Slapping me on the cheek, he shouted, “What borders it on the north?”
When I failed to come out of my silence, he slapped me on my other cheek.
Then he said, “Leaving aside for the moment what borders it on the north, what is the ‘it’ that I’m asking you about?”
My cheeks ablaze, I persisted in my silence. He struck me successively on the right cheek, then the left without my daring to cover my face with my hand until, his rage quenched, he ordered me to sit down. Part of the class broke out in loud laughter, and I sat there fighting back the tears. Once again, then, I’d become the butt of teachers’ harassment and students’ ridicule. I nursed my wounds in silence, consumed by despair. With hope extinguished and my new effort having ended so quickly in failure, I reverted to my accustomed misery. Even so, clinging to a fine thread of hope, I devoted all my time to studying. I’d pore over my books for hours on end, but the effort was all but wasted. For while my eyes were fixed on the page, my imagination would be soaring through valleys of dreams, and I had no ability to rein it in. Stirred by physical desire and populated by ill-mannered servant girls, my daydreams would generally end with the infernal habit to which I’d been addicted since I reached puberty. Not a night would go by but that I would be melted down in its furnace with an affected pleasure followed by prolonged, painful regret.
I wasn’t utterly passive in the face of my desire to make friends, but my efforts in this area met with utter failure. For one thing, the desire for friendship was countered by a genuine predilection for solitude, an aversion to and fear of people, and an introversion that thrust me into an excessive concern for privacy. I didn’t like anyone to know my secrets, nor even where I lived or how old I was. This was compounded by an inability to engage in conversation or catch on to people’s jokes, still less make up any of my own. Consequently, none of the other students found anything about me to like. They went back to accusing me of being disagreeable, and I lived a friendless existence. At the same time, though, I didn’t see myself as I really was. I accused others rather than myself of the faults that had deprived me of friendship, and for some time I believed that I had no friends because there wasn’t anyone who was good enough for me. Incredible, the conceit and self-deception a person is capable of: the heavens and the earth aren’t vast enough to contain them. Despite my faults and shortcomings, I used to imagine sometimes that I was the embodiment of absolute perfection. Hence, my deadly shyness was good manners, my academic failure was a genius that was slow to develop, and my abject poverty where friendship and love were concerned was a sign of superiority. Psychology — which we studied in the fifth year — supplied me with mysterious-sounding terms that I put to use in satisfying my false pride. Even so, I was weighed down by hours of desolation during which I would almost glimpse the truth.
One day I told my mother, who was the only beloved, friend, and companion I’d ever known, “I don’t have any friends. The other students despise me.”
In a fit of anger she cried, “Your shoe is worth a thousand of their heads! They only like people who go along with them in their silly pranks and bad manners. They envy you for your shyness and politeness. So don’t you be sad. There’s no virtue in getting close to other people!”
“I feel alone sometimes,” I said dejectedly, “and loneliness is hard for me to bear.”
Horrified by what I’d said, she looked at me reproachfully and said, “And where is your mother? How can you say such a thing when your mother is alive? Don’t I devote my life to your service and care?”
Indeed, she was devoting her entire existence to me, and she was everything in my life. But who did I have outside our home?
Meanwhile, my academic life hobbled sluggishly along despite being supported on the crutches of private tutors.
My grandfather suffered terribly whenever I failed an examination, and he no longer made fun of me the way he had before. Perhaps the fact that he was getting on in years had caused him to be more fearful than ever for our future.
He would say to me, “Why do you fail this way, Kamil? Aren’t you able to pass a grade in less than two years? Don’t you realize how anxious I am to see you working before I die?”
His words would fall like a heavy weight on my heart, and I would say, “There isn’t an evening when I don’t study till midnight.”
My mother would be quick to affirm the truth of what I’d said, whereupon he would shake his white head and mutter, “All things are in God’s hands.”
For this reason, I would anticipate test season with disquiet, dread, and bad dreams. For this reason also, I would be tempted by a combination of shame and conceit to feign exhaustion and illness during the months leading up to the examination so that I could use them as an excuse for my anticipated failure. As for my mother, she would visit Umm Hashim’s shrine, make vows, and tie protective amulets around my neck. I’ll never forget the time when, not long before my proficiency examination, she brought me a fortune teller, trusting in her ability to bring me success. The woman burned some incense in front of me, then propped a short stick up against the heater and instructed me to jump over it three times. I did as I’d been told, and she said to me confidently, “You’ll pass the test, God willing.”
When I failed the test, I said to my mother incredulously, “How could I have failed after jumping over the stick those three times?”
Yet in spite of everything, I kept on studying. And eventually I put the era of secondary school behind me and finished the baccalaureate when I was twenty-five years old.
15
Despite my successive failures, I felt proud and manly. Many government employees had nothing but a high school diploma. So, I thought: I’m a man worth his salt! I didn’t aspire to work for the government with it, but I did hope it would enable me to get out of the house. In other words, I hoped to be released from the lasso that had bound me so tightly, I feared it would crush me. Indeed, I was gripped by a headstrong feeling that caused my heart to yearn for renewal and release. No longer was I a boy who could be led around by his nose, and life was inciting me to rebellion and revolution. But what rebellion, and what revolution? Against what or for what? I didn’t find a clear answer to the question, and the truth is that I wasn’t thinking. The turmoil I was experiencing wasn’t an intellectual one. Rather, it was an emotional unrest that arose from somewhere deep inside me and longed for release, change, and the unknown. I didn’t perceive any particular purpose behind it, but I suffered a painful, nebulous yearning that, whenever it stirred within me, plunged me into sorrow and desolation. And whenever these feelings came over me I would fall prey to anger and lose my temper for the most trivial of reasons.
At that time my grandfather was approaching his eightieth birthday, and my mother was in her early fifties. My grandfather had become a lean old man, but he’d preserved his health and hadn’t succumbed to any serious illnesses. He still enjoyed an enviable share of his God-given vigor, and he hadn’t lost his kind spirit or his understated wit. He still retained his brisk, dignified military gait and his perfect posture. He did, however, find himself obliged to change his lifestyle, since he could no longer tolerate regular long evenings out. Instead he would go in the mornings to the Luna Park coffee shop to meet with a few of his friends, then go to the casino for a couple of hours in the evening and be home by ten.
As for my mother, she seemed older for her age than my grandfather did. She’d grown thin, and her temples and the part in her hair were visibly gray. She was in good health, however, and her face retained its beauty and radiance. There were times when she succumbed to the temptation to neglect her appearance, a development that caused me no little heartache and displeasure. It disturbed me so deeply that once I said to her, “Meet me looking the way you would if you were receiving guests.” And she didn’t disappoint me, since thereafter she would always appear at the door looking her best, which brought me gratification and joy.