitude and isolation, and I’m wary of strangers. What makes my disposition even more unhappy is the fact that by nature I’m withdrawn, unable to express myself without faltering and searching in vain for the right word. Never in my life have I been good even at talking, much less joking or playfulness. For all these reasons the other students accused me of being disagreeable. It so pained me to be described in this way that I asked my mother one day, “Mama, am I disagreeable?”

She stared at me in horror.

“Who said that about you?” she asked me tartly.

“All the other students,” I said hesitantly.

“Well, their tongues ought to be cut out!” she cried, furious. “They just envy you for your perfect manners and the carriage that takes you to school while they dawdle along on foot! Don’t you dare make friends with any of them.”

As if I were in need of such advice! Thus, I endured life at school alone, with hostility and hatred peering at me from all sides. If I’d taken part in the pleasures school afforded, it might not have been all that bad. However, my inordinate shyness forced me to boycott the various activities others were involved in, from scouting, to ball, to physical education. My mother wouldn’t even agree to let me go on field trips for fear that some harm might come to me. The other students would talk about the pyramids, the Sphinx, the Museum of Antiquities, and Fustat while I listened in on their conversations feeling bewildered and disheartened, as though I were listening to tourists relating stories about distant lands. I can hardly describe the embarrassment that came over me when I realized that all I’d seen of vast, far-flung Cairo — the only city I’d ever inhabited — were a few streets within walking distance of our house. My sole consolation during those days was to sit alone with my mother on the balcony or in our room, where we would talk for hours on end. Thinking of the teacher’s rod would remind me that there was a homework assignment I needed to do before going to bed. So I’d take to the book in loathing and disgust, studying wearily and without enthusiasm until, before long, I’d begin nodding off and sleep would dim my eyes.

* * *