Naguib Mahfouz: The Mirage

I’m amazed at the fact that I feel called to take up the pen. Writing is an art I have no experience with, either as a hobby or as a profession. In fact, it might be said that with the exception of school assignments in my boyhood and the clerical tasks relating to my job, I’ve never written anything at all. Even more amazing is the fact that I don’t recall ever having composed a note or a letter in the entire time I’ve lived on earth, which comes to more than a quarter of a century. The truth is that letters — like speech — are a symbol of social life and an expression of the ties that bind people in this world, and these are all things of which I know nothing. Don’t we prune trees, cutting off the branches that have grown crooked? Why is it, then, that we keep people who aren’t fit for life? Why do we show such tolerance — nay, neglect — by imposing such individuals on life, or by imposing life on them against their will? As a result, they roam the earth as frightened strangers, and sometimes they’re gripped with such panic that they go wandering about like someone gone mad with fever, trampling innocent victims beneath their stumbling feet.

I say once again that I don’t recall having written anything that deserves to be called “writing.” In fact, for as long as I can remember, I’ve found it an exhausting, nearly impossible enterprise even to converse. If I’ve had no choice but to speak, I’ve stammered helplessly, not knowing how to express myself. However, this helplessness goes beyond the matter of speaking or writing. It’s more serious and dangerous indeed, for the inability to express myself and the attendant sense of constriction and impotence are, without a doubt, the most trifling of its consequences. Hence, it’s only fitting that I should wonder what it is that now impels me to write. After all, it isn’t just a letter to be penned. Rather, it’s a vast distance to be covered, so vast it will leave me breathless. I’m astonished at the energy and fervor that compel me to write, feelings I’m not accustomed to. I imagine myself continuing to write, without hesitation and without growing weary, day and night, with a determination that knows no lassitude. But why subject myself to such torment? Haven’t I spent my entire life seeking refuge in silence and suppression? Haven’t the secrets in my heart been unable to find themselves a closed grave in which to rest and die? How to explain this passionate urgency? How is it that I’ve unsheathed the pen to unearth a grave over which the dust of concealment has accumulated? Life has been lost, and the pen is the refuge of the lost. That’s the fact. People who write are, generally speaking, people who aren’t alive. This doesn’t mean, of course, that I was alive before. However, I never ceased looking for a joyful hope by whose light I could find my way, and now that light has been extinguished.

I’m not writing to someone else. After all, it isn’t in the nature of those afflicted with timidity and shame to bare their souls to another human being. Rather, I’m writing to myself, and to myself alone. I went on concealing my soul’s whispers until I lost sight of its reality, and now I need desperately to reveal its hidden face honestly, frankly, and without mercy in the hope that this might lead, even in defiance of destiny, to healing. As for the attempt to forget, it offers no such healing. Truth be told, forgetting is nothing but a cleverly devised fairy tale, and of such fairy tales I’ve endured enough. Perhaps my beginning to write is a sign that I’ve given up the notion of suicide once and for all. Not that suicide wouldn’t be a fitting penalty for a man who’s taken two other lives. On the contrary, it’s far less than what such a man deserves. Yet what can I do in the face of life’s insistence on finding a way to defend itself? If the past were a piece of the physical place in which I find myself, I’d turn on my heels and flee. However, it follows me wherever I go like my shadow. I have no choice but to meet it face to face with a steady heart, and without blinking an eye. Be that as it may, death is easier to face than the fear of death, and the act of facing death has a magic to it that may turn these pages into a pristine, transparent soul.

I make no claim to knowledge. In fact, there’s nothing to which I’ve been more hostile than knowledge, and I confess to being a stupid, lazy man. However, I’ve endured bitter experiences that have shaken me to the core, and there’s nothing like experience to unearth what lies buried in people’s souls. I long to lift the veil and penetrate my secrets, to put my finger on the site of my malady, the seat of my memories, the wellspring of my pain. Perhaps in this way I can avoid a lamentable end and escape this pain that is more than I can bear. I’m feeling my way in the darkness.

In reality, I’m nothing but a victim. I don’t say this in order to mitigate my own guilt or shirk my responsibility. Nevertheless, it’s the honest truth. The truth is that I’m a victim. However, I’m a victim with two victims of my own. And what pains me beyond words is that one of these two victims was my own mother! As unbelievable as it is, it’s the dreadful reality. How could I have allowed myself to forget that she was the secret of my life and happiness, and that I couldn’t bear to live without her? But I was living on the brink of madness, and thus I lost everything and found myself in a terrifying, lightless void. I’m a man of deep faith, and I know for a certainty that I’ll be raised to life on the Appointed Day. I don’t fear the sufferings and horrors of that day — when I’m stripped bare in the presence of God, with nothing to show but my good deeds and my bad — half as much as I fear being raised in a state like the one I’ve endured in this world. I truly desire resurrection to a new life, and when that happens, my sufferings will become as nothing, to be annihilated for all eternity, and I’ll be able to meet my loved ones with a tranquil heart and a pure, untainted soul.

My mother and my life were one and the same. My mother’s life in this world has ended, but it still lies hidden in the depths of my own. Hardly can I think of any aspect of my life without her beautiful, loving face appearing before me. She stands ever and always behind both my hopes and my sufferings, behind both my love and my hatred. She gave me more happiness than I could ever have hoped for, and more misery than I could ever have imagined. It’s as though she herself was everything I’ve ever loved or hated, since she herself is my whole life. Is there anything beyond love and hate in a person’s life? So let me confess that I’m writing in order to remember her and in order to recover her life, since with the recovery of her life, all life will be restored. In this way, I may be able to repair the thread of my life that’s been broken. Perhaps hope will be renewed through such a recovery. At this time, everything seems vague and obscure, as though Satan had cast sand into my eyes. Even so, I feel my way patiently and deliberately, led forward by the hope of rescue to which a drowning man clings.

What moves me is a genuine intention to renew my life and resurrect it as a new creation. So, if the path is too arduous, if despair overwhelms me, or if shame and diffidence get the better of me, nothing will remain for me but death.

What reward do the dead receive from the living once they’ve disappeared under the ground? We flee from their memory the way we flee from death itself. Perhaps this fact conceals a precious wisdom. However, our selfishness insists on concealing it beneath a veneer of bitter, laughable sorrow. I fled in terror from our house, leaving everything behind. Then I began to come to my senses and regain some degree of composure. I realized the terrible momentousness of what had befallen me, and my hands sought refuge in the closet of memories. As I brought out everything that remained there, what should I find but a photograph.