9 - 15 August 2001
Issue No.546
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 August 2001 Issue No.546 |
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Delusion*
There must be a first time to everything and the first time was at night. The moon diffuses a silver peacefulness, the spring is limpid, its water flowing unhurriedly, with a tender murmur and, whenever you see the moon melting in the water, freshly melting in front of you, you cannot help feeling thirsty and you try to drink or at least to get a taste of it. I leaned forward with my whole body and stretched out my hand. The cool, sparkling drops almost reached my mouth, and I almost enjoyed the first taste of it when I noticed, next to my quivering image, quivering in shades of white and black, and to the tremor of the moon, the reflection of another head, protracted to the fore as if an outstretched hand had wrenched all its features violently out of its face, an elongated head ending with an unlimited transversal slit and, as if this were not enough, there was another slit lengthwise. No doubt, the head of a camel. Voiceless. Noiseless. Motionless. Suddenly, there was the head. I was not scared and I did not scream, I just turned round for no reason other than to make sure. The moon was gone, the spring had vanished as well as the murmur and the silver. I was all alone and, not far ahead of me, there was this head looking on at me from above. I could not see a body for it, but just a neck, thick, long, curved, sharp at the lower end as if it were a lathe, a neck ending with a head at its fore: that head. And there was no body. And the strangest thing was that I was not astonished, and did not question how a neck could spring out of no body. My whole concern was this head, looking on at me from above, and it was not even really looking on at me, it was as if it did not see me or as if I had not been there altogether, and I feared lest it should suddenly see me and go for me and bite me. But not at all. There was no anger in its eyes. No emotion, nothing, only two big eyes staring ahead, at nothing.
Abdel-Hadi El-Gazzar, 1953
As if in answer to my questions and surmisings that arose and spun around despondently, something began to take place, in the corner of the scene to the right, within a small square frame as in television programmes and on screen, something as mysterious as the priests' enactment in the back rooms of temples, or the silent performance by which priests revive the last supper and crucifixion of Christ. I saw this camel being dragged along by its owner at a slow pace and as if every step were a fleeting event or history passing by. Then without any prelude or any struggle, without there being a doer or a shot or a weapon, without anything at all, the man in the white garment and turban collapses. The owner collapsed. He had been murdered, for around his head thrown on the ground and despite the darkness of the scene, there was a pool of blood. Moreover, the camel did not run away, nor clamour, nor rage, nor did it gurgle. It went on standing with its halter hanging in the air, looking on, from above, also straight ahead, with a look full of everything to the point of nothingness, fixed and steadfast as if it had always been and would go on being forever.
Despite my conviction that I was not dreaming, and that I had really seen what had happened, I said: "It is a daydream, a vision, a delusion that will never recur."
And in the morning, any morning, for time had ceased to be, I was taking a shower behind the curtain so as to prevent the drizzle from leaking out, fully enjoying the empty bathroom, inside the printed nylon curtain: utterly alone with myself. All of a sudden, something begins to fiddle with the printed nylon curtain, then pushes it aside, and the two huge lips appear or, more precisely, the three lips, cleft and open as if aiming to swallow everything. The teeth show in between: large, clenched, tight as if fearing to open up lest something, anything, slip away.
Thereupon the whole head was with me, inside the curtain, under the shower. I was slightly taken aback but I went on having my bath and I started looking carefully at the two eyes through the thin wires of water hoping to catch a glimpse of something, hoping to know why it looked on and what it wanted, hoping to feel for a moment, that it even did see me but, not at all, it just looked on from above and also straight ahead.
I opened the newspaper to read, and I was not surprised when I felt a stir, or when the lines quivered then receded and, without the sound of ripping, the head bore through the newspaper and I could not see anything but its three lips, glowing very close to my face. I could see its large nostrils with every hair inside and the big, regular, clenched teeth that had no clefts between them.
I took the bus. It was packed to the point of suffocation and each of us was preoccupied with nothing but self-preservation. Suddenly, I saw the silent, motionless head looking down. Its sight was enough to provoke terror or at least curiosity but, strangely enough, only a few passengers gave it any attention, fleetingly, as if this had been a customary glance, then back again to the struggle for self-preservation. The great majority did not even notice.
In the evening, inside the closed bedroom, there is nothing but love and desire, when -- suddenly -- I realised that something is crudely sneaking in between us, without violence, impudently, perhaps even unaware of what is going on, but it did ultimately come in between us. She could not bear it: violently, frantically and loathingly she pushed it aside. It yielded to her push, but then it slowly, patiently and persistently sneaked back between us so that it became clear that it was no use pushing it aside.
Despite the fact that I was not astonished or violently angry or disapproving, I began to have a certain feeling, a feeling for which I can find no description, for the ancients perhaps did not know it and did not discover a name for it. However, it was now present and obtrusive, and I therefore told my colleagues at the office and my friends about it. Only one of them would not believe me while all the others laughed and went on pointing at me as they laughed as if I had only, after all, told them an old joke. It was obvious that they had long been afflicted with the same feeling, and that the camel's head appeared to them everywhere and all the time. But the question remains: is it the same head that appears to all... or does each of us have his own special camel's head or, as the legends go, each of us has a sister underground or above or -- again -- is it like the book hanging around one's neck on the day of judgement?
Discussions diverged and dragged on and, strangely enough, most of them took place in its presence, as it looked on at us through the door leading to the manager's office, looking on in its very same way, from above, facing us, staring silent and motionless with its eyes full of everything to the point of nothingness. The vehement, clamorous discussions may sometimes cool off when someone takes to posing as a learned erudite and, in a low voice, deliberates and analyses while the camel's head looks on at him from above. Discussions like small or big storms soon enough sink in a sea so perfectly still that its surface seems to be of glass -- a vast, boundless, shoreless sea.
Personally, despite the fact that it appears to me more than once a day and in places where I least expect to see it, I sometimes almost distrust my mind and senses and refuse to believe what I see or even what others see with me. Surely there must be an error. I rebel and I refuse to my heart's content, but those are fits, nothing but fits that do not last and that quietly dissolve as surely as the camel's head emerges. The only thing that happens is that, at every fit, especially if I have reached a state of fury or agitation, the number of its appearance increases intensively, so that I see it whenever I turn, wherever I go, before me and behind me, to my right, to my left and in front of me, sometimes even -- and this is terrifying -- I see it inside myself, present there with its frontal stare that never blinks within my innermost self and secrets. Sometime I can even see it in my childhood looking on at my mother as she gives birth to me, or perhaps at my father while in the act. And sometimes when I look at my future through heaps of plans and projects, its small uncanny ears push the heaps aside so that the head emerges, rises and starts to take its usual position.
What shall I do?
Whenever I ask people, they say do as people do. I ask them what they do and find that they do nothing at all. Sometimes some try to touch it, pat it, fondle it, sometimes some fly into a rage, are infuriated and curse it; others kick it or butt it, but the camel's head always remains as it is, and people remain as they are. It appears to them in a manner that makes them wonder at first, then they get bored with talking, and soon the eerie presence of the camel's head no longer seems a phenomenon that warrants a pause or even a glance. However, most people turn it -- and they are most ingenious at doing so -- into a useful phenomenon: they use it as an excuse for a delay, to justify the intensity of the heat in summer, to herald the coming of grace should it come, or detect portents of misfortune.
All this is achieved without it astonishing or amazing anyone or even leading anyone to think and reflect a while. For this reason perhaps the camel's head does not stop appearing. Perhaps if we were to be astonished, merely astonished, if we were all of us to be astonished whenever it appeared, it would cease to appear. We are perhaps ill, all ill, our imagination having been impaired by a kind of folly which has left its traces in the shape of a camel's head. This injury has perhaps destroyed the centres of astonishment and amazement in us, or perhaps it is something else, perhaps it is progress. Progress has certainly led us to the stage where a camel's head must appear to human beings, to a point where the catastrophe would be not that it should appear but, rather, that we should wake up one morning to find that it does not appear. What a calamity then and what a loss! What should we do when we have come to live not because we want to, but because the camel's head looks on at us whenever we begin to do something or to experience an emotion. Were it not for our awareness that it would look on we would never set out to do anything. Had it not been for my awareness of its presence I would have never ventured upon what I am doing right now for -- now -- without a hint of astonishment or surprise, and without my raising my head, I am sure that the camel's head is looking on at me, that high elongated head with features that seem to have been pulled forward considerably, the three huge, swollen lips and the regular teeth, large tooth next to large tooth, tightly clenched and without any clefts between them, looking ahead motionless, neither angry nor pleased, neither reaching out nor holding back, never doing anything except looking on, just looking on....
* Translated by Saneya Shaarawi Lanfranchi. Extracted from Flights of Fantasy: Arabic Short Stories, edited by Ceza Kassem and Malak Hashem, Cairo: Elias Modern Publishing House, 1985.
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