If only you and Misra could meet in a room darkened for that very purpose, you told yourself. If only there were no mirror to divulge the secrets of your inner torments; if the two of you could touch each other in the dark; if you could get used to each other while still in the unlit room; if each could claim to be someone else, until you were together long enough to want to know the other; if each could fabricate a story which would go well with the identity you wished to assume (you hadn’t, by then, been told that she had entered the country in disguise!); if only you could speak to each other without recognizing each other, remembering hardly anything which might generate suspicions, anything which might activate emotions within, anything which might stir dormant memories of your life together.
And if the two of you met in broad daylight, in the presence of other people, when, say Hilaal was here, or one of your friends, one of your acquaintances or one of your neighbours? You were certain your confidence would be so shattered you would break into pieces; at best, your dignity would drop at your feet as though it were a shawl flung by its wearer; possibly your tongue, short as the midday shadow, would curl up and lie exhausted in the sweaty siesta of the moment’s lethargy and you wouldn’t be able to speak
What you needed to confront her with was an innocence with which to protect yourself, you thought. Alternatively, you could do with the kind of powered stare you were bom with — that unmitigatable, impenetrable, “whole” stare, one which might have caught sight of her guilt and focused on it. Could this be why you felt comfortable standing in the curtained silence of the darkened hour, standing, to be precise, in the confluences of your past and your present; standing your ground, withstanding the wholesome flood of your future! “You behave as though you were a husband to whom a woman has been unfaithful,” commented Uncle Hilaal, “as though you couldn’t bring yourself to touch the body which had betrayed your trust. It is unbelievable that you would avoid any physical contact with the woman who could justifiably say that ‘by touching me, it seems as though he were touching himself!’” You lifted your eyebrows as if in wonder, and no wonder! For there stood before you, upright and as though waiting, another you, younger surely and more confident. You couldn’t think of anything to say — you didn’t speak to your younger self. Instead, you moved away from the mirror and stared ahead of yourself.
The world was open as the field you could see from the window and…
II
You were very old and your skin had started to sag and so you had it altered — that is, you exchanged your old body for another, one which belonged to a young woman. How this had taken place, or why, was something beyond your conjecture. Why, for instance, first wear the mask and features of an old man, only to discard them the following moment in order to don the visage and look of a young woman? Or why, for that matter, resort to a metamorphosis, changing face, visage, age, sex and features too?
Anyway, the signs of your body’s sagging began to appear first in the hands and fingers which shrank to the size of a small child’s little fingers. The logic behind all this metamorphosis was so dim to your unilluminated perception of things that you couldn’t see anything clearly Your legs had stiffened so you couldn’t get up, walk or rise to your feet — the legs themselves having been reduced to the size of a monkey’s paw. And you were seventy years old.
A second later, you were watching a young woman’s body being dismantled, right in front of you — each limb, part and organ was first shown to you so you could examine its fitness. Every now and then, you offered your approval or disapproval by nodding or shaking your head. You wondered why the young woman accepted the exchange. You were told that she was disgusted by her young body — a body which was beautiful, smooth and seductive. You were told that her father had raped her, that her elder brother had desired her and that her mother and sisters were envious of her. You were told that she couldn’t walk up or down a street without someone proposing to her, without feeling eyes of lust piercing through her body to the core of her soul. You were told that she felt she was a dartboard and an intrusion of eyes were penetrating through her. And why was she interested in yours? “Yours is a maturer kind of anima,” she said, standing in front of you, half old and half young, half you and the other half herself. Parts of your body mingled well with hers.
You noticed that her head, hairless and smooth like a peeled onion, lay within your reach. You wished you could stretch out your hand and touch her but apparently your arms hadn’t been screwed on. Also, you didn’t like the ugly sights in front of you now that you could see better, nor did you like eating the food that was on offer, now that your appetite was that of a young person. So why did you accept the exchange? someone asked you. “You must know,” you said. “Only in dreams do such impossible things happen.” And you were silent, thoughtful — and concentrating.
So far, you and the young woman coped grandly with the exchanges and you were civil to each other. Now, however, there was tension. You both remained hesitant and contemplative, and neither was willing to offer the final approval once it came to the exchange of the mouth and lips. You didn’t know what language she spoke; she didn’t know what syllabic, consonantal or guttural formations would come with your mouth and lips. You were worried what her political views were; she, whether you were conservative or no. You asked yourself what continent she was born in, whether her family was rich, if she had many friends — and what kind. She wondered to herself if you had a good or a bad conscience, if you were guilt-ridden and whether you had a happy life. These questions, these ideas, so far unhoused, unclaimed and unspoken, roamed about in the air, ideas without flesh, without soul and this made you wish you were whole again, this made you wish you were yourself again, a young man, barely seventeen. How very weird: to dream that you were dreaming? Or were you simply confronting your various selves, which consisted of a septuagenarian and of a young woman, not to forget the self whose identity you assumed when awake?
You felt there was something unfinished about you, as though you had made yourself in such haste you roughened your features unnecessarily You had the feeling, however, that your face fitted you extraordinarily And the identity ofyour newer self? It was like a dot in the distance which assumed features you could identify, becoming now a man, now a woman — or even an animal, your perceptions of the new self altering with the distance or nearness of the spot of consciousness. Then the mirror vanished from right in front of you and the wall which had been there replaced it. And there on the wall appeared shadows and the shadows were speaking with one another, some laughing, some listening and some holding hands or touching one another.
“And you — who are you?” one of the shadows asked you.
You answered, “I am in a foreign body.’”
“Now what does that mean?”
You paused. Then, “It means that I am in a foreign country”
“Yes? Go on.”
“I was once a young man — but I lost my identity. I metamorphosed into an old man in his seventies, then a young woman. I am a septuagenarian wearing the face, and thinking with the brain, of a young woman, although the rest of my body, my misplaced memory if you like, partly belongs to yet a third person, namely a seventeen-year-old youth.”
The wall in front of you shook with laughter and all the shadows joined in making fun of you, some mimicking your voice, others mocking the rationale of your complaint. You didn’t know what to do; you felt uneasy and looked from one shadow to another. Finally your eyes singled out a smiling face and it belonged to an old man. He was saying, “And what do you think is the cause of this torment? What have you done?”