“The Mirage” by Naguib Mahfouz (post 4): Author treats the protagonist’s rational, nonpsychotic voices as one of the most normal things about him

Kamil Ru’ba Laz is the first-person narrator of his psycho-socially dysfunctional life. He sleeps in the same bed as his divorced mother until his mid-twenties, then gets married, but is impotent with his wife, who is unfaithful and dies from an abortion, a day before his mother dies of a heart attack. “…his happiness was nothing but a mirage…” (1, p. 273).

It is understandable that Kamil would be ambivalent, but there is nothing in this story that would require Kamil to have his ambivalence expressed in terms of rational, nonpsychotic voices in his head. Why are such voices treated by the author as ordinary psychology?

“A voice inside me told me that beyond this dreary, narrow, constricted life there lay another that was bright, expansive, and free…” (1, p. 89).

“As though it were a stranger speaking, I said to myself: Tonight I’m going to try women and wine!” (1, p. 124).

“As though I were preaching to an unseen companion, I whispered, ‘If you love someone, declare your affection for her…’ ” (1, p. 127).

“Gone was the Kamil that had been brought into being by rage and desperation, and all that remained was the other Kamil as he existed in his natural state” (1, p. 170).

“In fact, an inner voice told me to run away” (1, p. 289).

“…I was possessed by a spirit of adventure the likes of which I’d never seen in myself. ‘Give it a try!’ it said to me” (1, p. 317).

“…I paused, with a voice inside me urging me to turn on my heels and run” (1, p. 348).

“…a voice inside me suggested that I postpone that decision till later” (1, p. 372).

“…my ears were filled with that old voice…” (1, p. 382).

Readers of this novel will form two groups regarding Kamil’s voices. One group, whose members have multiple personality trait and hear their own nonpsychotic voices (of alternate personalities), will consider it ordinary psychology. The other group, whose members do not have multiple personality trait and do not hear such voices, will assume that they are meant only metaphorically.

I suspect that the Nobel Prize-winning author, like most great fiction writers, was a member of the first group.

1. Naguib Mahfouz. The Mirage [1948]. Trans. Nancy Roberts. Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, 2009.