The Mirage (38 page)

I exhaled forcefully like someone trying to drive away a bad dream. I glanced over at Rabab and found her staring into my face in dismay.

Then a new thought occurred to me that I didn’t hesitate to express.

“Rabab,” I said, “why do you go on working for the government? Why do you endure such hardship unnecessarily? Why aren’t you content to stay at home like other wives?”

After looking at me long and hard, she said calmly, “Don’t you trust me?”

“God forbid that I shouldn’t trust you!” I said hurriedly, “But I.…”

Interrupting me, she said, “If you don’t trust me, it’s better for me to leave your house!”

“Rabab!”

Ignoring my anguish, she said, “But if you do still trust me, I’ll stay at my job.”

“As you wish,” I said with resignation.

Then in the same tone she said, “I don’t want to hear another word on this subject.”

And so it was. I left the house and went wandering about aimlessly till I was totally exhausted, then I went home again. We met as though nothing had happened between us. We had supper together, then went to our room and exchanged a meaningful look.

Then, in spite of ourselves, we burst out laughing. We went to bed and lay down, and I gave her a good-night kiss. For some strange reason, I was tempted to make another attempt at what we had agreed to avoid. Even stranger is the fact that I didn’t have an ounce of confidence, yet I still almost tried, and would have done so if fear hadn’t brought me back to my senses. It occurred to me to ask her what had made her sentence herself to deprivation. My lips parted and I voiced the question in my heart, yet it froze on the tip of my tongue. And fear, again, was what stopped me.

W
hen I opened my eyes in the early morning, I recalled the events of the previous day and pondered them in amazement. It seemed to me now that the issue hadn’t called for so much suffering and pain. And I said to myself: If she’d torn up the letter at school, I never would have known about it, and the fact that she didn’t do that is testimony to her truthfulness. Then I recalled the image of her as she tore up the letter and threw it out the window, and it was as though she’d been tearing my heart to shreds and scattering them to the wind. Before I got out of bed, a violent shudder went through my body and I shook my head angrily, as though to shake off the illusions that had accumulated there. When we’d finished our breakfast and were sitting on the long seat sipping our tea, I looked over at her furtively and found her beloved face to be serene, smiling, and radiant with beauty and peace. Seeing her this way, I was stricken with remorse for the way I’d acted toward her, and I said to myself: Truly, Satan is an accursed
tempter! The next morning a thought came to me like lightning: Isn’t it possible, I wondered, that she received the letter at home and that she hadn’t had the chance to tear it up elsewhere? But I soon rejected the idea. After all, it was ridiculous, as she had said herself, to think that anybody could be so foolish as to send a love letter to the husband’s home. Curses on illusions! My beloved was worthy of all trust, and trust is everything. If it weren’t for trust, there’s no telling what evil people might perpetrate.

We went out together and got on the tram. Many people may have been looking at us enviously, but could they imagine how we actually lived together? Indeed, what odd worlds are contained within people’s souls. And the oddest of them all was the case of Rabab. How could she spurn marital relations with such peculiar resolve? How I longed to know her thoughts! As I thought about these things, I felt the need for a counselor to relate things to and listen to. Never before had I felt so lonely, isolated, or vulnerable. It was natural, of course, for me to think of my sole counselor in life, namely, my mother. Yet the minute she came to mind, I was gripped by shame and anger. After all, it would have been easier to announce my worries to the entire world than confide them to my mother!

Could I get to the bottom of the mystery by myself? Was it possible that God had made her a chaste creature for whom life could only be sweet if she was celibate? It was a plausible hypothesis, which was supported by the data. Nor did I regret this actuality, since if it hadn’t been for this very fact, I would have been in an awkward position indeed. It was also a fact that my contact with her, even at the happiest of times, had never been without a vague anxiety and fear. It was during the time when she was distancing
herself from me that my impotence had recurred. Consequently, I refused to see myself as anything but the victim of my beloved’s eccentricity, the ransom for her happiness. When I’d reached this point in my thinking—by which time I’d almost arrived at the ministry—my mind went into a jumble and I felt an overwhelming anxiety that I couldn’t explain. There seemed to be every reason for complete peace of mind, yet I was enveloped by an agonizing confusion, and I entered the ministry in a daze. Who was the scoundrel who had written that letter? It was quite reasonable to assume that he wasn’t the dignified Muhammad Gawdat. So who might it have been? Mightn’t it have been the other young man, the fat one with the disdainful look? It wasn’t unlikely. He was within my reach. In fact, I knew the spot where he stood waiting every morning. Had she really been unaware of him, or had she just been pretending not to notice him? At the same time, I hoped fervently that he wasn’t the one, since I hadn’t forgotten for a single moment that he could fell me with a single blow. I thought to myself bitterly: If she’d just kept the letter, I could have done anything. But what did I mean by “anything”? I didn’t know exactly. Be that as it may, I found myself obsessing about the matter again after it appeared to have been resolved. By God, I thought, she only tore it up to keep me from reading it. O Lord, was I descending into the infernal abyss again? Let her beware of going too far!

On the other hand, I thought, anyone who would allow himself to doubt Rabab doesn’t deserve to be part of the human race. Might it not be best for me to ask her over the phone whether she’s received any more letters? I had an overwhelming urge to do so, but I was prevented by fear. In fact, an inner voice told me to run away. But who would
I be running away from? And where would I go? I must be either crazy or just childish, I thought. In reality, we’re a happy married couple, but my mind is perverse. Ah, if only I could delete yesterday from the record! If only the memory of her tearing up that letter could be erased from my imagination! And here’s a new thought: If she read the letter at school, then why did she reread it in our room? Did it give her pleasure to reread it, or was she confirming a rendezvous? My forehead was about to explode from the intensity of my thoughts. When I left the ministry that day, the pleasant outdoor air ministered to me with a spirit of its own. I breathed in deeply and felt a refreshment that restored my tranquility. Then I started telling myself over and over: What a fool I am! When I arrived home, Rabab greeted me with a bright smile. My features relaxed and I asked her with a laugh, “Is there anything new?”

“You mean any new letters?”

“Yes,” I replied, still laughing.

“No,” she said, smiling, “the mail’s stopped coming.”

I left the house that afternoon without any particular destination in mind, and no sooner had I settled into my place on the tram than a lovely idea came to me, namely, to visit Sayyida Zaynab. For many years her tomb had been my refuge and sanctuary. I had no hesitations about acting on the desire, and it suddenly filled my being. When I crossed the mosque’s threshold, a breeze of blissful relief came wafting over me, and my head was filled with memories dear to my heart. In my mind’s eye I saw myself walking to the sacred tomb with my hand in my mother’s. I remembered the day when she’d brought me to repent of the sin that had now become almost second nature to me. The memory left a sense of such shame and remorse that I
felt an urge to turn around and flee, but I kept on walking. I walked around the tomb reciting the Fatiha, drawing courage from my sense of lowliness and from the status I’d enjoyed since childhood with the saintly figure to whom it belonged. I placed my hand on the door and murmured beseechingly, “O Umm Hashim, you of all people know the goodness of my heart. You of all people know that never in my life have I harbored ill will toward anyone. So cause my reward to be in keeping with the things I’ve done. This is my prayer, Good Lady.” Then I retreated into a corner and sat cross-legged on the floor. My nostrils were penetrated by a sweet aroma that may have been some perfume being sprayed by a magzub, while the sounds of the supplications being made by those circumambulating the shrine filled its corners with melodic echoes. A sheikh passed near me chanting verses from the Holy Qur’an in a hushed voice, and I remembered how I’d fallen away from the religion’s obligatory rites to the point where the only thing I did regularly anymore was to fast during Ramadan. I thought to myself: If I returned to the right guidance found in the prescribed prayers, might not my heart find serenity and assurance, and might I not experience relief from the burden of anxiety and fear? Despite the pain it had endured, my heart had continued to find refuge in the prophets and the guidance they brought, and to drink deeply from a wellspring of cool, pure waters. I was flooded with a tranquility so profound, I wanted to soak up all I could of the wholesome, untainted serenity that I was experiencing in those moments. In that peace-induced rapture, my sufferings appeared to me as nothing but a fine thread in the fabric of destiny’s invincible sway over all that is, and I was drawn into a state of contentment and
surrender. A cloudlessness of the spirit set my soul in an upward spiral until I reached a pinnacle of bliss beyond anything I’d ever hoped for. It was as though my heart were a branch in paradise, swaying aloft as the dove of peace sat cooing upon it. I remained in this euphoric state for I don’t know how long until all of a sudden, my imagination was intruded upon by the image of a panic-stricken Rabab tearing up the letter. Thus was I awakened, cruelly and forcefully, from my blissful reverie like someone jolted out of his slumber by a violent earthquake. I sighed out of a wounded heart, then rose to my feet, recited the Fatiha one more time and left the mosque. As I was coming out the door, I happened to see a geomancer. I have faith in such people just the way my mother did. I waited until a group of inquirers who’d gathered around him had gone their ways, then I came up to him timidly and asked him to read my fortune. The man began making hollows in the sand with his thumb and moving his seashells back and forth between them. Clad in a white garment, he was pallid and thin as a mummy, and he had lost all his teeth except for his upper incisors.

“You think and worry a lot,” he said.

He’s right, I said to myself, and proceeded to listen intently.

“And you have a cunning enemy.”

At that, my heart started to pound! Wouldn’t that be the person who’d written the letter?

The man went on, saying, “He’s planning a cunning deceit, but God will bring his artful plot down on his own head.”

Didn’t this mean that Rabab was innocent?

“And you’ll receive a piece of paper that will bring you long-lasting satisfaction.”

“Do you mean a letter?”

“Possibly. What I see before me is a piece of paper.”

What did this mean? Things were getting more and more mysterious.

“Will it come from the enemy?”

“No! No! It will come from some other party, and it will cause your worries to be dispelled.”

“From what other party?”

“Blessing will come to you whence you know not.”

Feeling bewildered, I wished he would explain more.

However, he said, “If new difficulties arise, this amulet will overcome them, God willing.”

As he spoke, he gave me a tiny paper envelope with a thin string tied around it.

“Put it over your heart,” he said, “and trust in God.”

As I was on my way home, I remembered the pain I’d been having since the previous afternoon, and I could see clearly that a year’s happiness wouldn’t offset even a single day’s misery. I couldn’t settle down to anything, and I just grew more uncertain and confused. The tranquility that would hover over me at times was nothing but a summer cloud, and I knew I wouldn’t be at peace until I’d confronted the truth face to face. I hadn’t wanted my soul to be polluted with suspicion toward this one with the comely, pristine face. However, the seed of doubt had been sown, and it was bound to keep growing and bearing its infernal thorns. Driven by despair, I’d clung with all my might to the hope of finding serenity, but it had fallen to pieces in my hand. I couldn’t bear to go on living my life being tossed back and forth between moments of illusory peace and long hours of
agony. Hence, I had no choice but to try to see beyond the veils. I knew that it might mean my own destruction, but there are times when life requires that we run after our own destruction as though it were our most cherished desire.

I love you, sweetheart, I thought. But perhaps fate has cast this love into my heart in order, through this very love, to destroy me. And what power do I have to resist its decree?