———

The psychologist looked at me. She raised her eyebrows, drawn a reddish-brown, and said, “Now we have three Luqmans?”

“Yes … I mean, no!”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes and no. All of them represent the same person, and if they separated and became distinct from each another, it’s only because they are children of different times, such that each of them exists as a possibility for the others. Even you could be Luqman … ”

“I?” she replied, laughing at the joke I made. Then she pursed her lips in a whistle. Was it out of admiration or astonishment? Who knows! But she returned to her small notebook, writing down her observations and inviting me to go on. I learned later that she would make a note that I was suffering from dual personalities, or even triple, as well as the inability to distinguish between reality and imagination, which led me to confuse people and characters, and to suffer from the delusion that some of them were present with me.

I wanted her to understand that this is literature, that you have one foot in reality and one in the imagination, moving forward across a slender rope stretched tight between the boundaries of consciousness and unconsciousness, between absence and realization. What she truly needed to know was that my reality was catching up with my imagination, and that wherever I turned, I was meeting a Luqman. I looked at her again, my eyes caught by the orangish-red hair tucked behind her ears, and her face spotted with freckles. This ginger. Are you the one who will decide my fate after my limbs recover and regain their ability to move?

How long have I been here, patiently waiting to get my four limbs back? Weeks, I reckon, since they came only yesterday to take the casts off my arms, replacing them with bandages reinforced with lightweight metal splints, which are so much easier to wear. They said my legs need at least a week more. That is why my psychologist comes to me, instead of me going to her. She sits on the chair, calls me Mr. N, and poses questions about my childhood, my early manhood, and my relationships, as though, in this way, she would solve my riddles and untie all the knots inside me.

At first, I refused to answer her. I would close my eyes, pretending to sleep. Then I actually would drift off, and when I woke up, she would be gone. But after a few times, she began waiting for me to wake up. She knew it was impossible for me to fall asleep every time, and I would eventually get bored with pretending. At a certain point, I understood it was in my best interests to cooperate with her because this beautiful ginger would be the one to decide whether I was mentally competent and did not pose a danger to myself or others. She was also the one who would persuade my brother on that question, and he was the one who would decide whether to send me home or to a sanatorium.