Being and Nothingness | Rabeea Mahmood Rabeea

• Sir, I assure you and I repeat it for ten times:

“I am not MAD” … “Though I am not looking in a good mood but I don’t have any mental problem or disorder. To prove it to you sir, I can confirm that your type of work is an economic consultant and you do not belong to the psychological treatment group. I think there is no need to repeat the same statement many times again and again. Please consider my perfect mentality.”

• “My Story?”
• All right … Thank you sir. You should have listened to me from the beginning, it was better to avoid my insistence and being disturbed by me.” He adds: “you could have helped me avoid repeating my words tiredly just to make you convinced that I am not mad.” … “Once upon the time and for the first time all over my life, my story starts just when I woke up early in that morning, I…?
• Ok. Ok. Sir … Calm down and don’t be angry please… It’s ok, as you like, I will summarize it:

As I have proceeded; I, unusually, woke up early and as usual I asked my wife, with whom I used to feel happy as she met my requests happily, to prepare the morning time cup of coffee. Astonishingly, my wife didn’t respond this time. It was the first time that my wife did not reply to my calls since ten years period of marriage.

• I know sir, you are absolutely right. This is something natural that the wife sometimes does not respond to her husband’s callings as she might not hear him. But what makes me astonished is the action itself. It hadn’t happened throughout the ten years span of our life together that my wife neglected my callings. How it comes this time?

In fact, I worried about her and I expected something wrong with her…

• No sir, I found her in a very good condition and she was feeling very well. But you might not believe it that the problem was not with her but with me!

I immediately understood what the problem was. In short, the problem in my being; I was not existed indeed.

No sir believe me this is the fact that I got after a while. She was physically roaming around in the house, going up and down in a rash without seeing or recognizing me. I talked to her, but she didn’t respond. I tried my best to let her feel of my existence and to confirm that I’m close to her, I insulted her, I tried to stop in her way. Unfortunately, all attempts have failed. I failed to draw her attention… she packed her luggage and left.

Poor wife, what can a woman do when her husband is absent rather than packing her luggage and going to her parents home straightly?

To be frank with you; at first, I expected her to be crazy. “There is no doubt she is crazy”, I said. How is it possible that a woman can do so while I was in front of her without seeing me? I felt I was there but she could not see me. In fact, at the time I walked down the street, I found the clear fact out that there was no doubt about it!

• I assure you sir it was I who was not existed.

It is a miserable and bitter feeling when someone woke up to find himself nothing … non-existent at all… it is an extra ordinary case, it is a miracle, you can’t imagine.

No one could see me or even talk to me.

The owner of the small restaurant where I used to visit didn’t serve the delicious meal I used to have every day; Humus and Foul. Even the owner of the small shop did not open his records to tell me as usual; how much I owe him. I did not hear his regular statement; “You have to pay me so and so”.

This is the habitual daily scene which I used to see and practice for years. I entered the shop and got out of it with my hands nothing to take and nothing to pay. “Haven’t I told you that I was not existed?”

I was lost in the street searching, talking to the passersby and screaming at their faces. No one among them knows me or even feels me.

• My job?

Yes, I went to my job. Sir, I am a little clerk in a trading company. It is not that good job which can be enviable. What shall I do? This is life. You can’t believe it sir; when I visited my job, I found someone else occupying my position. Alas! I wish I were myself so that I could let him know how to take my place!! I would teach him a lesson which he would never forget!

• What did you do?

Nothing sir, I went back to the street with broken heart. I didn’t know where to go after that. I decided to leave this people and this world. I might find a world in which people wouldn’t deny my existence! While I was murmuring and I didn’t know where to go or with whom to meet, an unexpected thing happened suddenly. It turned everything upside down; an unexpected thing which turned my nothingness into being.

• Wait sir I am coming with my words…
• I collided with an old man who looked so poor and needy. This sudden accident caused at falling some tickets out of his hand down on the ground. After a while I got to know that he was a lottery vendor.
• “Please son, buy a ticket. I am taking care of hungry children. If you saw them, you would feel very sorry for them.” The old man said after repeated apologies for being collided with me.
• I felt very happy instead of feeling sad for his case or for what he had said. This was because I found myself. I was existent. How could this old man see me after all? How could he find out my body finally? Unconsciously, I gave him all what I had in my pockets though the amount was not so much. He had given me a ticket and said: “The raffling will be held tonight.”
• What did you say?
• Yes sir, you are right. Now I get to know that you are an intelligent man and I am not mistaken to knock your door… as soon as I won money in the raffle, I went directly to the bank to fill my pockets with money. I straightly headed to my house to find the amazing event waiting for me there…

Groups of people have been crowded there waiting for me by the front door of my house. Some of them I really know where others I have never seen before.

Amongst them I saw; my Boss, dear wife and both owners of the small shop and the restaurant. From their outer expressions as if they are saying: “We have not seen you for a long time.” …

Now sir; do you know why I have come to meet you? …

I would like you to show me the way in which my pockets remain full!

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Azeez Jasim Mohammed holds PhD in English Literature. He taught English language and literature at teachers’ training institutes and university levels in Iraq and Jordan. He published many literary articles. He is the author of A Contemporary Shavian Manifesto – Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK and Co-editor of A Short Way to Short Story – Ahad Publications, India. He is co-founder and editor of NUANCES: A Journal of Humanistic Enquiry.