Craving for Death: An Imaginary Memoir - Part 1
Here, I write my memoirs in a way that resembles magical realism, which belongs to the Arabian Nights, in the language of dreams and myths. The only fidelity in narrating the events is to the pattern
This image was generated by an artificial intelligence system. The moment of the first birth marked the beginning of feelings of astonishment, fear, and disgust towards this world.
“I was born on the day when Prophet Muhammad ascended to the heavens, on Night Journey and Ascension.”
This is what my mother would often tell me during my early childhood.
My birthday was on April 28, 1984.
Before birth, my soul wandered among galaxies, stars, and planets, taking the shape of magical-colored dust sprayed in space.
Being a free spirit is like being in a musical composition; your body is a musical instrument, and every planet or star you cross sends out colorful waves of this music that shape you, extending your form, shrinking it, or making it spin, accelerating or decelerating your movement.
When I saw the Earth, the color blue was dominant on it. Its gravity attracted me, so I succumbed to its temptation and did not resist. Musical vibrations coming from the souls of some of what I can call my friends pushed me. Seemingly, it felt as though a mischievous soul friend playfully nudged me from behind, intentionally or accidentally, propelling me into the pull of Earth’s gravity. I found myself entangled in a delicate, miserable body in the city of Jeddah, west of the Arabian Peninsula, a few kilometers away from the Kaaba, the Qibla of the Muslims in prayer five times a day, and the place of the spiritual Hajj journey.
My mother told me that my birth was tough, and she nearly lost her life. The doctor had to perform a cesarean section at a time when such operations were not common, except for the necessity of maintaining the mother’s life.
The size of my head was the primary issue during my birth. It obstructed the opening of the womb, and the doctor was unable to adjust my position to facilitate natural childbirth.
The troubles did not end there.
After the doctor succeeded in extracting me or giving birth to me by cesarean section, I did not cry like the rest of the children.
My soul was shocked by the constraints imposed by the gravity on this Earth, and by the ugly and destructive isolation that the inhabitants of this planet live from the universe.
Their thoughts resemble the noise of motorcycles with rusty and broken engines, a weird disturbance and contradiction to this a
lluring musical buzz from the stars, galaxies, and planets.
But the doctor, may God forgive him or bless him, did not give up. He hit me on the back, and put my head in place of my foot in the air, three strikes until I started to scream, and scream, and scream.
And this was the beginning of the journey that the reader can trust and believe in: the screaming, and the screaming, and the screaming.
I was the second child among four siblings, three males and a female, and I was the quietest and most silent of them. My mother says that my upbringing was easy compared to my siblings. She would leave me in one place, then leave, and return to find me in the same place, taking a sitting position, no complaints, no screaming, nothing, as if time stopped when my mother left, and resumed as soon as she returned.
What my mother, with her kind heart and love for me, did not know was that I wished she would not return when she left me.
I prayed to God to facilitate for my older brother to take my life in one of his fits with me.
I yearned intensely to revert to my former existence—a free spirit akin to the colored dust, dancing in resonance with the stars’ vibrations and shimmering in their luminous glow.
What I remember from my childhood is a feeling of astonishment and disgust, astonishment that I am human, and disgust from this world.
Despite my longing for my mother’s permanent absence, she consistently returned. Her unwavering determination to feed me persisted, even as I resisted eating with all my might. Occasionally, I would defiantly throw up the food onto her clothes.
How great you are, my mother.
After my attempts to provoke my older brother to kill me failed, especially the attempt that I nearly succeeded in, where he pushed me from a high ladder, and I fell on my head, and I was only seven years old, but my mother once again caught up with me while I was bleeding, and I still carry a hole in the middle of my forehead, a thin line marking my failure to revert to my former existence.
My creative mind came up withA brilliant idea that might help me return to my former existence., which is malingering, and the plan nearly succeeded.
I started to claim diseases that I did not have, and my body started to receive dangerous injections on the recommendations of doctors whose intelligence had not yet reached the degree in which they understand the desire of a small child for freedom, and correcting the mistake of a friend in the world of spirits who was joking with me by kicking me on my backside and bringing me to this world.
Every month, I feel like I’m getting closer to death, and my poor mother has no idea what’s going on in my mind.
Until the Uncanny providenceappeared again, as it had appeared several times to save me from myself, but this time it manifested in a Ecstatic Mystic “majzoub” from our family, who was on a trip to Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah, and our family hosted him.
My mother says about this Ecstatic Mystic “majzoub” coming from our village in the Monufia governorate that he is a renowned seer, and he sees the unseen, and myths are told about him similar to those that were for the spirit of God Jesus, in healing from diseases, miracles, and speaking in the unseen.
My mother tells me that he looked at me, moved his hand on my back, then said to her, and I wish he had not said, your son does not suffer from any disease, examine him with another doctor, your son is very healthy, and his health is better than all of us, then he paused for a while and added: “Your son knows the truth from falsehood, the error from the right, leave him alone, and he will have a great status.”
Here another feeling was born that belongs to the world of dreams and wishes, from pondering the word “greatness” that this Ecstatic Mystic said, but the first feeling I remember from childhood, when my mother recounted the prophecy of “majzoub”, is that I will live, and I will live very long.
Feeling of Astonishment and disgust.