Amir Elsir - Telepathy

I did not join him in the gloom that saturated his phrases and asked him to discharge Nishan from the hospital if that was appropriate, because I wanted him for another matter. I would take him some place where all his glands could be checked to learn his chances of dying the way he did at the end of Hunger’s Hopes . At that moment, however, we received a big surprise. An alarmed nurse came to inform the director that Nishan Hamza could not be found in the hospital. No one knew how this patient had fled or where he had gone.

The psychiatrist, who had grown tense, asked him, “Did any other patient flee with him?”

“No, all the other patients are accounted for,” the nurse replied. Then he departed. I was left to contemplate, for some minutes, damnable possibilities that virtually leapt before me.

The worst eventuality would be for Nishan to consider me an enemy and try to do away with me. I realized that what the doctor had said about the possibility that schizophrenics would remain ill throughout their lives was true — if not, why would a man who had recovered, or nearly so, flee from what was a dream refuge, compared with his shabby, dirty, corrugated-metal hovel in Wadi al-Hikma?

I wanted to ask if he had received a telephone call from a woman, because an imaginary image of a woman was dancing in my mind: Ranim, who had emigrated and who had once been Yaqutah, might have returned from abroad suddenly in order to live out with us the ending of Hunger’s Hopes . I actually did ask, but no one knew. The doctor and I staggered through the hospital, questioning the nurses in the wards, the guards at the entries, and some of the patients who might shed some light on the matter. No one knew anything. Nishan had suddenly evaporated from a ward that not even a fly could enter without a permit. He may also have vanished while strolling in the hospital’s garden, although patients were also under a guard’s supervision during those hours.

I suddenly sensed that I needed my brother, Muzaffar. I wanted him to disrupt my isolation and my fear of solitude, which I knew would be haunted by various nightmares in the coming nights. I pulled out my phone and spoke to him. He seemed anxious and said he would come right away, taking the first plane he could book a seat on.

On that unforgettable evening, my brother, Muzaffar, and I were unexpected visitors to the home of the venerable playwright Abd al-Qawi the Shadow. The weather had started to moderate somewhat, and splendid breezes wafted past.

My brother had prolonged his unscheduled holiday a little for my sake. He was casually dressed in ordinary jeans and a floral-pattern shirt, but I was very elegant in a black suit, a blue silk shirt, and a dark red necktie, which I had purchased during one of my trips to Europe.

I had come to commit the insane act that I had sworn to carry out after sleepless nights and obsessive thoughts that were as far as possible from Nishan Hamza and instead were racing down another path. I was going to ask for the hand in marriage of Linda the Shadow, feeling confident that the portrait I had created of her could not lie.

The Shadow was reclining on his wooden bed with rope netting in the courtyard of his house, according to a habit unlikely to change, given his age. A stippled glass containing milk stood before him, the medium-size book he had been reading sat in his hands, and metal-rimmed reading glasses were perched on his face.

I suddenly saw Dr Sabir Hazaz, the doctor of reflexology, who was carrying a spiffy black leather bag, emerge from inside the house where Linda doubtless was with her elderly mother and the girl who had slim breasts and curly hair and who might be a relative or merely a servant — I didn’t know which. I knew that the Shadow’s only son, Luqman, had migrated to America fourteen years earlier and came back occasionally for a limited number of days, during which he wore embroidered shirts and trousers torn at the knees as he sauntered down the streets and through the markets in search of depressing local franchises of “Kentucky Chicken,” McDonald’s, and “Pizza King,” while he cursed the authorities, backwardness, and beggars stationed in the streets. Then he would return to America to complete his hegira. The Shadow had told me once how proud he was of his son, whose name had now evolved into Loco the Shadow or Loco with a Shadow. He was a professional rap artist in a group called The Gliders, which performed in public concerts and political campaigns and had more fans than our country had inhabitants. I actually hadn’t heard of this group and knew nothing about the culture of rap music, but didn’t debate this and shared the father’s delight with good conscience.

Dr Hazaz didn’t glance our way and did not even appear to see us. He headed to the door with energetic strides unusual for a man his age. Now I remembered seeing a red Hummer near the place; I hadn’t, however, linked it to the reflexologist and definitely hadn’t expected to find him here. But I refused to allow myself to be distracted by curiosity about his presence in the Shadow’s house, especially when I had a portrait with missing features that I was attempting to complete and was on a romantic mission of supreme importance that could easily end well or badly.

The past few days, during an exhausting trip searching for Nishan Hamza — whom the long arm of the law was also seeking now that al-Nakhil Psychiatric Hospital had lodged a complaint, unnecessarily I thought — I had gone with my brother, Muzaffar, to Wadi al-Hikma, where the tale’s ember had ignited and where it had not yet died. Joseph Ifranji, who actually had changed his name to Beauty Spot Ifranji, didn’t accompany us, because he had been caught in an unlicensed bar and was currently being tortured in a factional militia’s camp and threatened with the disquieting possibility of deportation to South Sudan.

The broker at Nu‘man Realty had told me this after Ifranji stopped sending me text messages. He said he hadn’t mentioned my name to the authorities as the person who had rented the dwelling where Ifranji had lived to spare me any unnecessary anxiety. I thanked him enthusiastically and gave him back his house. I felt sorry for Joseph, who was helping me plot out future novels, which I could only imagine while he was gone. Perhaps when I roused myself from my anxiety and crises I would try to free him from that ordeal, if I found he was still in the country.

Imam Hajj al-Bayt wasn’t present in Wadi al-Hikma this time and actually wasn’t to be found in the entire country. Dozens of the people among those congregated around torn scraps of cloth — selling, buying, and haggling but not selling or buying — volunteered that Hajj al-Bayt had finally hit upon the chance of a lifetime and traveled to work as a muezzin in a remote village in the Sultanate of Oman. One of his relatives worked as a teacher in the village and was able to send him a work permit, a snappy outfit, and even a plane ticket on Fly Dubai, a new airline. His children would soon join him there.

I was delighted that a resident of Wadi al-Hikma had graduated to something that was definitely better, even if that meant working on the peak of a mountain or in a barren desert. But at the same time I felt naked, because we now lacked any protection or moral cover should we happen to face a dilemma, like the first time, when a senile old man had raised a cry against us and we were almost throttled by the residents. Nothing like that happened to us this time, fortunately, no circle constricted and widened around us, and no lackluster old man loitered there. Sales from the dirty rags continued unabated, and the pathetic purchasing picked up and slowed down. An old pickup truck of no discernable color was parked there with mounds of watermelons and overly ripe tomatoes in the back. Before we set out on our quest for Nishan, whom no one reported seeing in the district since we had plucked him from it by force that previous time, a rather chic youth, wearing a straw hat and gray necktie that hung down his chest, inside out, asked me if I remembered the young man Murtaja. He had heard from people that I had come to the district once and must have seen him.