Amir Elsir - Telepathy

I can at this point add something to what I have always asserted. Whenever I have observed Ifranji, listened to him in person, received his texts, or heard his voice on my phone, I have been certain that thanks to him I possess a living novel that is growing in my life and that will emerge as an actual novel one day.

The final serious message was from a friend who works in the Ministry of the Interior, in the division dealing with identity cards. Quite early today, before I went to see Abd al-Qawi the Shadow, I had sent him an email with some brief information about Nishan. His reply confirmed that the man’s statements tallied with his files and that the ID he carried had actually been issued more than seven years ago.

Now all I had to do was to keep tabs on this schizophrenic in al-Nakhil Hospital and focus on part of my life that I had neglected for the last two days. I turned off my phone again without calling Najma to find out what she wanted. Accompanied by my insomnia, I strode into my bedroom, where insomnia gradually faded away. The next morning when I awoke I discovered that I had slept soundly without tossing and turning or brooding. I smelled food cooking and heard the vacuum cleaner vibrating the floor of my house. Umm Salama was here, resolutely tidying up my unruly bachelor life.

I sat down at my table and turned on my computer. I went to Facebook to see what had been added during my brief absence, because there was always something new. I read with little interest the commentary on my last entry, which was the word “telepathy”. By quickly perusing the new photos Najma had posted that morning, I discovered a love poem, which was fragmentary and monstrous, from an admirer who called himself “The Afflicted Moon”. I also found an article by me about the rise to power of religious factions — the reasons for them and their implications; it had appeared on the op-ed page of one of the newspapers.

The Virtuous Sister’s page, which I thought of as the treasure-trove page, was full of booby traps, and the number of visitors had increased significantly from the day before. The Anti-Christ was lamenting the delay in the end of the world. The Mobile Charger was bewailing the scarcity of electricity. The person claiming to be “The Yearning, Choking Sheikh” had posted a new love poem that was not available to everyone; again he requested an email. The fellow who referred to himself as “Dead Man” had written: “We are God’s and to Him we return.”

The Virtuous Sister’s friends were fighting ferociously among themselves, and she appeared only as a full stop, a delicate question mark, or not at all. She had removed her picture in a black veil and replaced it with one showing her wearing the same type of niqab but in gray.

My personal email account was overflowing with messages; I didn’t open them because I was afraid they might bring new crises. I already was dealing with a crisis with consequences I hadn’t been able to handle.

I turned off the computer and grabbed my copy of Hunger’s Hopes , quickly turning to the page after the one that had been folded over. There I read about the mental hospital, an injected tranquilizer, and an intravenous drip that induced a tranquil state. I read about Yaqutah the nurse who worked in the hospital and who couldn’t keep herself from crying at work for the patient she had been fond of for a year and still was attached to. She didn’t know if this was true love or merely human sympathy that had grown in her and she could not shake off. I read about the flood of feelings in the filthy ward, which housed multiple patients with a variety of mental ailments. They were shouting, screaming, weeping, laughing, and attempting in rare moments of lucidity to escape from the intense surveillance and allow their savage illnesses the freedom to cross-pollinate in the streets.

By the end of the page, Nishan had begun to recover, becoming more lucid. He was able to remember Wadi al-Hikma and his beloved nurse’s face. His normal excuses were able to form in his mind, and he would definitely share them with everyone he had exposed to the fallout from his delirium, wherever he had acted out of control.

Nishan’s bout of insanity and confinement to a hospital were true to life, but Yaqutah, the nurse who had emigrated and changed her name to Ranim, was missing. The real hospital was clean, not filthy, and people with many types of mental illnesses were not crowded together in one ward. Nishan was actually lying in a clean room in a private hospital, and I was definitely paying for all his expenses. Even if Dr Shakir was a friend and very accommodating and sympathetic, the language of the bottom line supplanted all other tongues.

I had no intention of visiting Nishan that day or any other unless there was a sudden change in his condition. I was content with what I had done for him to date and felt no need for a visit. The most that I would try to do in the future was to wait for his complete cure and release from the hospital. Then I would attempt to have him checked for glandular cancer — to determine whether he actually had it or whether the real-life version of the text rectified this part as it had many other passages.

I sensed that my life had become unsettled and that what had happened in just two days was unprecedented during all the years of my adult life, part of which I had spent teaching math and part of which I had killed myself writing those asinine novels. If I asked myself now what actual profit a novel like Hunger’s Hopes could achieve, balanced against its enormous losses, I would say I had actually made no profit at all. I was on the verge of going stark raving mad myself and tearing up my two remaining copies of the novel. I regained control of myself only when one of them was about to be shredded.

I would not allow a crisis like this to cause me to abandon writing quite so easily. To become a writer I had abandoned a profession that was not merely respectable but also somewhat equitable in terms of providing me a living wage and a woman whom I loved and who loved me. In retrospect, teaching may have been the better option when the choice was presented as between house and the lady of the house — and writing.

I turned on my phone in order to reclaim my normal day and in keeping with my latest decision. I was surprised by the noisy rings of Najma’s call even before my phone was fully on.

The sight before me now was totally unfamiliar. I sensed I was confronting a different girl from the Najma I had met back in the days of “The Neighbors’ Goat” and during the subsequent period of quarrels and reconciliation, of brief meetings I felt she had rehearsed in advance. This young woman exuded grace — from her stylish clothes and splendid smile to the glances of a precisely delineated femininity, which I had never, ever, expected from her.

That morning Dr Shakir had phoned me to say that Nishan had improved considerably but would need to remain for a number of additional days under medical supervision. Then he would be able to return to his normal life. In brief, there was no need for me to interrupt my busy schedule to come see him.

That was what I had decided with total satisfaction to do before the doctor called. Joseph Ifranji had also informed me by the “single ring” or, as I referred to it, the “I need you but have no credit” method, that living in the rental house in a working-class neighborhood had greatly helped his nerves. He was hoping that his wife, Ashul, would return with their son, Mahogany, from the new state of South Sudan to share his delightful dwelling. Daldona, his jinni girlfriend from the Aisha Market, had become angry for no reason at all and left him. He didn’t think she would return, not even if he went back to the torn rag in that clamorous market. He added that he had met some neighbors who were pleasant and companionable, including a drunkard with a fine singing voice, a woman who made excellent syrup-soaked zalabiya doughnuts, and a professional demonstrator against the ruling elite; he was usually in prison or about to be returned there. The activist’s name was Sallum, but in the district his nickname was Beauty Spot. He, Joseph Ifranji, was seriously considering changing his name to Beauty Spot so he would be known as Beauty Spot Ifranji, because he was deeply impressed by this stalwart man. I laughed wholeheartedly and told him that Beauty Spot Ifranji would be a troublesome, offensive name ill-suited to the miserable life he was leading. In fact, the authorities might arrest him for it and deport him to his country. I knew that Ifranji would never be convinced. He had long been accustomed to changing his name as circumstances arose only to return later to his original name. He was once Joseph Mandela and then Joseph Bin Laden, along with other names I no longer recalled. During what was approximately the hour left before I was to meet Najma, I leafed through a book on the science of the paranormal, searching for something that would help me solve the riddle posed by Nishan and Hunger’s Hopes . Unfortunately I found nothing significant. It was an unpretentious recital of Sufi miracles, such as crossing the sea without boats, being physically present in two different places at the same time, and turning plain water into milk, without any explanation of the mechanics of these feats. I abandoned that book with the intention of searching for another more useful one and left for my appointment with Najma.