Unreceived Letter: Deadly Correct Measures
Dear Malak, the mistakes of Chronos, the god of time, encompass everything. Those who don't deserve hunger, starve; those who don't deserve love, receive it; and those who don't deserve death, die. More than ten years ago, I used to teach in the summer at a prestigious girls' college on the East Coast of the United States.
During the final exam, I caught one of the students cheating and took the usual bureaucratic measures. I gave her a failing grade and reported her to the university administration, which formed a disciplinary committee. After hearings and deliberations, the committee expelled the student from the university. Three weeks after this decision, the girl committed suicide... Another person kicks the bucket, as the Americans say...
The disciplinary committee chairwoman contacted me after the suicide to assure me that I was not responsible for this tragedy and that any mistake (if there was any) was the responsibility of the committee's psychologist who failed to assess the impact of the decision on the mental state of the student who was already suffering from some problems. She also promised that this mistake will be corrected to avoid it from happening again.
However, her talk only amused me further with the bureaucratic distribution of responsibilities, reviewing the case file of the deceased, and the assurance that all procedures were correct and even flawless. Any mechanical performance errors would be addressed and improved for the next time. Oh, Max Fibre, you are wonderful with your visionary insight into the features of modern horror.
The losses are limited and hardly noticeable, with only one human victim. But apart from that, everything is quiet on the other side. Curse everything... "Murderer" is written on my forehead. I have reached the pinnacle of civilization, so congratulations to me. I carry the blood of this girl on my conscience, as she was a victim of a process in which I was an aware participant. I carry her blood, whether justly or unjustly, it doesn't matter to me.
And like any typical romantic intellectual, I prefer not to be hurt. Therefore, I isolate myself from the real world, avoiding the truth as it is sick and infected with syphilis, and I should avoid it. All I have in front of me is forgetting, silence, and acceptance of the role of the assumed moralist whose fall is inevitable, ending in entertaining the audience and followers.
And I do not know why I remembered what happened these days, after ten years of complete forgetfulness. Perhaps it's the talk of endings... A solitary man who grows in the shadows of books more than he does in the radiance of life... Walls of questions and barriers of confusion... An alien in a world that no longer exists. A man forever suspended at a point between reality and despair, between memory and pain, and his greatest horror is, as Stefan Zweig said, to find himself pushed to the abyss without his knowledge...
A man who started with Kamal Abdel Jawad and will end with Kamal Abdel Jawad... And, like Ibrahim Al-Katib, disappointment (in both the mental and romantic senses) was the driving force that always moved him, and it was the only harvest he reaped. He is not a hero, nor is he an anti-hero, a comic buffoon, a tragic hero, or a common man or an uncommon man, and thus he is multifaceted, but none of them has been able to replace his real, unknown, rejected, and ostracized face... This is who I am.
I know you may disagree with this diagnosis, but I feel that the little girl Delilah will agree with it someday in the future, and in any case, nothing matters... I heard someone once say, "But where did you get the idea that truth is the thing God demands of us? It's a strange idea because God knows the truth already, and He knows it very well to the point that it makes Him yawn with boredom. Truth is a matter for tailors and belt makers. As for God, I think He prefers masks."