It is the last week of his unendurable struggle with cancer, he is sitting in the room reserved especially for him in the main city hospital, surrounded by his visitors: family members, relatives, friends, students and admirers, and by all those whom he has, for one reason or another, asked, or hasn’t asked, to see, but who came anyway. He lets a brave smile spread across his face, as he relates anecdote after anecdote, and joke after joke, triggering long ripples of laughter and creating a cheerful atmosphere. The same people had gathered on happy occasions, such as a wedding, a circumcision, or the birth of a child, but not to bid farewell to a dear one who is about to depart this life in a few days or hours. Here joking and earnestness seem to mix well at the doorstep of death.
I pretend to smile and to listen to what he is saying. In truth, I try hard to comprehend one thing: to unravel a mystery that has baffled me for the whole weeks of my long, uninterrupted visits I have been paying him; in other words, during all my semi-permanent stay with him in the hospital ward throughout the last four months he has been there. He had been going to Paris almost every month, where he was treated for five consecutive years. The treatment did not work; when he fainted one day, he was rushed to this national hospital.
The one thing that has baffled me and made me feel so powerless and, at the same time, jealous is that his right eye has been fastened on the entrance of the ward as if expecting someone, while his left eye seems to dread the arrival of that expected arriver and not to want him in yet. It is as if one eye were inviting that unknown arriver to enter while the other is warning him not to come in, turning him away.
Thirty years of good companionship, close friendship and true brotherliness, not to mention the striking similarities of our family backgrounds, education, experiences and professions. All this has enabled my friend Mohammad and me to appreciate each other’s desires and feelings by a mere look into the other’s eye. Isn’t the eye an open window on a person’s inner self? At times, we would, in the presence of others, communicate with each other, without uttering a word. We would express desires and requests, acceptance or refusal, satisfaction or anger, and joy or sadness, while the others were completely oblivious to our “conversation”. To understand his request, all I had to do was to look at his eyes; and for him to know my feelings, he had but to glance at mine. We could get to the bottom of each other. We had no secrets; our hopes and worries were the same. Our sentiments were identical and our feelings similar, as if we were one being or one soul living in two bodies, as the poet put it:

His soul is mine and my soul is his,
When he wants I want,
And when I want he wants.

That is why I grew alarmed at my inability to understand this ambiguous situation: his right eye burning to meet that unknown arriver, and his left eye shunning his arrival.
It is perhaps the feeling of grief rising from my breast that has dulled my intuitive power, or it may be the stress I have been experiencing lately that has paralyzed my intellectual faculties. That is why I have today plucked up my mental and spiritual powers and concentrated my gaze on him without him being aware of it, for he has been too busy talking to his visitors. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his right eye is hoping that the unknown arriver will come soon, and that his left eye is repelling him.
In all my philosophical studies and psychological research, I have never come across a similar case in which a person’s mind splits up in such a way and his resolve is so clear. All I can remember from my studies are two cases: a drawing and a poetic verse. The drawing is carved on one of the walls of the ruins of Babel representing a viper with two heads, each one of which is pulling violently in the opposite direction. The poetic verse is by an ancient Arab poet in which he describes a frightened wolf in these words:

It sleeps with one eye shut,
With the other it guards against death;
It is both wide-awake and asleep.

I am not one to accept defeat; and my resolve is as strong as his. He’s been battling cancer for five long years; it has mercilessly assailed the bone marrow, gnawing at his bones until they have become like a piece of glass the cracks of which look like a spider web. The bones have become so brittle that they could collapse at the lightest gust of wind and break into small pieces that scatter all over the place. That is how his Doctor described his state. In spite of this, Mohammad leaves his room twice a day to walk in the hospital corridors in a vicious attempt to “breath life” into his fragile bones. Then he returns to the reception hall in his ward to take his seat in the middle of the gathering to welcome the visitors, and to tell them funny anecdotes, jokes and stories. Sometimes I can tell from the look in his eyes, as he speaks with a smile, that he is in acute pain, but he just casts a meaningful glance at me and smiles. He wants to teach me how a man dies in dignity. “As he has lived in dignity!” I’d add, with a glance. Then without drawing anyone’s attention, I walk into the nurse’s room next-door to ask her to give him a painkiller dissolved in water so that his visitors would not notice that he is taking medicine. It’s his last week, according to the head Doctor who is attending him.
I glance around me, looking at each face. They are all here. I know them all. Not one of his friends is absent. But who is this expected arriver? For me the problem is no longer just my inability to solve the paradox in his eyes; the challenge I am facing is to unravel the mystery of this expected arriver whom my friend refuses to announce. In other words, what pains me is that my bosom friend has kept it a secret from me. I have never kept a secret from him!
The fire of wanting to rise to the challenge keeps burning inside my ribs. I must solve this mystery. It is curiosity that is deep-rooted in the soul and which elevates man to the peaks of knowledge at times, and at other times it sends him tumbling down. I will not allow him to carry his secret with him to the grave! I will crush this shell to get the pearl out. To learn this secret, I’ll have to proceed differently. I am not going to beg him to tell me it! It is clear that he does not what to tell his secret to anyone, not even to the closest people. He conceals it from even his ‘self’, I mean from my ‘self’ who is him. I’ll unsheathe my second technique which I have kept up my sleeves, and I’ll brandish it at him. The first technique, by which I mean ‘eye language’, helps only to understand desires, requests and feelings, but it fails to reveal the subtle expressions and exact names. In the last case, I’ll resort to the second technique known as ‘mind-reading’.
This last technique, which we both master, consists of reading each other’s mind without the need for words. Mind-reading had first arrested my attention when, as a child, my father took me with him on a trip to Alexandria, Egypt, in the summer. One evening, we went to a theater-restaurant for dinner. On the stage, there were two magicians, one of whom went down towards the spectators while the other remained on the stage, blindfolded and with his back to the public. The first magician walked towards me, perhaps because I was the youngest of the spectators, or perhaps he knew from my complexion that I was not Egyptian, but just a tourist on his first visit to Egypt. He gently asked me to give him my passport or my ID, which I did. Then he began to read the information in my passport silently without moving his lips. The magician who was on the stage was reading aloud the information which his friend was reading silently:
Name: Ali Ibn Mohammad Alkasimi
Nationality: Iraqi
Profession: Student, etc.

After a short while, the first magician went to another tourist and repeated the same thing. Turning to my father, I asked him, my eyes alight with excitement and happiness:
“Isn’t there a trick in all this?”
“Absolutely not!” my father said, “They are reading each other’s thoughts, just as others can read lips. For example, a lip-reader uses his eyesight, and a mind reader uses his mental perception. It requires a bit of intellectual harmony, training and concentration.”
At this moment, the boundaries between magic and reality vanish, and imagination and reality merge in my head.
“But, Dad, can I learn mind-reading?
My surprise and joy intensified when I heard my father say: “Why not? I can help you!”
My father had studied religion in one of the religious schools in Baghdad and practiced spiritual exercises and Sufism. Upon our return from Egypt, my father started to train me on mind-reading. This art is slightly different from telepathy in that mind- reading takes place in the presence of two people who are in the same place. My father explained that ‘thinking’ and ‘idea’ or ‘ideas’ are not quite the same thing, because thinking is a mental process. It is molded into a thought that is translated into an internal verbal sentence that sticks in the mind and which linguists call “middle language”. When this sentence goes from the stage of thinking to that of expression, and when it is expressed in words through the tongue, the lips and the rest of the mechanisms of articulation, it is picked up by the listener’s ears and transmitted to the brain for understanding and assimilation.
My father’s exercises reminded me of those of my piano teacher who taught me music lessons. She’d strike a note and ask me to name it. I’d listen to the note and say: “re”.
“Try again!” the teacher said, playing the same note again.
Then I’d say: “fa.”
“Try again! Listen carefully!” she said as she played the same note a second time: “mi”
“Yes! That’s good!” she said, which made me feel good.
My father followed a similar method: he’d think up an idea, and ask me to read it in his mind. I’d collect my mental perceptions and concentrate on his mind, exactly as he had taught me to do. Then the idea would gradually become clear in the form of a linguistic sentence which I had difficulty reading at first. However, through repetition and practice, I was able to read his mind easily.
Here I am sitting in front of my friend in the hospital ward. Two days have elapsed since I launched my continuous, but unsuccessful attempt to solve the mystery: that of his right eye expecting an unknown arriver, and his left eye warning him not to come in, fearing his arrival. To solve the mystery, I must use my second technique: mind- reading. But I hesitate to unsheathe this technique for two reasons. One is the mental strain that accompanies this technique due to the energy spent concentrating; the other is that my friend also reads thoughts. What is amazing is that he, too, had learnt it from his father who taught religion at Al-Qarawyyin University in Fes. Didn’t I say that we had similar hobbies, values, customs, education, and family backgrounds? My friend has only three days to live, according to the Reanimation Doctor. He is surrounded by all his relatives, true friends, former students, and even by some doctors and nurses who have been spending some of their off-duty time with him. Sidi Mohammad, whom I have nicknamed “Heart winner”, has won them all. He has stolen their hearts, and they cannot stand the thought of being away from him. I glance at him. Our eyes lock. From my look, he senses that I am trying to read his thoughts. An unusual smile flits across his lips, and his eyes glow in a particular way. I understand what he means! He is flinging a challenge at me, as if to say:

I have kept the secret in a room with a locked door,
Whose keys are lost;
And the door is now sealed off.

He’s joking with me; there’s no doubt about it. He’s playing, as he always does, even in our everyday conversations. He’s constantly playing, always using paronomasia and antithesis, and making ample use of play on words. He uses ambiguous expressions, and invests his linguistic studies to speak and think in an inimitable manner. But this time, I’m not going to let him get away with it. I’ll put an end to it! I’ll show him what I can do, too. I’ll break the seal, knock down the door, and smash walls.
You know who I am! No, my dear friend, you’ve overstepped the bounds of joking, and landed in the courtyard of earnestness and reality. Death is the only invariable reality in this existence; it accepts no joking. You’re still wearing the clown’s mask and laughing and joking around. No, my good friend, that is not the way to enter the dominion of death!
I shut my eyes and concentrate the energy of my visual powers on his thoughts to read them. I cannot see anything, so I try again with greater concentration. To my utter surprise, there is nothing to read. His mind is empty; there is no idea in it that I can pick up. What am I saying? Even the small mind of a fetus in its mother’s womb has convolutions in which are recorded all the sounds and events that have reached it from the outside; even this small mind is not a blank sheet as yours is now. Stop playing; for I’m in no mood for that!
He breaks into a smile and continues his conversation with the others. He’s challenging me. I’m ready to meet his challenge. What I need is more concentration and effort to carry out an unprecedented attempt: I’ll try to read his emotions before they are expressed in a ‘middle language’ sentence. No doubt he has intentionally shut his feelings out of his mind. He has kept them down there in the depths of his soul.
I spend all of the afternoon trying, my whole body dripping sweat. I have a high fever. One Doctor, who is amongst the visitors, notices my condition. Even the hospital Doctors have fallen into the habit of spending their leisure time with him. He has fascinated them with his talk. He’s the greatest “enchanter” of all. I walk out of the room, the Doctor hot on my heels.
“Nothing’s the matter.” I said, “I’m fine!”
But I’m not one to be defeated at a first try. I’ll try again tomorrow morning. All his visitors have now left him. It’s dinnertime. I must go, too. I do not wish to see the nurse spoon-feeding him, because he has not been able to use his hands these last two days. But I’ll be back tomorrow morning. He has only one or two days to live, according to his Doctor, and I must solve the mystery which he did not want to tell anyone.
I try in vain to get some sleep in preparation for my last battle. I get up early, take a cold bath to summon all my internal and outer energies. I head for the hospital in the early morning before the sparrow starts singing, the lark leaves its nest, and the sun reaches the vault of heaven.
I find him alone. Our eyes meet. The nurse walks in, carrying his breakfast. I ask her to leave. Something inside me makes me want to be alone with him. I begin to feed him as we sit in silence. We are engaged in a continuous eye talk, even though eye reading is today much more difficult than usual; for suppressed tears have stuck to the inner corners of our eyes. This has been the case for the last four months: as soon as we are alone, stubborn tears assail us.
Unwillingly, my eyes beg him to disclose the secret of the unknown arriver. No response! He has a vacant look in his eyes. There is neither acceptance nor refusal. This is his habit: he never says ‘no’ to anyone, and he’s very generous. But what’s this information that he is withholding from me? I look at him. From my look, he understands that, in these circumstances, I’ll do my best to unravel this secret.
He falls silent. Brimful of tears, my eyes are riveted on the whole of his body - not just on his eyes or his facial features, but also on the whole of his being. With my powerful look, I transpierce the wrinkles of his weary face, the orifices of his withered eyes, his pale skin, his crushed bones, and his flattened chest. I get to the bottom of his heart, and join its faint beat in a funeral recital. I infiltrate into his blood that flows painfully slow. I dive deeper and deeper.
My forehead is oozing sweat, and my body is burning with fever. My heartbeat increases rapidly, and my vision becomes blurred. I see him inclining unnaturally in his seat. He shuts his eyes. His head drops down his chest, and his body leans forward. He’s falling off his chair. I cannot see anything. Everything is shrounded in darkness. I fall down, too, unconscious. Our bodies are laid out side by side on the floor.

***********

Tranlated by : Ali Azeriah