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Of all the people I have chanced upon in life, there is no one who has left a greater impression.
He was, in the end, the sort of man who causes us to ask ourselves, “What does he live for? What does he find in life? What logic compels him to keep breathing? What philosophy drives him as he wanders the earth?”
It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.
He seemed pleased to have run into me. Perhaps because it gave him a chance to show me how well he’d done, or because, when he looked at me, he was so glad he wasn’t like me.
It wasn’t hope that drove me so much as the desire to see myself insulted.
Can there be any sweeter intoxication than exerting power and authority over one of your own kind? It is, nevertheless, a rare pleasure, to be calculated with care and enjoyed only with a particular sort of person.
Whatever affection they showed him was rushed and brushed away, like a tedious chore; when he fell ill, they affected the sort of false compassion that one might show to a beggar.
Her false self, patiently nurtured over many years, was strong enough to keep her true identity suppressed.
Only now did I begin to understand why it was not always through words that people sought each other out and came to understand each other, and why some
poets went to such lengths to seek out companions who could, like them, contemplate the beauties of nature in silence.
For even the most wretched and simpleminded man could be a surprise, even a fool could have a soul whose torments were a constant source of amazement.
“I’m nothing to them…and I never have been. For years, we’ve lived in the same house…never once did they ask themselves who this man was they shared their life with…and now they’re worried I’m going to leave them…”
Like all simple people, she could go in an instant from sorrow
“Something strange happened to me yesterday, and it swept me back to that time I thought I’d left behind forever…”
He had, I imagined, poured the soul he’d hidden from us all into these pages, and now he wanted to take it with him.
I looked at this man who wished to leave nothing of himself behind, who, even as he moved toward death, wished to take his loneliness with him. And I wished him everlasting mercy.
“Could you not leave this notebook with me for a single night? We’ve been friends for a long time now, and you’ve never told me a single thing about yourself…Do you really find it strange that I might wish to know more? Do you still feel the need to hide so much from me? To me, you are the most precious person in the world…But even so, you want to see me the same way you see everyone else — as a nobody — and abandon me?”
“You may be right to have no confidence in others. But can’t there be exceptions? Can’t there? Don’t forget, you’re human, too…You’re being selfish, and for nothing!”
“Raif Bey, please try and understand me! I am just embarking on the journey that you are close to finishing. I want to understand people. Most of all I want to understand what people did to you.”
Can there be another soul wandering this great globe who is as lonely as I?
world. I was, in addition, absurdly shy, and therefore often mistaken for a fool, which upset me deeply.
My greatest pleasure was to sit alone beside the river, or in the far corner of the garden, and let my thoughts waft away. My daydreams were in sharp contrast to real life; they were full of adventures and heroic deeds. Like the heroes in the countless novels I had read in translation, I was possessed of a sweet and mysterious desire
No matter what I had bottled up inside me, I was absurdly anxious about letting it out, and so my adventures in writing ended.
I had yet to learn that nothing in this world can ever match the marvels that we conjure up in our own minds.
When I saw how she was incapable of voicing her feelings, and how fear and envy contrived to suppress everything about her that was deep and strong and beautiful — I saw myself.
Suddenly, near the door to the main room, I stopped. Even now, after all these years, I cannot describe the torrent that swept through me in that moment. I only remember standing, transfixed, before a portrait of a woman wearing a fur coat.
Madonna of the Harpies.
But Mother Mary in Del Sarto’s painting had learned how to think. She had developed her own ideas on how to live; she was a woman, no less, who had begun to shun the world.
All I wanted was to stand before that painting for hours on end, gazing into those dark, unseeing eyes.
Every afternoon, I would stroll in, pretending to stop to inspect each painting in the gallery, as my impatience grew. For all I wanted was to go straight to my Madonna.
“Your hands are so very cold.” She answered without hesitation. “Warm them up.” And she held them out to me.
“Do you know why I hate you? You and every other man in the world? Because you ask so much of us, as if it were your natural right…Mark my words, for it can happen without a single word being uttered…It’s how men look at us and smile at us. It’s how they raise their hands. To put it simply, it’s how they treat us…You’d have to be blind not to see how much confidence they have, and how stupidly they achieve it. And if you need a measure of their arrogant pride, all you need is to see how shocked they are when an advance is rejected. They are the hunters, you see, and we their miserable prey.
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Heaven was only centimeters away.
Some things we never know we need until we find them. And now, when I looked back on my life, it seemed empty and idle, if only because she’d not been in it. All my life, I’d shied away from human company, never sharing my thoughts with a soul. How pointless this seemed now, and how absurd! I’d thought that it was life itself that had ground me down, that my sadness stemmed from spiritual malaise.
A soul came forward only when it found its twin, when it felt no need to rely on mere words to explain itself…It was only then that we truly began to live — live with our soul.
All I wanted was to pour out my heart to her, the good with the bad, the weaknesses with the strengths, holding nothing back, baring my soul. I had so much to say to her…enough to fill a lifetime.
“I’ll go wherever you take me…Wherever you like.”
But why, when they say goodbye, do they assume I am the one to blame? Because I never gave them what I promised I never would, or because they convinced themselves it would be otherwise? Isn’t that unfair? I don’t want you to think the same way about me…You can consider that a point in your favor…”
But what I hate most is women always having to be passive…Why? Why are we always the ones running away and you are the ones chasing after us? Why is it always that we surrender and you take the spoils? Why is it that even in the way you beg, there is dominance, and pity in the way we refuse?
How I loved her! I had opened my heart to the world I saw in her.
But let me tell you. I do want more than this, much more, and yet it’s still beyond my grasp. I’ve tried everything, but to no avail. From now on, you can be happy. But what about me?”
I dreamed of a magic wand that would change me utterly, give me a new heart, one that combined the innocence of a little girl with the power to embrace all creation, so that when I woke up in the morning I would awake to a new world. But the truth is another country…the skies here are cloudy…my room is cold…I feel so estranged from everything around me. Despite the intimacy between us, you are still so far away, another person in another body…my muscles are so tired and my head aches…”
In attempting to possess something that was never there, we lost something we already had…
“Smile once for me and then go,” she said. I smiled and then hurried out of the room, my face hidden in my hands.
She had swept me away from my dark and silent world, delivering me to the land of truth and light.
In every pair of eyes, I would be searching for the Madonna in a Fur Coat.
She had condemned me to a lifelong quest for a cypher, for someone who did not exist.
And if, by chance, I happened to hear her cries as I lay there on the ground, taking my last breath, I would die smiling.
and oh, how I longed to be at her side, wiping the sweat from her brow and attending to her every need!
That night I came to understand how it was possible to be more attached to another person than to life itself.
