The Mirage by Naguib Mahfouz

by his anger, just as I was terrified by anger in general, and my lips quivered like a little boy who’s about to cry. Seeing the state I was in, he began sputtering with rage.
    “How quick you are to cry!” he shouted. “What’s there to cry about? Have I been unfair to you? Have I done you some violence? I made an idiotic mistake, and all I said was that I’d made a mistake. Is that so unforgivable?”
    I didn’t utter a word the entire way home. I went on feeling grieved and disconsolate until I remembered that I was going home to my mother and that soon I’d be telling her about everything that had happened. And that made me feel better.

13
    O ne day during the week that followed our meeting with my father, we received a visit from my brother Medhat. When I took a good look at his face this time, I could see that he was the spitting image of our father, and I wondered with some alarm what his lifestyle and morals would be like. Would he resemble his father in those areas the way he did in his physical constitution? I gave him a strange look that day that no one took any notice of. At the same time, I loved him dearly, just as he loved us. When my mother chided him for not visiting us more often, he said to her, “You, of all people, know what madmen’s morals are like!”
    His quip sent me into gales of laughter, and I looked over at my brother with gratitude.
    Then he turned toward me and said regretfully, “I heard about what happened during your last meeting with our father.”
    “Did he tell you about it?” asked my mother with interest.
    “No,” he said with a laugh. “Uncle Adam the gatekeeper did.”
    “The gatekeeper!” I cried censoriously, feeling quite indignant. “Was he eavesdropping?”
    “No,” Medhat assured me. “He has no need to, since my father fills him in on every little thing that happens to him. Uncle Adam is father’s long-time confidant and hears everything that’s on his mind, though most of the time he’s the butt of his sharp tongue. I can’t tell you how badly I feel about the attitude he took toward Grandpa. I wish I could have seen him here today so that I could kiss his hand and apologize to him.”
    We went on talking for a long time. Medhat was a skilled conversationalist who knew how to communicate with ease and warmth. His laugh was loud like his father’s, though without his father’s coldness or harshness. Hence, it wasn’t long before I’d come to love and admire him, and I wished I had some of his joviality and ease of expression. Eventually the conversation came around to the subject of his future. He’d completed the Intermediate Agricultural Certificate in the summer of that year, and he said, “I went to see my uncle in Fayoum in hopes that he might help me find a job through one of his acquaintances, but he didn’t take to the idea of my looking for work with the government. Instead, he proposed that I practice on his farm for a high wage with the idea that he would rent out some land to me in the near future. I saw his offer as a way to start making a good living through agriculture, so I accepted it.”
    As for my mother, she wasn’t so sanguine about the idea.
    “Wouldn’t it be more respectable to get a job with the government?” she objected.
    My brother let forth a long laugh, then said, “My diploma doesn’t qualify me for a decent job. But my uncle can give me valuable work opportunities and the chance to make a fortune.”
    “And live the rest of your life in Fayoum?”
    “It’s a suburb of Cairo!” he replied consolingly.
    “For so long I’ve hoped for the day when you could be on your own and we could live together!”
    He kissed her hand gently and said with a smile, “You’ll see me so often, you’ll get sick of me!”
    Then he bade us farewell and departed.
    Heaving a deep sigh, my mother said forlornly, “He spent the first half of his life in that madman’s house, and he’ll spend the latter half off in