“Come up to the podium,” said the professor.
I froze in place, however, too flustered to move. I wanted to apologize, but the distance between the professor and me would have required me to raise my voice loud enough for everyone to hear me, so despite my desire to speak, I kept quiet.
Looking at me in bewilderment, the professor said, “What are you just standing there for? Come to the podium!”
Heads kept turning in my direction until I felt as though I were going to burn up under their stares.
As the professor urged me to come forward with a gesture of his hand, I asked reluctantly, “Why?”
My question provoked quite a number of laughs, and the professor said testily, “Why? So that you can give a speech like the others!”
In a low voice that couldn’t be heard beyond the last two rows of the lecture hall, I said, “I don’t know how to give a speech.”
Since my voice had quite naturally not reached the professor, a student sitting nearby volunteered to relay the message.
“He says he doesn’t know how to give a speech!” he shouted sarcastically.
In an encouraging tone the professor said, “This is a training session, specially designed to help people who aren’t good at giving speeches. Come.”
So, seeing no way of escape, I moved my feet painfully and with what felt like a superhuman effort, as though I were being led to the gallows. I ascended the podium in a stupor, then stood there with my left side to the students, staring at the professor with a look that bespoke both resignation and a plea for mercy.
Seeing how ill at ease I was, the professor said kindly, “Look at your classmates, compose yourself, and speak as if you were all alone. One has to get used to these situations, since a lawyer’s life is full of them. Otherwise, it’s a farce. How will you stand in court tomorrow, as either a defense lawyer or as a prosecutor? Gather your courage, then deliver a speech to this audience, urging them to contribute to a particular charity.”
Everyone looked at me with rapt attention the likes of which even the most eloquent orators wouldn’t receive. I gazed into the faces looking at me without seeing a thing, and I was filled with such dismay and such a deadly faintness of heart I nearly swooned. I was enveloped by that acute sense of despair that grips one by the neck in nightmares, and not for a moment did it occur to me to think about the topic. I may have forgotten it entirely, and the only thing that went through my mind was the question: When will this ordeal be over?
Weary of waiting, the professor said, “Speak, and don’t be afraid of making a mistake. Say whatever’s on your mind.”
Lord, when would this torment come to an end? It was clear that no one was going to take pity on me. On the contrary, the students had started winking at each other and cracking jokes at my expense. One of them, as if he were warning the others not to look down on me, said, “This is how Saad Zaghloul started out.”
“And this is how he ended!” added another.
A third shouted, “Listen to the eloquence of silence!”
The place was filled with noisy clamor and laughter. My head spun and I started having difficulty breathing. Then, determined to put an end to the miserable situation, I left the podium and headed for the exit without paying any attention to the professor as he called me to come back. And all the while I was pursued by the demons’ loud clamor as their derisive laughter rang in my ears. I went out wandering aimlessly, frantic and delirious, till I ended up at the tram stop.
Over and over I said to myself with bitter resolve, “I’ll never go back, I’ll never go back.”
This resolve was the healing balm I needed for the wound I’d received that day. Indeed, I would never go back. They would never lay eyes on me again, and never again would I expose myself to their contemptuous grins. Besides, what was the use of going back to the Faculty of Law if a lawyer’s life was full of such situations? It would be better to draw the curtain altogether on the era of academics. I’d been a slave to torment long enough. My new resolve comforted me in the face of all the humiliation and embarrassment I’d endured. In fact, it was like a breath of fresh air to my suffocating heart, and it caused me to forget my pain and bitterness. I returned home with nothing on my mind but this same determination.
After lunch, I told my mother and grandfather about the affliction I’d suffered that day.
My voice choked with tears, I said, “This is an unbearable life, and I’ll never go back to the university.”
Shocked by what I’d said, my grandfather rejoined, “Are you really a man? If you’d been born female, you would have made the best of girls! Do you want to quit your education when you’re on the last lap just because you weren’t able to say a couple of words? I swear, if your mother had been in your place, she would have delivered a speech to the people there!”
My mother began clenching her right hand, then releasing it in a kind of spasmodic motion as she said, “They envied him. O Lord, they envied him!”
My grandfather tried to talk me out of my decision, sometimes with gentle persuasion and other times with threats, but desperation had entrenched me in my obstinacy, and I wouldn’t bend. When his patience had run out, he said, “So then, the whole year is a loss. There’s no point in enrolling you in some other faculty when we’re already more than two months into the school year.”
Fearful that I might be cast once again into the educational hellhole, I said, “There’s no use in my going on with my education.”
Interrupting me in a pained voice, my mother cried, “Don’t say that, Kamil! You will continue your education, whether in this institution or in another one!”
Clapping his hands together, my grandfather said, “He’s lost his mind. And this is the end of the pampering!”
However, I was like someone defending himself in the face of certain destruction. Knowing I no longer had it in me to cope with lessons, examinations and other students, I cried desperately, “I can’t! I can’t! Have mercy on me!”
A fierce argument then broke out which I handled with a strength I hadn’t known I had in me — a strength derived from fear and despair. Finally my grandfather fell silent, furious and exasperated.
After a period of enervating silence, he asked me, “Do you want to get a job with nothing but a high school diploma?”
“Yes!” I replied, without looking up.
When I stole a glance at him, he was calm, his brow was furrowed, and he was fiddling with his silver mustache. I then looked over at my mother, whose eyes were filled with tears. Even so, I felt certain that my grandfather’s opposition was only half in earnest, and that if he had really wanted to break my resolve, he would have had the last word. The fact was that the matter of our future occupied his thinking a great deal during those days, especially now that he’d entered old age, and he may even have been relieved at the suggestion that he help me find work, since in this way he could set his mind at rest concerning my mother’s fate.
Thus it was that my academic life drew to a close barely two months after I’d enrolled in the Faculty of Law. However, I didn’t find the happiness I’d dreamed of. It’s true, of course, that not for a moment did I consider going back to the cruel experience of academic life. At the same time, though, I felt an intense need to portray myself as an innocent victim, making up hollow excuses for myself for having withdrawn from the pursuit of knowledge and fled its institutions. Although this attempt of mine succeeded to some extent with others or, at least, with my mother — my true-blue friend for right or wrong — I just barely managed to convince myself. I was filled with a bitterness and discontent that triggered within me a desire to discipline and punish myself. This desire took the form of an offensive launched against myself, and I subjected myself willingly for the first time to an honest confrontation with my faults and shortcomings.