Bahija went into al-Walid hospital heavy with care, wishing her husband were there with her. But he had died a few weeks earlier and missed out on seeing children clinging to his legs.
The nurse gave her the good news that she had given birth to a boy, and Bahija forgot her labor pains and asked the nurse to let her see him immediately. She held him gently and lovingly and called him Bahjat. “Isn’t Bahjat a beautiful name?” she asked.
The nurse laughed as she set the baby down in a nearby crib. “A beautiful name,” she answered, “but I prefer modern ones.”
Bahija could not keep her eyes away from her son and felt that every look made her happiness deeper. In a while she found she had to doze, but she woke up suddenly when she heard a high-pitched, indignant voice cursing all nurses, doctors and hospitals. She was astonished to find that the source of that irate and damning voice was none other than her son. She gasped in amazement, and Bahjat turned to her and smiled as though he had known her for millions of years. “Couldn’t you find anything better in this town,” he asked in pitying tones, “than this crappy hospital?”
Bahija muttered something in confusion and anguish, and Bahjat said, “As I’ve observed, this hospital is not free, and it’s the duty of those who work here to look after their patients day and night. Yet they left you alone for several hours without a nurse or a doctor looking in on you. You shouldn’t keep quiet about this neglect. He who takes our money – we have the right to take his soul.”
“You can talk!?” Bahija exclaimed.
Bahjat said, as if insulted, “Not only can I talk, but I can also read, write, and count from one to ten, and I won’t be needing any schools or universities.”
At that moment, Bahija heard a noise by the door. She thought someone was about to come in and said to her son, “Keep quiet. Don’t speak even one word.”
Bahjat said, “You’re now talking like our leaders.”
“If the people here at the hospital discover you can speak,” Bahija said, “do you know what might happen? Even I don’t know, but my heart doesn’t feel at ease. It tells me I might lose you, and I don’t know exactly how they’ll treat you.”
Bahjat laughed again and said, “You won’t lose me unless I marry a woman who hates mothers-in-law.”
“Pretend you can’t talk, just like other children, and you’ll find that silence is useful. A silent person sees more than one who talks.”
Bahjat promised his mother he wouldn’t talk any more and said, “Before I shut up, I want to tell you my father visited me while you were sleeping and congratulated me on my safe arrival. He’ll visit you whenever you fall asleep.”
She bombarded him with questions, but he kept his promise and did not talk, even after they had left the hospital and were at home by themselves.
When one year had passed, Bahija said to Bahjat, “The time has come for you to start talking like other children.”
But Bahjat did not talk and paid no heed to his mother’s pleading. All her efforts to get him to talk met with failure. He stuck to his silence, even when he reached the age of twenty. He looked for work, but found no one who would employ a speechless person. All available jobs were suitable only for chatterers. His mother comforted him, saying, “We’re not in need of any work. Your father left us with more than enough.”
One Friday afternoon Bahjat went into a mosque without having performed ritual ablution. He joined some men relaxing on soft, thick carpets flooded by lights from chandeliers with many lamps. They sat silently and piously in a circle around a corpulent old man with an unkempt beard who was talking about men and women riding together on buses. He said with vehemence and severity that it was forbidden because men would be tempted to indulge in fornication. Bahjat let out a merry laugh which was met with disapproval. He could no longer hold his tongue and found himself compelled to speak. He asked the old man in a loud voice, “Is making love forbidden, master?”
The old man was taken aback, but he smiled as he muttered, “They are unbelievers with reprehensible morals!”
Bahjat then said in a sarcastic tone, “We have believed, and now it’s an article of faith with us that riding buses is forbidden. Is riding donkeys at night also forbidden, or is it permitted?”
The old man then recited in a dignified voice a verse from the Qur’an, “God has made unbelief, immorality, and disobedience odious to you. As for those who act wantonly, their resting place will be the flames.”
“I asked some questions,” Bahjat said angrily, “and I have a right to get answers.”
One of the men said in a commanding voice, “Ask questions that benefit your Muslim brethren.”
Bahjat thought for some moments, then said, “I have a question for the master. Is it true, Master, that the non-believer Napoleon had only one testicle when he occupied Muslim Egypt?”
The old man said in a scolding and contemptuous manner, “Behave, boy!”
Bahjat faced the men sitting near him and said, “You’re asking for honey from a ferret, and expecting to be guided by someone who sees a tall and broad man as a boy. God save you and us from what happens to boys!”
The old man became angry, and those who admired him, his seekers, supporters, and students, were also angry. They attacked Bahjat in a group, descending upon him with their shoes. He resisted, telling them to stop beating him because his blood might stain the precious carpets. They dragged him to the courtyard of the mosque and continued hitting him until he fainted. Then, together they picked him up and threw him outside.
When Bahjat woke up from his faint, he hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take him home. Once there, he tried to speak with his mother and the police, to let them know what had happened. But he couldn’t utter even one word, and died a few days later from his wounds. Bahija felt like a combination of widow and orphan. Her house was full of women offering condolence, and she heard some of them whisper something about her son’s muteness. She was about to talk back and tell them at length about her son who talked in his cradle, but she changed her mind and with quick steps put some distance between herself and them, as though they were rotting corpses. Thereafter, Bahija slowly cast off all words, and every time she sank deep into silence she was given the opportunity to see her son groveling in the dirt, crying from the fatal wounds he had received on his head. But her silence instantly gave her son enough strength to bear his pain. He would go altogether beyond it, wipe his tears, and run over desert sands where no sun rose, no moon showed itself, and no stars glittered. He would not lose his way or strength, and would carry on running fast so that he might one day soon reach his mother and throw himself into her arms, a baby born a second time without the pangs of a difficult childbirth.