* * *
For two months or more — day after day, and with utter promptness — I faithfully kept this appointment of which the other party knew nothing. I manned my observation post until my eyes grew weary, gladly giving her my admiration and respect until I had nothing left to give. I luxuriated in happy dreams until I’d forgotten truth and reality, roaming about in the world of ardor until it had robbed me of reason and good sense. I memorized her from tip to toe: her every gesture and sidelong glance, the way she stood and the way she walked, her stillness and her movement. Through the windowpanes of her flat I came to know her entire family: her father, her mother, her sister, and her brother. And all of this without her knowing a thing about me, or even sensing that I existed. It was as if, as far as she was concerned, I inhabited another planet. I was tormented by anxiety and weariness, consumed by the desire to prove my existence, but I was helpless to take a step beyond where I stood. In my daydreams I would imagine myself accosting her or following her or declaring my admiration and respect for her. In reality, however, no sooner would she emerge from the door of the building than my heart would shrink in diffidence and alarm. I would even get ready to look down in the event that she happened to look my way. It would probably have been easier for me to throw myself off al-Malik al-Salih Bridge than to endure a single look from her eyes. I wondered in gloom and desperation: When will she notice that I exist? When will she realize that there’s a stranger who has far more love for her in his heart than even her mother and father? Isn’t it strange that someone can simply brush past a heart that would gladly be the ground on which she treads?
My thoughts during that time focused on my heart, with its sorrows and its hopes, its fears and its joys, and I felt a tremendous need for someone who could give me counsel and advice. My mother was the only friend I had in the world. But I didn’t go to her with my crisis, of course, since I sensed that my heart’s desires would be met with hostility on her part. However, in some of the magazines my grandfather read I found pages devoted to readers’ questions, and I hoped that here I might find the advisor I lacked. To one of them I sent a question that had been keeping me awake at night: “From an unlikable man: Is there no hope that his beloved might love him in return?” The magazine’s reply was: “Love is a mystery that has nothing to do with likeability or unlikeability. Love may be blind to ugliness and unattractiveness, so don’t worry about your own unlikeability! And if we might be allowed to speculate concerning the woman’s nature, it may be accurate to say that she’s charmed by strength and valor!” I was happy with the reply’s opening, but when I got to the conclusion, I felt let down. I wondered what the writer meant by “strength.” Oh! I thought, I’m not strong anyway, and if the truth be told, my addiction to a certain despicable habit has turned me pale and made me thinner than I ought to be. When I thought of valor, I couldn’t help but laugh bitterly as I enumerated all the things that frightened me in this world, from people and places to mice and cockroaches. And my heart was wrung with despair.
But I didn’t lose hope. After all, the fire that blazed in my soul was too hot to be extinguished by a blow from despair’s icy hand. I wrote back to the magazine with the following question: “How can I attract the girl I love?” And the reply was: “Go to her father or her legal guardian and ask for her hand, and I guarantee that she’ll love you.” Lord! I thought, how cruel can you get? The people at the magazine don’t know that I’m still a student and that I have four, or possibly eight, years to go before I’m on my own. Besides, they don’t know that it would be easier to storm the gates of hell than to knock on my beloved’s door and ask her father for her hand. Don’t they know what it means to be shy? I guess I’m doomed to go on living with an undeclared, unrequited love while my sweetheart is just a step away from me!
17
Then something happened to me that may have been trivial in itself, but that changed the course of my life. My academic life was a never-ending battle between my slothful mind and my itinerant soul. It was a battle that yielded — as it had in the past — acute suffering but very little fruit. My mind’s tendency to wander had become a dominant character trait that had taken over all my mental faculties. I’d even begun worrying that I might be thirty-five years old by the time I graduated from university! At the same time, of the critical things I’d learned about what the study of law involves, there was one thing I hadn’t realized I would have to face. This thing — to which other students hardly attached any importance, and which they actually took to with gusto, viewing it as a kind of sport — was the study of rhetoric. Once a week in a large lecture hall, all first-year students attended a lecture on public speaking. During the first two months we heard lectures on the theoretical aspects of the art, after which the practical training was to begin. The professor began inviting students to give extemporaneous speeches on various topics. They would speak fluently, with stentorian voices, courage, and aplomb, and I would listen to them with a mixture of amazement and profound admiration. I was taken by their glibness and guts, and astounded at their ability to handle such a frightening situation in front of such a huge gathering. Hence, I volunteered to be shy in their stead, so much so that my forehead would be dripping with perspiration.
Then one day what should I find but that the professor was calling my name: “Kamil Ru’ba Laz!”
I was sitting in the very back row — my favorite place, since no one would notice me there — and when I heard my name I rose to my feet in a reflex reaction.
The sound of my name aroused derisive attention and one of the students whispered, “That’s Lazughli’s grandson.”
Another asked, “Is ‘Lazughli’ a noun or a verb?”
Meanwhile, I stood there in a state of shock, my heart pounding wildly.