The Critical Case of a Man Called K by Aziz Mohammad

Author:Aziz Mohammad [Mohammad, Aziz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press

Week 15

I reread The Old Man and the Sea, for the strength I needed to face the day, and got up feeling full of energy, like a fisherman setting off with the expectation of a good catch. I took a shower, ate a light breakfast, and dressed at a leisurely pace. In the car, Queen’s “I Want To Break Free” was playing off the disc I’d made of my favorite band. When “Bohemian Rhapsody” began, I turned the volume up as far as it would go and began singing along tunelessly to Freddy Mercury’s highest register.

I arrived at the hospital early and parked the car opposite the entrance. The long, low building rose in front of me, and something about it seemed to bestow on me special status because I was a patient. I climbed the outside steps lightly; they’re evenly spaced, close to one another, and so conducive to agility that as soon as you’ve climbed them, you want to go down again and climb back up. But the door opens in front of you unexpectedly and of its own accord and sucks you in, so you surrender yourself joyfully to the flow of air and traverse the public areas, and even though you may want to ask Reception this or that, you roam around wherever you feel like going, with no goal other than to maintain your progress over the tightly fitted flagstones of this strong, ancient building, this marvellous, solidly built structure. Verily, I love it like a dog and want to pat its head!

I had done enough tests in this hospital in recent days, taken into my body enough of its blood supply, for a sort of familiarity to have developed between us, and the lean, serious doctor who is in charge of my case had made an appointment for me in the Oncology department, which is an independent department located inside the hospital but separated from it by a long corridor so as to isolate it as much as possible from the others. Having found my way to the latter, I saw it to be cheery and pleasing to the eye, well suited to leading a person wherever he might want to go. It looked out, on one glass-walled side, onto an open-air playground, while on the other, the wall was smooth and bright, the sun thrown down the length of its floor in squares, like a sunny carpet over the marble. “Oh, my! What a long, thrilling corridor!” I said, as I walked down it on my own. Then, halfway down, I raised my voice and said, “O Corridor, I walk down you for the first time, and I shall walk down you I know not how many more times, but I’d like to say—on behalf of all the times to come when I shall perhaps be too exhausted to tell you—I’d like to say now that I love you and that you are a cheery, exciting corridor. Your lighting is marvelous and your

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.