Read Online Telepathy by Amir Tag Elsir - Free Book Online

from reading or writing till I resolved it.
    I broached the topic of Nishan Hamza Nishan, the man I had unconsciously written up in
Hunger’s Hopes
, with the Shadow directly, without lengthy preambles. I was obliged to drink his bitter coffee and to share his breakfast, which consisted of two boiled eggs, with no salt or spices. I also had to drink a glass of sour orange juice that I knew for certain would give me indigestion and create acid reflux in my esophagus. I was also forced to participate in his exercises that were designed to strengthen his core abdominals and that he ran through without showing any sign of fatigue or panting while he was stretched out beside me. He thumped me roughly on my belly every time I slacked off because I was tired.
    Once we finally finished his obligatory morning routine, as he referred to it, and he allowed me to breathe normally and light a cigarette, the Shadow seemed intrigued by the case. He asked me to repeat my tale in fluent literary language as if it were one of my novels. I didn’t understand why he requested this and couldn’t comply, because for me writing a novel is a type of insanity I cannot perform in the presence of an observer, not even that of a creative genius like the Shadow. In any case, though, I repeated the story.
    â€œYou know,” he observed, “this tale reminds me of my old play “An Elderly Demon in the Republican Palace,” which landed me in prison at the end of the 1950s. Writer, do you remember that play?”
    Actually I didn’t remember it and had never before heard it mentioned as one of his plays or by another author. This wasquite simply because I had not been born then and did not remember it being published in book form.
    Without thinking and without sensing that a trap had been set for me, I said to humor an old man’s youthful memory, “Yes . . . yes. I remember it most definitely.”
    As his eyes sparkled gleefully, he said in a sharp but not offensive tone, “You certainly do remember it because you laughed when you watched it in your mother’s belly. You clapped loudly at the end of the performance.”
    I felt a bit embarrassed and wanted to apologize by explaining my conduct as having been caused by preoccupation with Nishan and by my eagerness to hear his take on this conundrum. The Shadow, however, did not allow me to do this. He waved his hand before my face, just as I was about to apologize, and continued, “It’s not your fault . . . That great play, which was the first text the dictatorship brazenly criticized throughout the entire country, which shook people’s confidence in their rulers, and which sparked a vanguard of street protests and even unrest in government circles, was one I absolutely did not write myself. Matthew, an Anglican priest, sent it to me in twenty-six consecutive dreams. I would awake each day and write down what had come to me in the dream without addition or deletion. Don’t be surprised that Nishan has sent you his story and that he – not you – fiddled with some of its details. Do you understand now that this matter is ordinary, not astonishing?”
    I suddenly felt that the Shadow had moved beyond the vigor of youth and graduated to the crustiness of old age.I was about to express my opinion when to my surprise I sensed that even if he had just made up the tale, the circumstances were parallel. As I mentioned, I had never heard of that play and – now that I think of it – am sure I had never heard of Father Matthew either. I don’t know whether a real person was imitating a real situation or whether this was a playwright’s invention.
    I asked, “What’s the relationship between the stories of Matthew and of Nishan Hamza Nishan?”
    I absolutely hadn’t recorded dreams and had been conscious throughout my creative hysteria, observing my normal rituals – both admirable and vile – while I