“Yes?” he said inquiringly.
I mustered the strength to speak, but all I said was, “I’ve come for an examination.”
“What exactly are you suffering from?” he asked, sounding a bit puzzled.
It was only after a prolonged agony that I managed to say, “I’m a married man.…”
Then I stopped. Or, rather, my tongue was tied. However, I found my silence burdensome, and since the doctor’s intense eyes were urging me to speak, I confessed everything. At first the words came out confused and faltering. Then, encouraged by the earnest, staid expression on his face, I started pouring out my story without a break. I felt I’d cast a heavy burden off my shoulders, and as though henceforth, he was the one responsible for my recovery from the malady that had been afflicting me.
“How long have you been married?” he asked me.
“About a month and a half,” I replied.
“And when did you start suffering this condition?”
“From the first night,” I said bitterly.
“Did you suffer this same condition before you married?”
“I hadn’t had any previous experiences with women.”
Then he asked me about “the other.” I hesitated momentarily, then answered him honestly. He asked me about some details, and again, I gave him a frank reply. Nor did I conceal from him the frightening excess to which I’d gone in my secret habit.
“Have you engaged in your habit since marrying?”
I was impressed with him for asking this particular question, which I saw as evidence of a special perceptiveness.
“Yes, I have,” I said.
“So,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s as if your response only changes when you’re with your wife.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling bewildered and sorrowful.
After a long silence, he said, “Now I’m going to ask you some explicit questions, and I ask you to answer them honestly. Do you love your wife?”
“Very much.”
“Does she have any sort of perversion, or natural frigidity?”
“Not at all.”
“Did you grow up together?”
“She’s not a relative of mine.”
After this he asked me questions that I found quite shocking. However, none of them applied to me, and I answered him with complete honesty. Then he got up and gave me a thorough, careful examination that I endured with a trembling heart and with a battle raging in my soul between hope and despair.
We returned to our seats and he began recording his impressions and conclusions in a notebook. Then he sat up straight and said to me, “You’re physically sound. It’s true, of course, that you’ve harmed yourself through your pernicious habit, which has left effects that call for a special kind of cleansing. However, the problem you’re suffering from, as I see it, has nothing to do with this. Your impotence has no biological basis, and you may be going through a psychological crisis. Don’t you have psychiatric clinics in your country?”
I couldn’t make any sense of this last question. I was also amazed by his use of the phrase “your country,” as though he were a foreigner.
“You would know more than I do about such matters, Doctor!”
“The fact is,” he said with a smile, “that I haven’t been back home for very long, and I only opened this clinic of mine a few days ago.”
Now I understood why I’d found his clinic empty, and why I hadn’t seen his sign before. However, I also realized that the trouble I’d put myself through had led nowhere, and I went back to feeling hopeless and despondent.
Then he went on, saying, “You’ve got nothing wrong with you. You’re fully capable of having marital relations, and you’ll do so one of these days, so don’t give in to despair. This is something that happens frequently to newly wed young men, but it isn’t long before they’re back to normal, though the problem may last longer with some than with others. Rest assured that your day will come. Meanwhile, I encourage you to come to me for cleansing to get rid of the slight prostrate congestion you’re suffering from.”
I listened to him with rapt attention, and with hope and despair still competing fiercely for the upper hand. When would my day come? And would it really come? The doctor had finished saying and doing all that he could say or do. However, I made no move to get up. Instead, I clung to my seat, my eyes fixed on him like someone pleading for help.
Then I asked, “What did you mean by ‘psychiatric clinics’?”
“Ah,” he said. “They’re a new type of clinic which I don’t think is available in our part of the world. However, don’t worry about what I said. I don’t think you’re in need of one.”
“You said I might be suffering from a psychological crisis. What did that mean?”
“I told you not to worry about what I’d said. I was overstating the case. At any rate, I’m not a psychiatrist, so I shouldn’t go into areas with you that might do more harm than good. Your healing lies within your own power, so don’t despair or lose confidence in yourself. Overcome your fear and anxiety, then expect recovery with full assurance.”
My last question to him was, “Is your opinion conclusive?”
“Yes,” he said confidently.
I left the clinic better than I’d been when I went in, and I went home feeling hopeful. I said to myself: Doctors don’t lie or make mistakes. And with that I was transported with joy. I returned home on foot, and on the way I passed the building where my wife’s family lived — the building of reminiscences — and my imagination carried me far away. Then, all of a sudden, my enthusiasm waned and I was gripped with anxiety, and before long I’d reverted to a state of sullenness and gloom. However, I kept repeating out loud to myself the things the doctor had told me, searching wherever I could for the confidence I lacked.
45
In spite of my perpetual anxiety, I cherished the hope of recovery. And as we carried on with our platonic married life, I was spurred on by this expectation. When I felt particularly anxious, I would steal a glance over at her, wondering to myself whether she was really as happy as she seemed, and whether she still loved me. As for her, she did truly appear to be happy and content, loving and devoted. By this time she’d stopped mentioning her mother, though I didn’t know whether the woman had stopped asking her questions, or whether my beloved was keeping from me the conversations that would take place between them. But God, how I loved her! Our shared life together hadn’t lost its magic for me. On the contrary, it had found a place in the deepest parts of my being. I would go into raptures over her as she sat next to me on the long seat or lay beside me in bed no less than I did in the days when she would appear on the balcony or in the window. And it was a miserable thing indeed that ill fortune had tainted those early days of our marriage, filled as they were with the most wonderful opportunities for happiness and bliss.
And as though ill fortune weren’t content to afflict me through myself, it had come to afflict me through my mother as well.
Despite her courtesy, my mother was no good at hiding her feelings. If her tongue didn’t give her away, her eyes did, and if her eyes didn’t give her away, her feelings made themselves known by the peculiar, passive way in which she was conducting herself. She’d become withdrawn, making her bedroom into a prison that she rarely left, and she seemed to have devoted herself entirely to prayer and worship. Nor was this prolonged estrangement lost on Rabab. As any other woman would have done, she — despite her gentleness and mild-mannered nature — would respond to my mother with irritation and anger. She never tired of saying to me, “Your mother hates me!” My mother, unwilling to change her behavior, would justify herself by saying she wasn’t good at mixing and social niceties anymore. Yet if I went to sit with her she would receive me graciously and with a smile, and speak to me with meekness and resignation. So it wasn’t long before I realized that there was something amiss, and that a thick barrier had gone up between us. I could see that I was dealing with a different person than the mother I’d known throughout my youth. Whenever I mentioned to her that my wife was upset by her aloofness, she would say to me testily, “Your wife doesn’t like me, and that’s all there is to it.”