It is exactly ten o'clock now.
I got out of the car and reached the agreed-upon place, behind the gas station in the middle of the desert road, and the thoughts that were going through my mind were not positive by any means; I was now a gift to any highwayman, and even if I had been slaughtered, no creature would have noticed, as the place was empty and suspicious.
Maybe he won't come, of course he won't come, if I were him I would feel suspicious too.
Here I decided to go back, and when I was about to leave I felt that needle sticking in my neck and a ghost whose features were shrouded in darkness falling into his arms.
Before I knew it, I lost consciousness.
******
Now let me tell you a story:
It's the story of Wajih, the father whose mother always claimed that the bottle he always held was medicine. My brother and I always wondered: How could this medicine make him unconscious all the time? The idiot doctor who prescribed this medicine definitely needed to be checked out.
One summer day, after lunch, which my brother and I had while sitting in front of one of Fouad El Mohandes' films, we took a nap under the fan. When I woke up, everyone in the house was asleep, even my brother who was lying on the couch under the fan, which was sending fake paper money flying everywhere.
At that moment, I seized the opportunity to sneak into my father's room, which he always warned me not to approach, otherwise the consequences would be dire .
His robe scared me for a moment, then I realized it was empty, having been hung on the door. I pushed the door open and a cold shiver ran down my back, and there it was, his medicine bottle lay beside him, deep in a sleep with a series of continuous snoring.
I pulled it out slowly. I opened it, then put it to my mouth and took a sip.
Oh my god! My throat almost burned.
I put it down and ran out of the room, coughing until I almost threw up.
I wiped the repulsive liquid from my mouth, then I searched for my mother in the spacious rooms of the house, and when I found her, she was silent, absent-minded, and staring at the window.
Why are you standing like that? I was careful not to make a sound as I watched her watch.
On the other side of the window, our neighbor, Umm Fawzi, was sitting in front of the mirror. She opened a basket and flipped through its contents. Then she took out a large gold necklace and placed it on her large chest. Then she took out a necklace, stuck it on her arm, and shook it proudly in front of the mirror. Umm Fawzi was as happy with these things as my brother and I were with my toys, and that was something I did not understand.
My foot hit a wooden bench and my mother turned to me with red, teary eyes. I had never seen my mother cry before, and I didn't even think that adults cried at the time. So seeing her cry was a big deal. I had never seen her cry even when she had to endure my father's tantrums.
I felt sorry for her, I rushed to hug her and quickly wiped her tears away. She asked me: "Why are you awake?" I did not answer, but I kept hugging her and did not want to leave her .
That woman whom fate afflicted with the love of a person who intentionally wasted the best years of her life and with whom the flower of her youth withered.. I see her in old pictures as a beautiful woman, her hands clinging to my father's neck and laughing coquettishly with eyes full of hope for a bright tomorrow that never existed in the first place and now withering and regret have broken them, and her eyelids are covered with folds of worry and frustration.. Those sparkling eyes whose pupils have turned gray, looking at themselves in the past with their perfection and beautiful roundness and eyelids free of wrinkles, regretting a day that she foolishly did not devour to the end.. and memories that she did not indulge in, and another lover at a previous station whose embrace she left to cool.
God looks down on her in anger and afflicts my father with the blows of poverty and disease, but she bears those blows for him, and her misery increases upon misery in an endless cycle of misery.
And when I broke into Umm Fawzi's house the next day, sneaking in, and when I secretly brought her that golden necklace to surprise her while she was in the kitchen preparing us fava beans for dinner, she looked at me in alarm, then said:
- "What did you do?".
And the slap fell.
Then I opened my eyes and found Safwat's hand slapping me repeatedly to wake me up.
I got up to put my hand on my head, which was still aching.
Then I said to him weakly:
- "Did you drug me?"
He replied, saying:
- "Security precautions. Now tell me: who are you? Who sent you?"
While I was still on the edge of consciousness, he took out an unusual glass syringe from his pants pocket, then pointed to a tube containing a clear liquid, then said:
" See this tube? This is the substance I injected you with. I took this formula from another dimension, it has not yet been discovered in this world of ours. To shorten the complex name of this chemical compound, I named it "Zizi." A delicate name, doesn't it?! As for this…"
He twisted the gun's stem to replace the tube with the clear liquid with another tube containing the black liquid.
" As for this tube, I call it 'Zozo', which is the exact opposite of the other . Don't be fooled by the name this time; this black liquid is a one-way ticket, and in order for you to avoid that unique experience with Zozo, I advise you to speak now."
I said weakly:
- "I have cancer."
"My name is Safwat, not Magdi Yacoub."
I shouted louder, saying:
" Will you let me talk or will you continue with this sarcastic paragraph?"
" Sorry, it's my fault. My name is Safwat, and they call me 'the ascetic.'"
He held out his hand for me to shake, and when I did he pulled me to my feet.
My pants were torn and my clothes were covered in dust, so I started to dust myself off, and he said:
" Sorry, I had to drag you, you're too heavy and I couldn't carry you from the car here."
I looked around to find myself in an empty room except for some chairs and an old wooden table on which was a glass cup with some milk poured into it. He handed it to me, saying:
" Drink this, it will help you get rid of the effects of Zizi quickly."
Then he brought a wooden chair and said:
- "Help yourself".
I sat down, and he sat in front of me, playing with his gun.
He was a man in his mid-forties, his clothes were neat and not appropriate for the situation, he came up to me boldly with his hair shiny and neat as if he had just come from a party, his features did not suggest anything that would make me worry, there was no sign of an old wound on his face that would suggest criminality to me, but friendly features, clear skin and brown eyes as if you were in a dentist's office.
Then I began to tell him everything that had happened, from the time the drug had seeped into my mind and thrown me into the depths of the other world, to the vision that had forced me to seek him out from the man with the amputated arm. He listened to me attentively, and showed no signs of it, and when I had finished he leaned back, then blew his mouth out and said:
"Oh my! I didn't expect anything like this."
I said:
" Now that I've told you everything, I want answers."
He looked at me suspiciously, then said:
- "Okay. I will answer all your questions, but on one condition."
He leaned towards me, his features turning serious, then continued:
" The next time you tell anyone about me, or even if I happen to see you passing by me on the street, then I want you to say your last prayer, because the first thing I will do to you is that black liquid going down your neck."
Then he extended his hand to shake my hand, saying:
- "Do we have a deal here?"
I shook his hand saying:
- "We agreed".
He suddenly got up, then put the magic gun in his coat pocket, and with the other hand he took a key out of his pants pocket, then said:
- "Follow me."
She put the glass of milk on the table, then followed him.
He inserted the key into the room's door, which opened and we left the temporary detention center into a large courtyard with a high canopy from which hung some lighting lamps, which suddenly shivered, followed by a tremor under our feet.
He said without turning around:
" Don't worry; it's the subway, we're below."
We walked past his car until we reached his wooden desk set inside the wall.
He put his hand inside, and the wall suddenly split in half, revealing a glass box that looked like an old street phone booth, but inside it was a small seat surrounded by many electrical panels and a screen that sat in front of the seat.
He looked at me and said:
" I offer you my means of transportation to the other dimension."
I looked at him in surprise:
- "Are you going there?"
He said:
- For more than ten years now, and on a regular basis.
-But why?
He pressed a handle on the side of the wall, and it closed again, leaving the wooden bookcase innocently in the forefront of view.
He suddenly laughed, then said:
" I didn't think I could share this secret with anyone without being accused of madness … Another dimension ! What nonsense? This is too flimsy to be mentioned in a low-brow novel, but here we are. I mean, you were there, weren't you?"
I looked at him blankly, then he took a pen out of his pocket, then searched for a blank page, picked it up, then rushed with it to one of the seats, so I sat next to him, and he began to draw something that looked like the solar system.
" This is our home since eternity; the Earth, and since ancient times man has been haunted by one question: Are we alone in this universe? For years man has searched for other life outside the planet but has not found any. When he was exhausted in his search without success, he said: Wait, perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. Shouldn't we , instead of looking up among the stars, look in the opposite direction? Down at our feet !"
Here, many claims about life inside the Earth appeared, and some even went further in their imaginations and said: They are organized kingdoms, and that these inhabitants of the Earth are more advanced than the humans sitting on its surface, but all these claims were weak and without evidence; while some of them looked up and others down, none of them knew the confirmed truth, that they are around us, sharing life with us on the surface of the planet in another dimension without us seeing them or them seeing us, another parallel life in another dimension that does not meet our dimension at all.
I said:
" Are we talking about parallel universes here?"
He said:
" No, I'm talking about the same universe, the same planet we live on. To give you a clearer picture, let me give you a living example: the hummingbird. This bird's eye perceives five other colors that the human eye does not perceive. These colors are around us, but we simply do not detect them. The bat's ear picks up waves with short wavelengths. Dolphins pick up sounds in the range of one hundred and fifty kilohertz, which is about ten times what humans perceive. The issue is simply that this life here on the surface of the planet is all around us, but we just do not perceive it."
He went to the library and pulled out a book, then turned its pages until he came to a drawn picture of a person in old English sailor's clothes standing on the mast of a ship, then he pointed to it and said:
- "Clayton Manning, a British sailor, recorded in his diary that before he died he received a blow to the head that caused him to go through a similar experience. He was transported to another dimension, and saw another Clayton and another world similar to his world before he witnessed a disaster that destroyed this world. When he returned to tell everyone, no one believed him.
In 1347, the Black Plague struck Europe, killing more than two hundred million people, including him.
- In another book written by Chevaux - a student of Michel Nostradamus, author of the most famous book "The Prophecies of Nostradamus" - he mentioned that his teacher was eccentric in the last periods of his life; he always heard him whispering at night to someone, also calling him Michel. When he asked him, he answered in the negative, claiming that this Chevaux was imagining things, but he swore that one day he saw his teacher talking to someone who was an exact copy of Michel Nostradamus.
And here's this one too, in 1920 there was a woman named "Ophelia Henri", who lived in the state of "Baden-Goldberg", a state located on the outskirts of Germany. When this woman became very sick, and before she died, she told her children that she had seen another woman who looked like her and had died in another dimension, and the next day her children found her dead too.
The most famous question in human existence has been answered since ancient times, we just didn't realize it. We are not alone on this planet, those we call ghosts are just visitors we spotted by chance after they crossed over to us from the other dimension. Who knows? Maybe they too thought we were ghosts visiting their dimension then and were terrified.
Someone hears the voice of his father, who died a while ago, calling him in the living room. He rushes outside and finds no one, and does not know then that this is not his father's voice, but rather the voice of the other version that leaked to him from the other dimension.
We see an event and swear that we have seen it before. The pedants say: It is the phenomenon of déjà vu. This is nonsense, of course. Here, your double has seen the same thing in the other dimension and you only felt it.
I stopped him here to say:
" Wait, are you now assuming that there is a physical connection between one and one's doppelganger in the other dimension?"
Here Safwat smiled gloatingly at having my attention, then raised a glass of water to take a sip. He said:
- "More than that, fates are interconnected. Didn't you ask yourself when you moved there why everyone you saw didn't go beyond your circle of acquaintances and relationships here in the dimension you live in? The police officers Adel, Ramez, and your lover who you found among the kidnapped. Why when you woke up did you find yourself in the same place you moved from but in the other dimension? Rather, why was this doppelganger of yours taking the same place to commit his crimes? It is fate's plan when it attracts us to each other like a magnet. Everything we do to widen the gap between us and our doppelgangers there, fate seeks to correct the course, placing us in the same circle in order to maintain balance. Moreover, Clayton, who killed the comet, his doppelganger also died of the plague when he returned . Ophelia saw her doppelganger die and died the next morning . Michel Nostradamus predicted the hour of his death, so did he know for sure when he would die or what? I think you know the answer now.
Lives are interconnected, if your doppelganger dies in the other dimension, you are destined to die here.
Everything is logical now, someone dies in the other dimension and fate did not have the chance to arrange a convincing reason for his look-alike here to die, so he falls dead without warning, then we stupidly shout :
"Oh my God, the poor fellow died suddenly while he was in perfect health." We do not realize then that it is fate and its way of gathering his pieces, this is how you find an explanation for all the mystery that surrounds us, there is no such thing as coincidence, my friend, fate is tightly interconnected."
I was silent for a long time, searching for words, because what I heard now exceeded the barrier of comprehension.
Then I said:
- "Why me in particular?"
He said as if he expected the question :
" Why Clayton? Why Ophelia? Why Michel Nostradamus?"
"The secret lies here, my friend," he said, putting his finger on the top of my head. I frowned in disbelief, and he said:
"It is the mind, my friend, with all its mysteries. Many dormant places, if awakened, give us supernatural powers, including the power you were granted, which made you an ambassador to the other dimension.
Clayton knew that the blow to his head had opened his way into this world, and by extension, the rest of them had certainly found a way, even if they did not realize at the time what had befallen them.
This is exactly what happened to you, and I don't know for sure if it was the tumor that surrounded your brain? Or this drug that got into it? Or both?
This is also where the device I showed you comes in. By sending electrical waves to my head, it activates that mysterious area in my brain that lets me move there whenever I want."
- "Why? Why are you doing that?"
He took out a cigarette, lit it, and blew out a thick puff of smoke, then said:
- "To kill."
I said:
"- Murder !"
He said:
- "Give me a name so I can travel there to take care of him in my own way, and in return give him a personality with Zuzu? And when I return here I will be clean, with no strings attached to the victim. If I kill someone here, you will definitely be arrested, but what if I kill someone there?"
I completed:
" He will die here, and no one will know you had anything to do with it."
He blew another puff of smoke and said:
- "Genius. Right?"
As if he had raped my convictions and beliefs, I realized that my mouth had been open for a while so I closed it. A movie tape played inside my head of what I had been through that past period, Baher when he died there met his death the next day, and Shawqi, Sama's father with the amputated arm, her version here told me that her father had also died a few days ago.
Damn ! Does this mean that Sama in the other dimension really saw my doppelganger? Is this crazy butcher who's killing everyone around him my doppelganger?
Is the girl I love about to die?
As if he was listening to my rambling thoughts, he added:
" What a predicament! If you let this butcher go, the ghosts will haunt you and make your life hell, and if you kill him, it means you will die. It is truly a predicament that I do not envy you for."
He said it, then stood up and settled behind me, saying:
- "Now that I have answered all your questions."
Then the clear liquid seeped back into my neck, and I lost consciousness.
- "Let's stop here."
Nasr said it while playing with his pen, then he continued saying:
" So you're saying that there's another dimension other than the one we live in here, and this doppelganger, who you claim is in the other dimension, is nothing but a serial killer who holds his victims captive to kill them, including the girl you say you love."
I took the initiative and said:
" I like the version in this dimension, though. Yes."
Nasr said:
- "What nonsense is this? Who buys this talk?"
" I wanted the whole truth, so don't interrupt me until I'm done and then you can be the judge."
He said:
"Okay, go ahead."
I went back in my mind to when I was covered in dust, sitting in the cafe inside the gas station, holding a bottle of milk, sipping from it to get rid of the remnants of the numbness that had not yet left my limbs, lost in all the possibilities, and they were as follows:
Possibility 1: If I go to the other dimension and look for this madman to kill him, I will save Sama and those with her from death, and my longing will somehow curb those monsters chasing me, but in the end I will die.
The second possibility: I ignore the whole thing, but then I will spend the rest of my short life being hunted by those freaks, which also means I won't get treatment, so by extension I will also die.
Third possibility: I get treatment, and when I get there I hide until it's all over.
But then my beloved pets would not leave me, and besides, in this way I would be handing over the girl I love and those with her to death, and this murderer would continue to wreak havoc as he pleased.
I shuddered as I realized my options were out of reach.
I feel as if I am trapped inside a bubble; I cannot move and see nothing through it except the unknown, and I almost go crazy and lose my mind . I want to get out, I want to breathe, I gradually suffocate and my face turns pale, and my veins protrude from my neck, and before I burst them I doubt that they are carrying me and lying in the depths of the ocean, and for fear of getting out to face death by drowning, I return and accept my imprisonment. And this confusion is an eternal, never-ending cycle.
It was as if I was fighting a chess battle with few boards surrounded by pawns from all directions .. and I thought that cancer was my biggest fear !
I miss the days when I thought I had life, when I touched the steering wheel of a luxury car for the first time, when I sat in a business class seat on a plane for the first time, or when I went to the club for the first time with the shorts to play golf, or when I felt for the first time that a gold watch embraced my wrist after I was poor and destitute, or when I thought that the possibilities before me were endless, and that the many doors of happiness had opened before me.
I miss you, Howida. How guilty I feel now as I recall every moment I betrayed you and gave your exclusive right to my feelings and hugs to other women!
Now, I stand at the gate of fate, from which there is no escape except death, and crossing it also means death, unless fate gives me one last chance to give my life meaning, to offer it willingly in place of those I love!
Perhaps I should look at the matter from another point of view, perhaps my fate will push me to atone for what I did to everyone or to myself.
If this is good, then so be it.
For you, Sama, I will wander like Christ, chasing his death, and laying down his life for others. This is the best scenario available now, a scenario in which Adam, the selfish, insensitive scoundrel, becomes more than a secondary character, but a hero in someone's story.
****
Sama rushed into the exhibition, trying to think of some excuse to give for the alleged delay, but inside, the owner of the exhibition was waiting for her with an unusually wide smile . She stopped and shook hands with her like a friend.
Sama does not understand what is happening, as she is not used to this proper treatment from her .
The latter took it from her hand, then brought it into her office.
She took some papers out of the desk drawer to hand them to her.
Sama is still lost, not understanding what is happening.
But after she looked at the papers she was holding, her feet could not carry her; she now knew that she had officially become the owner of this exhibition with all its precious paintings, with a purchase offer containing many zeros that Adam Wagih had paid. Then congratulations poured in from the old owner and her colleagues, until Sama almost lost consciousness from extreme happiness.
And when she came out with bated breaths, she reached out to touch those murals, walking with her eyes closed in the corridor, inhaling every moment of the dream that had come true, until her fingers touched an empty area of the wall. There was one missing mural, "Death Staring Out of the Window," which had disappeared, leaving a void on the wall.
Wajih's last wish was to give her a life without death, and to possess everything that is death.
*****