The Mirage by Naguib Mahfouz
I’d had it with my muteness and inaction, and I was furious with myself. I am going to speak, I said to myself, even if it happens to be the weakest expression of faith.
So in a strange sounding voice that I hardly recognized I said, “How beautiful you are.…”
It was the first flirtatious word I’d ever uttered in my life. Aiming her gaze at my reflection in the mirror, she smiled, then looked down and folded her arms over her chest. It wouldn’t do any longer to pretend she was still doing her hair, so she sat there with her arms crossed as though she were waiting. Feeling more awkward than ever, I bit my lip angrily. The matter of changing our clothes seemed like the biggest problem in the world. So were we going to remain in this painful state till morning? Why didn’t I just go over to her and press her to my bosom until the problem had solved itself? But how was I supposed to take this momentous step? I could imagine it, and I could talk to myself about it. As for actually doing it, that was an impossibility. My heart was filled with anguish and rage, and I felt increasingly powerless and humiliated.
Determined at the very least to break out of my silence, I said, “Would you like to change your clothes, sweetheart?”
Figuring I’d arrived at the ideal solution, I took advantage of the opportunity and calmly began taking off my clothes, being careful not to let on how uncomfortable I was feeling. I placed my suit on the bed and picked up my pajamas, which were draped over the long seat. Then I stuffed myself inside them without budging from my place.
I waited for some time, then I asked her, “Are you finished, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” she answered in a whisper.
I got up, and when I did so, I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I saw that I was still wearing my fez, so I took it off with a smile. Looking timidly over at her, I found her sitting where she had been before. Now, however, she was wrapped in a white silk robe and was sitting with her back to the dressing table. Going back to where I’d been standing before, I rested my elbow on the bed frame and stood there looking at her happily and amorously.
Whenever she looked up at me, I looked down bashfully. We’d finished changing our clothes, but that wasn’t all that had to be done. There seemed to be no end to the night’s problems. My heart longed to embrace her. So what was holding me back?
It was nothing but a step I needed to take. And did a single step need to cause such suffering? My heart was thirsty and full of longing, but my shame was intense and perplexing, and my body was dead and immobile. Was I going to stay this way forever? Why not conceal my sense of lifelessness with conversation? But what would I say? Inner turmoil had tied my tongue, and every minute that passed left me weaker and more agitated. Then all of a sudden and without cause, my thoughts shifted to my mother’s room. Has she gone to sleep? I wondered. Is she imagining what I’m doing now? Shame’s fires blazed all the hotter, and I felt as though I was about to suffocate. For my part, I surrendered to despair and helplessness, wondering: Will we go on in this laughable situation till morning? Deep inside I longed to flee, and I almost wished none of this had ever been!
I was awakened from my gloomy reverie by my beloved’s voice as she said, “It’s hot in here.”
She moved over to the window to open it. Finding the opportunity favorable, I came up behind her and helped her open the window the rest of the way.
This done, my beloved started to retreat. However, like someone crying for help I said, “Why don’t we stand in the window for a little while?”
My beloved answered my cry and we stood side by side only an inch apart. The window overlooked the back of the building, and directly beneath it there was a church garden dotted with tall trees whose rustling sounded like whispers drifting upward in the silence of the night. There wafted over our faces a sultry breeze that I’d longed for the way a little boy longs to reach out and touch the moon. So here we were, separated by little more than a hair’s breadth. I leaned toward her with deliberate slowness and caution, and our clothes touched. Then ever so gradually I began to feel something soft as our sides made contact. I let out an audible sigh that awakened my shyness anew and caused me to slow down somewhat. I was afraid she might resist me or move away from me, which would have caused me to feel defeated all over again and conclude that there was no hope. However, she stayed right where she was, leaning her elbow on the windowsill.
I brought my left hand back slightly, drawing it up behind her until it formed a half-circle around her waist. Then, slowly, cautiously and fearfully, I began narrowing the half-circle until it had come in contact with the folds in her silken robe. The feel of it caused a shudder to go through my heart, and for a second time, I let out an audible sigh. Then, mustering all the courage I had in me, I encircled her waist with my arm. My beloved didn’t move or resist me in any way, so I put thoughts of hesitation and defeat out of my mind. Pulling her toward me with my right arm, I took her into my arms and rested her forehead on my chest as I caressed the part in her hair with my lips.
Then, having gotten beyond my self-consciousness, I murmured, “I love you.”
We remained this way for God knows how long. Then, still locked in our embrace, we stepped back and lay down on the bed without my letting her out of my arms. We rested our shoulders on two downy cushions, with my beloved—still wearing her robe—on my chest and in my arms. Strangely, I didn’t intrude upon her with my eyes. Instead, I looked out the window and directed my gaze heavenward. My soul was filled with an aliveness I’d never known before. As for my body, it remained inert, cold, and unresponsive, as though my soul had soaked up the last drop of my energy. I was filled with a dazzling, spiritual intoxication that was joyous and sublime. And I stayed this way till the break of dawn without knowing how sleep had overcome me.
41
I awoke to find sunlight filling half the room beneath the open window. My glance fell on the mirror, and in a flash, memories of the previous night came back to me. I looked around the room and found it empty. Realizing that my beloved had left while I was still fast asleep, my heart welled up with affection and I sent her a greeting and a prayer. I told myself that the travails of engagement and nuptials had come to an end and that the future held nothing for me but unruffled tranquility. As I reviewed my memories of the previous day, my soul went roaming through a maze of intoxication and happiness. At the same time, I was aware that I hadn’t even begun yet, and that I had yet to record a single word in the huge tome of married life. I got out of bed and looked at the clock to find that it was past ten in the morning. I was appalled at how late I’d slept, and immediately thought of my mother. I wondered what she would think of such an extended slumber, and I felt pained and embarrassed. What made the embarrassment even more painful was that nothing whatsoever had happened to justify such a late start to my day, and my happiness was tainted with a touch of distress. It was as if I were realizing for the first time that the night before hadn’t been without its failures. Nevertheless, I resisted this treacherous feeling and, refusing to be alone with it, left the room. I was met in the parlor by the servant, Sabah, who had become part of our family. She congratulated me on “the morning after” and informed me that the bride was waiting for me in the dining room. I went there and found her sitting at the table like a rose in full bloom. Delighted to see her, I came up to her, my face beaming, and kissed her on the cheek. We had our breakfast, which consisted of tea and milk, eggs, and cake and as we ate we engaged in ordinary chitchat: I asked her what time she’d woken up, and she told me she’d gotten up at eight o’clock, explaining that she always woke up early no matter how late she’d gone to bed. My mother came in and congratulated us together, then sat with us for a while. Then we moved back to our room and spent the day in sweet conversation without either of us feeling the least bit weary or bored. The forlornness I’d felt earlier took its leave of me, and as I entered into the joy of being with her, I told her the story of my love from beginning to end. We punctuated our conversation
“Didn’t you feel anything toward me?” I asked her anxiously.
She smiled gently and opened her mouth to speak. However, she sealed her lips again without saying a word. I felt a voracious hunger to hear something that would bring me some solace, so I pressed her to speak.
Then in a voice that was barely audible she said, “I don’t know.… I don’t know when I began to love you.”
With this there came over me a drugged feeling that I wished I could sleep on eternally. I took her face in my hands, drinking in the sight of her lips made fuller by the pressure of my palms. Then I placed my lips on hers and melted in a long kiss. I found my beloved captivating, her conversation sweet, her wit quick, and her intelligence astounding, so much so that my own conversation by comparison with hers sounded dull and insipid. She was so congenial and witty, I knew that her dignified bearing was simply a reflection of her good manners and modesty. For some reason I’d once imagined her to be a paragon of self-control—of aloofness, in fact. But in her kisses I experienced a warmth that would melt the heart, and in her eyes I glimpsed depth of feeling and refined sensitivity. She broke into a natural spontaneity more quickly than I had expected her to, a development that may have been encouraged by the exceeding shyness she saw in me.
When night fell and I closed the bedroom door behind us, I told myself with a sense of dread that had come upon me with the approaching darkness: Tonight it will happen, God willing. I’d had no previous experiences with women, and the only sexual life I’d known was the infernal habit from which I’d only recently escaped. However, I’d learned some things by way of hearsay at the ministry that, for all I knew, might or might not do me any good.
I saw my beloved standing in front of the mirror and combing her hair. Delighted by the sight of her tall, willowy frame, I came up to her and wrapped my arms around her. She turned around until I could feel her bosom touch my heart, and I drew her close in passionate affection.
This was love. I realized by instinct that I’d have to bring it down out of the clouds in order to do my duty by her. But how? She rested peacefully against my chest as though she were a sprite formed out of the fabric of pristine clouds, while I myself seemed like a pure, disembodied spirit. How was I to find my body? Suddenly my soul was permeated with feelings of agitation, tension, and fear, all of which were intensified by the previous night’s failure. I hadn’t thought of it as a failure until that morning, and during the day I’d come to the opposite conclusion, or nearly so. At that moment, however, the feeling returned with a hopeless certainty and resignation. Then, gripped by such a deadly shyness that my blood froze and my determination flagged, I was afflicted by a terrible fear of the bed. When I was in it, I could find no excuse for myself, although when I was away from it I could at least find a half-excuse of sorts.
These noxious thoughts went through my head while my beloved was still in my arms. I turned into a lifeless statue and the joy of all joys went the way of the wind. She sighed. She may have been annoyed by the fact that we’d been standing there for so long. Stung by her sigh, I couldn’t bear my inaction any longer. So, picking her up in my arms, I carried my precious bundle to the bed, laid her down gently, then lay down beside her. Filled with longing, I covered her lips, her cheeks, and her neck with quick, copious kisses. Feeling tender and affectionate herself, she encircled my neck with her succulent arm and we lay there next to each other for a long time.
Feelings of love, despair, enjoyment, and fear were doing battle in my heart as though I were in a blazing, trackless desert expanse with delirium tossing me to and fro among the phantoms of joy and the ghosts of fear. I was in a blissful dream, yet fear and hopelessness refused to let go of me. How was I to find deliverance when my body was dead and lifeless? My throat was parched with fear, and I stood bewildered in the face of my impotence and despair, wondering what to do. However, not for a moment did I think of retreating. After all, where was there to flee? On the contrary, despair moved me to take off her robe. My hand found its way to her belt clasp and undid it, and I could feel her bosom shudder beneath mine. I removed one side of the robe to reveal one of her breasts, and her lithe body appeared in a white silk gown that hardly concealed a thing. She made a move to bring the edge of the robe back over her chest, and I removed it again, causing it to reveal the translucent white gown. I gazed at the alluring sight of her body with eyes that agitation had nearly robbed of the ability to see. I was in a pitiful state, indeed. The torment of a dying person struggling desperately to cling to the life of his body couldn’t possibly have been worse than my torment in those moments. Yet in spite of it all, I stubbornly persevered, drawing on my despair and torment for strength, useless though it might be. The timid person doesn’t flee in the midst of the battle, since flight brings humiliation in the face of the enemy. It’s true, of course, that he avoids the battle to begin with and gets as far away from a confrontation as he can. However, once he’s on the battlefield and everyone’s eyes are upon him, flight—no less than the battle itself—becomes more than he can bear.
I brought my beloved into a sitting position and removed the robe from her arms, leaving nothing but her translucent gown and her exposed body. She turned her head away from me and hid it in the pillow. Little did she know that I was consumed with despair, and that this entire scene was nothing but a farce. I felt more pained and ashamed than ever. Even so, I reached out again as though I were still aspiring to some unattainable hope. As I spread her out on the bed, she was trembling with despair and cold.
“I’m afraid,” my beloved said in a whisper.
How outrageous! Who was she afraid of? Her whispered words stung me like a lead-spiked whip. Yet I didn’t stop. Nothing could make me turn back—neither reluctance nor resistance—till I’d seen all I’d hoped to see. What had come over me? It wasn’t just death I was suffering. It was something new, something frightening and disturbing. What had come over me? Lord! My beloved was beautiful and charming, yet ignorance and blind imagination were at work against me. I was blind and inexperienced, someone whose eyes had yet to see the light of life. I’d entertained all sorts of childish fantasies about it. Then when I saw the real thing, I failed to recognize it! It was a tragedy, though if it hadn’t been for the death I was experiencing, it might not have been a tragedy at all. This cruel experience was teaching me that love creates beauty just as beauty creates love. Be that as it may, alongside the despair and shame I was already feeling, I was stricken by panic as well, and there was no more hope. I froze, my beloved’s face buried in the pillow, placing herself at the mercy of her executioner. I froze, not knowing what to do or how to retreat, and in a certain terrible moment I nearly burst out laughing from sheer nervous tension. However, I got hold of myself. The very next moment I had the urge to cry, and if crying weren’t considered shameful, I would have poured out my tormented soul in a river of tears.
Finding my inertia as wearisome as it was frightening, I took her in my arms and kissed her as feelings of pity and grief—for both of us—flowed from my lips. It was a lamentation uttered with kisses. As the minutes and seconds passed, they felt like the teeth of a saw cutting through my neck. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Then the situation became tedious and exhausting. Extricating herself from my embrace with a sprightly motion, she covered herself with her clothes. Sleep seemed like a la
42
My beloved was pure compassion and mercy. She greeted me the next morning with a bright smile, then went flitting gaily here and there. Consequently, I had no reason to doubt that she was a happy bride. If she’d seemed only to be pretending to be happy so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, I would have been unspeakably miserable. But she was acting out of an inborn simplicity that knew no such thing as affectation or pretense. I felt truly and sincerely that she loved me, and that hers was a big heart full of tenderness, compassion, and femininity. So I felt hopeful again. I told myself that we were still just starting out, and that countless joys awaited us once we’d taken this first, difficult step. We spent the day together, part of it talking and the other part looking at the drawings, games, and toys that she had skillfully prepared for her kindergarten class. In the evening we were visited by her family. We all gathered in the sitting room with my mother and talked for a long time, happily gobbling down chocolate and sweets. They tried to draw my mother into the conversation, but she, like me, wasn’t a skilled conversationalist, and she came across as reserved and distant. I suspected she wasn’t making a very good impression on them, and that Rabab shared their feelings. In fact, it wasn’t long before I’d come to share the same impression, and I found myself feeling ambivalent toward her. On one hand I wanted her to be with me, which was a feeling I knew well and which came naturally to me. On the other hand, however, I felt painfully awkward having her living with me as a married man. In fact, the minute I thought of her my forehead would break out in a sweat. Once the social gathering had broken up and night fell, a sense of foreboding came over me. No sooner had our bedroom door closed behind us than the well of contentment in my heart dried up, and the hope that had sprung up in response to the day’s happiness dwindled away to nothing. My sweetheart seemed to be suffering some of what I was suffering and to be feeling a distress that even her tact wasn’t sufficient to conceal. I replayed the events of the previous night in my mind, and in less than a second my confidence had gone the way of the wind. I wished we could just go to sleep without making another attempt, since I was certain of failure even before I began. However, I had to do what I had to do. So I repeated the attempt down to the last detail, including kisses, hugs, and failure. Indeed: failure, failure, and more failure! My poor sweetheart. In the beginning she surrendered more or less fearfully, but by the end she wound up picking herself up, bashful and uncomfortable. We finished at a late hour the way we had the first time, then she went to sleep while I remained wakeful and brooding.