Telepathy (12 page)

Without knowing it, Najma had drawn my attention to Umm Salama, the widow who attempted to straighten me out and tidy up my house, preparing food for me twice a week. She wasn't really an excellent or a halfway proficient worker, and even her cooking wasn't great or healthy. Her washing and ironing of my clothes were the worst I had experienced, and she always seemed in a rush. She complained about her adolescent sons and their costly dreams whenever she found me in the living room or knocked on the door of my bedroom to ask me something.

Najma had also alerted me to my emotional need for at least a minimal love interest suitable for a heart the
age of mine. I hadn't smelled fragrant incense from an ornamental brazier for ages. I hadn't glimpsed a ribbed perfume flask or one shaped like a rose or a serpent – from Coco Chanel, Nina Ricci, or Yves St Laurent – leap from its repose on the dressing-table to a live body I could touch. I hadn't seen new curtains at a window, an elegant comb, a hairdryer, or any other accessory related to beauty or enjoyment. I had been navigating a narrow corridor from uninterrupted dullness to uninterrupted dullness, from creative isolation to limited relaxation to seclusion again. I would write those erroneous novels that did not react against or link to an experience that might be more enriching if my life were better.

I shall no doubt curse Najma for making me notice the death I have been dying while assuming it was a life. I will write about her one day with cramps more severe than those that killed the wretched petition writer Hamid Tulumba.

Suddenly Linda the Shadow came to mind. Actually she herself did not come to mind; rather, it was the brilliant portrait I had worked hard to draw of her, guided by her breathy voice, as delicate as a whisper, and the warm compassion I felt surging from my phone whenever I spoke with her. I summoned the full portrait to my mind and began to regard it with intoxication.

Why shouldn't I aspire to marry Linda the Shadow?

That might prove sheer insanity. I had never seen her and did not know the shape of her face or the look of her eyes. Was she as splendid as I had portrayed her or was she just
a girl who read a lot and lacked any other traits that would justify a romantic adventure? Another insane aspect of this project was that I was at least twenty-seven years older, but that was definitely not a problem.

The girl who did not like face-to-face meetings, who did not appear anywhere that curiosity, cameras, or eyes were active, would perhaps prove an astonishing prize for a man so accustomed to confrontations that he could train a butterfly to stand still to confront the light.

Why not really? Linda the Shadow loved my writing and her opinions delighted me. Perhaps she loved me too and was waiting for me. I didn't think the Shadow would reject having a writer for a son-in-law, since he himself was one.

I wished to keep this beautiful thought in my mind for the longest time possible, but it escaped, although I knew it would return. I went on Najma's Facebook page to see what she had written since I fled from her brash advances in Juwana Café. As expected, I discovered that she had reworked the defeat and transformed it into a victory. She had posted a picture that clearly displayed her new femininity and was extremely inflammatory. Beneath the photo she had written: “Even if you brought the moon as my dowry, I would ask you for another moon that you created just for me. Then I would annul the marriage.”  There were as usual a thousand “likes”, including mine, which I deliberately added, and a hundred comments. The most remarkable response came from Fattah, a poet known for his extreme generosity in examining web pages run by women
and for posting hungry comments on each page. He had written: “Yes, Najma, but I actually possess three moons in my heart and will be happy to present them to you. Then I'll go celebrate the annulment with my friends.”

With reference to the riddle that was Nishan, I can say I tried to forget it daily but never did, because Dr Shakir informed me one day, in an urgent exchange, that I needed to meet with him immediately. I thought the man had succumbed and returned to the state of angry stupor once more and committed countless offenses. The situation was quite different, however. When I met the elegant psychiatrist in his office, he told me what was troubling him. During his stay at the hospital, Nishan had met – either in his room or when he roamed in the courtyard and garden – many fellow patients who had recovered or were on the road to recovery. He had established a strong relationship with Tuba, a reclusive football player who was trying to train birds to play ball; Sihli, who was a former ambassador with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and who had been afflicted with schizophrenia when he was appointed ambassador to Burkina Faso; Abd al-Azim Tataqawi, who had spent forty years in the College of Medicine but hadn't graduated yet; Sallah Aji, who called himself “Bespoke” and who was once a singer of some renown; and other patients who were all schizophrenics or manic-depressives whose conditions had improved to varying degrees. Nishan had goaded them to abandon their former worlds and to share with him his beautiful world in Wadi al-Hikma as soon as they were discharged
from this burrow. They seemed convinced and responsive enough to his call that one now refused to meet his family when they visited the hospital, and another told his family candidly that he wasn't related to them.

Seen from my point of view, the situation was phenomenal, because none of those well-to-do patients being treated in this private hospital could survive for even an hour in Wadi al-Hikma, even if they had no psychiatric condition.

I laughed profoundly, but Dr Shakir was not amused. He plunged into a headstrong discussion of the puzzle of schizophrenia, which remains a chronic condition to the end, leaving those afflicted with split personalities. The injections and pills that are prescribed as treatment are actually merely tranquilizers and do not effect a complete cure. He told me about the great danger that would loom over the residents of Wadi al-Hikma if it became a colony for mental patients, even if only for a day, before those patients were rounded up and returned to the hospital.

I did not join him in the gloom that saturated his phrases and asked him to discharge Nishan from the hospital if that was appropriate, because I wanted him for another matter. I would take him some place where all his glands could be checked to learn his chances of dying the way he did at the end of
Hunger's Hopes
. At that moment, however, we received a big surprise. An alarmed nurse came to inform the director that Nishan Hamza could not be found in the hospital. No one knew how this patient had fled or where he had gone.

The psychiatrist, who had grown tense, asked him, “Did any other patient flee with him?”

“No, all the other patients are accounted for,” the nurse replied. Then he departed. I was left to contemplate, for some minutes, damnable possibilities that virtually leapt before me.

The worst eventuality would be for Nishan to consider me an enemy and try to do away with me. I realized that what the doctor had said about the possibility that schizophrenics would remain ill throughout their lives was true – if not, why would a man who had recovered, or nearly so, flee from what was a dream refuge, compared with his shabby, dirty, corrugated-metal hovel in Wadi al-Hikma?

I wanted to ask if he had received a telephone call from a woman, because an imaginary image of a woman was dancing in my mind: Ranim, who had emigrated and who had once been Yaqutah, might have returned from abroad suddenly in order to live out with us the ending of
Hunger's Hopes
. I actually did ask, but no one knew. The doctor and I staggered through the hospital, questioning the nurses in the wards, the guards at the entries, and some of the patients who might shed some light on the matter. No one knew anything. Nishan had suddenly evaporated from a ward that not even a fly could enter without a permit. He may also have vanished while strolling in the hospital's garden, although patients were also under a guard's supervision during those hours.

I suddenly sensed that I needed my brother, Muzaffar. I wanted him to disrupt my isolation and my fear of
solitude, which I knew would be haunted by various nightmares in the coming nights. I pulled out my phone and spoke to him. He seemed anxious and said he would come right away, taking the first plane he could book a seat on.

– 
12
 –

On that unforgettable evening, my brother, Muzaffar, and I were unexpected visitors to the home of the venerable playwright Abd al-Qawi the Shadow. The weather had started to moderate somewhat, and splendid breezes wafted past.

My brother had prolonged his unscheduled holiday a little for my sake. He was casually dressed in ordinary jeans and a floral-pattern shirt, but I was very elegant in a black suit, a blue silk shirt, and a dark red necktie, which I had purchased during one of my trips to Europe.

I had come to commit the insane act that I had sworn to carry out after sleepless nights and obsessive thoughts that were as far as possible from Nishan Hamza and instead were racing down another path. I was going to ask for the hand in marriage of Linda the Shadow, feeling confident that the portrait I had created of her could not lie.

The Shadow was reclining on his wooden bed with rope netting in the courtyard of his house, according to a habit unlikely to change, given his age. A stippled glass containing milk stood before him, the medium-size book he had been reading sat in his hands, and metal-rimmed reading glasses were perched on his face.

I suddenly saw Dr Sabir Hazaz, the doctor of reflexology, who was carrying a spiffy black leather bag, emerge from inside the house where Linda doubtless was with her elderly mother and the girl who had slim breasts and curly hair and who might be a relative or merely a servant – I didn't know which. I knew that the Shadow's only son, Luqman, had migrated to America fourteen years earlier and came back occasionally for a limited number of days, during which he wore embroidered shirts and trousers torn at the knees as he sauntered down the streets and through the markets in search of depressing local franchises of “Kentucky Chicken,” McDonald's, and “Pizza King,” while he cursed the authorities, backwardness, and beggars stationed in the streets. Then he would return to America to complete his hegira. The Shadow had told me once how proud he was of his son, whose name had now evolved into Loco the Shadow or Loco with a Shadow. He was a professional rap artist in a group called The Gliders, which performed in public concerts and political campaigns and had more fans than our country had inhabitants. I actually hadn't heard of this group and knew nothing about the culture of rap music, but didn't debate this and shared the father's delight with good conscience.

Dr Hazaz didn't glance our way and did not even appear to see us. He headed to the door with energetic strides unusual for a man his age. Now I remembered seeing a red Hummer near the place; I hadn't, however, linked it to the reflexologist and definitely hadn't expected to find
him here. But I refused to allow myself to be distracted by curiosity about his presence in the Shadow's house, especially when I had a portrait with missing features that I was attempting to complete and was on a romantic mission of supreme importance that could easily end well or badly.

The past few days, during an exhausting trip searching for Nishan Hamza – whom the long arm of the law was also seeking now that al-Nakhil Psychiatric Hospital had lodged a complaint, unnecessarily I thought – I had gone with my brother, Muzaffar, to Wadi al-Hikma, where the tale's ember had ignited and where it had not yet died. Joseph Ifranji, who actually had changed his name to Beauty Spot Ifranji, didn't accompany us, because he had been caught in an unlicensed bar and was currently being tortured in a factional militia's camp and threatened with the disquieting possibility of deportation to South Sudan.

The broker at Nu‘man Realty had told me this after Ifranji stopped sending me text messages. He said he hadn't mentioned my name to the authorities as the person who had rented the dwelling where Ifranji had lived to spare me any unnecessary anxiety. I thanked him enthusiastically and gave him back his house. I felt sorry for Joseph, who was helping me plot out future novels, which I could only imagine while he was gone. Perhaps when I roused myself from my anxiety and crises I would try to free him from that ordeal, if I found he was still in the country.

Imam Hajj al-Bayt wasn't present in Wadi al-Hikma this time and actually wasn't to be found in the entire country. Dozens of the people among those congregated around torn scraps of cloth – selling, buying, and haggling but not selling or buying – volunteered that Hajj al-Bayt had finally hit upon the chance of a lifetime and traveled to work as a muezzin in a remote village in the Sultanate of Oman. One of his relatives worked as a teacher in the village and was able to send him a work permit, a snappy outfit, and even a plane ticket on Fly Dubai, a new airline. His children would soon join him there.

I was delighted that a resident of Wadi al-Hikma had graduated to something that was definitely better, even if that meant working on the peak of a mountain or in a barren desert. But at the same time I felt naked, because we now lacked any protection or moral cover should we happen to face a dilemma, like the first time, when a senile old man had raised a cry against us and we were almost throttled by the residents. Nothing like that happened to us this time, fortunately, no circle constricted and widened around us, and no lackluster old man loitered there. Sales from the dirty rags continued unabated, and the pathetic purchasing picked up and slowed down. An old pickup truck of no discernable color was parked there with mounds of watermelons and overly ripe tomatoes in the back. Before we set out on our quest for Nishan, whom no one reported seeing in the district since we had plucked him from it by force that previous time, a rather chic youth, wearing a straw
hat and gray necktie that hung down his chest, inside out, asked me if I remembered the young man Murtaja. He had heard from people that I had come to the district once and must have seen him.