Read Online Voices from the Other World by Naguib Mahfouz - Free Book Online Page B

settled over all. Then I felt my mother’s hand gripping my feet as she called in a quavering voice, “My son, my son!” My wife screamed, “Taw-ty, what do you see?” But I was unable to reply. Something, no doubt, aroused their apprehension. Did she see what this was? Did the warning show on my face? My gaze shifted against my will to the entrance of the room. The door was locked, yet the Messenger entered. He entered without needing to open the door. I knew him without knowing him before: he was the Messenger of the Hereafter, without any like him. He approached me in awesome silence and irresistible beauty. As he did so my eyes were fixed upon him; he was all I could see. I wanted to call out to him but my tongue would not obey. He seemed to know my inner desire, for his smile grew broader, and I recognized him as my escort, while nothing else remained in my mind.
    The whisperings of night and my agonies and infirmities all passed away, and I ignored the tears all around me, as I found myself in a state of well-being and security that I had never before experienced. I yielded myself to an infinite love, leaving my body alone in the struggle! I saw, without any anxiety, the blood in my veins resisting, my heart beating and straining, my muscles tightening and slackening, my breath deeply panting, my chest rising and falling. I felt the hands of affection lift my back and enfold me, and I saw my insides and my outside without any care or concern. Then the Messenger seemed to turn his attention from me to my body directly, to execute his mission with confidence and assurance, and a smile that did not leave his two handsome lips. And I saw the holy aura of life surrender to his will, and depart from my feet and my calves and my thighs and my belly and my chest, and the blood within them freeze and the limbs stiffen and the heart stop, until a deep sigh escaped my gaping mouth. My corpse became quiet as I sank into eternity, and the Messenger took his leave just as he came to me, without anyone’s noticing. A peculiar feeling pervaded me that I had left life behind, that I had ceased to dwell among the people of the world.
    Two
    The stunning sensation that I had actually died, that I no longer belonged to the realm of the living, truly overwhelmed me. I was still in my room, and the room was still as it was, so what had happened? What had changed within me? My mother and my wife were leaning over my body, when something occurred that I could not doubt, and it was the most critical thing of all. I was not surprised, and if I had been able to reply to my wife when she asked me, “Taw-ty, what do you see?” I would have said, “I am dying.” But I had lost the power of speech and of other things. I was not surprised, as I have said, when I felt the depths of Death—as the bed feels the numbing flow of sleep—completely aware of what was happening. What could not be doubted is that Death is neither painful nor terrifying, as mortals imagine. If they knew the truth about it, they would seek it out as they do well-aged wine, preferring it over all others. For it is not regret or sadness that grips the dying person. Rather, life appears as something paltry and unimportant when one intuits on the horizon that divine and joyous light. I was shackled with fetters, then they were smashed. I was trapped inside a vessel, then I was set free. I was intensely heavy on the earth, then I shed my bonds and was rid of my weight. My form was narrow, then I stretched everywhere outward without any bounds. My senses were limited, then each faculty changed utterly; I could see all and I could hear all and I could comprehend all, and I could perceive all at once what was above me and below me and around me—as if I had left my body sprawled before me to take from Creation an entirely new one. This total transformation that defies description took place in an instant. Yet, I still felt that I had not