Last Night in Brighton

Chapter 2

2. Regression

للتراجع

‘You think I’m bullshitting you,’ she said.

He did.

‘I’m here, aren’t I? I paid upfront,’ he replied. He wanted to sound confident in his decision, but he had not slept the night before, and his feet were tired. He wanted to spread his toes, but his shoes were full of sand. He hoped she wouldn’t notice little grains of it on her wooden floors. He reckoned he looked like a ghost — or worse, a d**g addict — large, puffy circles under his eyes. But then again, maybe she was used to this class of people — the ghost and/ or junkie class of people. Half-living people.

‘Because if you actively disbelieve it, it won’t work,’ she continued. ‘Because I can’t guarantee your satisfaction.’

‘What does that mean?’ he asked, a bit worried.

‘It means that if you don’t get there, that’s on you,’ she answered, looking at him with intent, motherly eyes. ‘No refunds.’

He looked her in the face. She had a strange twitch — a nervous, little seizure in her left eye, barely perceptible.

‘I made a very clear decision,’ he assured her. After a moment’s quiet, he continued: ‘No refunds. I am aware of the possible pitfalls, Doctor Fahmy.’

‘I’m not a doctor,’ Doctor Fahmy said. ‘I need you to be fully aware of what’s happening for legal purposes. I am a hypnotherapy practitioner. You can call me Lana.’

‘I would feel more comfortable calling you Doctor Fahmy,’ he said. Doctor Fahmy frowned. A moment passed.

‘Alright, Lana,’ he conceded.

‘Alright, we’ll begin with the formalities,’ Doctor Fahmy said. She stood and escorted him from the sofa in her narrow foyer through her kitchen to a small pantry she had converted into a makeshift office with the help of some Ikea furniture. He reclined on a chaise lounge. On one side of the chaise hung a framed diploma from Jackson Heights Hypnotherapy Institute, and below it was a small bookshelf of self-help titles. Doctor Fahmy sat on an armchair on the other side of the chaise. On a small desk beside her armchair was a notepad, paper, a pen, and some spectacles.

‘Would you like a blanket?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s hot outside — Why do you ask?’ he returned. She had offered him a blanket in their previous session, which had been their first, but he felt uncomfortable asking why. He was still irritable from that session. An expected side effect.

‘It comforts some people,’ she said. ‘That’s another point I’d like to get over to you: The purpose of this is to find answers. Finding answers comes at the cost of living in blissful ignorance, right? What you are about to experience may bring up some trauma for you. That pain is not only natural, it can be a goal. A healing crisis. Ultimately, what we’re about to do here together today is about addressing how things stuck in the distant past are still informing and obstructing the present.’

‘You’re not responsible,’ he said, hurrying her.

Doctor Fahmy nodded. ‘You have signed paperwork to that effect and are completely aware of what you have signed. You are aware that I am recording the audio of this session. You are fully conscious of your decisions and are under no form of duress. You are free to leave anytime,’ she said. He inspected the room. There was a large tape recorder from the 1990s sitting on the floor, in the corner of her pantry-office. Doctor Fahmy reached out her hand to signal that he should respond to her disclaimers verbally.

‘Yes, I consent to all of this of my own free will,’ he said, unsettled by the recording device.

‘You are also acknowledging that your requested treatment is non-standard. We have worked out the details. You have agreed to and pre-paid your fees,’ she said. He nodded. She lifted a hand signalling him to speak.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘The treatment you are about to receive is, per our discussions prior to this session, not Past Life Regression Therapy,’ she continued. ‘You are about to undergo an amended Past Life Regression Therapy. It is tailored to your specific requests. What you are about to experience should more accurately be called just a Time Regression Therapy. It employs many of the same techniques of my Past Life offerings, but the purpose is to travel to a space at once familiar and unknown to you.’

He asked for a glass of water. In the minute it took her to retrieve it from the adjacent kitchen, thoughts raced through his mind. He had already paid several hundred dollars for this session. He could leave. He realised that once he had entered a state of hypnosis with Doctor Fahmy, it would be difficult for him to rouse himself to a fully conscious waking state. What sort of pain? he wondered. Does anyone not come back from a Past Life Regression therapy? Surely not — It would be all over the news: MAN DIES IN (BULLSHIT) HYPNOTHERAPY SESSION. What if the emotional trauma of such a thing is so severe that the person who returns is only a fraction of who they had been? He quieted his thoughts. If he shared any of these doubts with Doctor Fahmy, she would have refused to treat him. He had come too far. He thought about his first session, which had been a remarkable success. Doctor Fahmy handed him a glass of lukewarm tap water. He downed it and placed the glass on the floor beside his chaise lounge.

‘The sensations you are about to experience are true to life. Some say their experiences in that state are as vivid as this reality. Sometimes they are even more intense than your life here and now. There is a great deal of disagreement among practitioners about what it is that you will experience — whether it’s simply what exists in your subconscious or an alternate dimension. Of course, there are things that are not explained by science. Scientists themselves are the first to say that they arrive at a certain point, and beyond that point is an inexplicable divine, always just out of reach of our comprehension. Within the study of physics there are a great many proponents of the idea of parallel universes or parallel realities. There is some possibility that what you are about to experience will affect another reality. It is also not unthinkable that after our session, you will feel yourself to have returned to a reality very different to the one you are experiencing now. In my view, as a hypnotherap ist, there are no hard and fast answers. You decide the significance of the world you are about to enter. Upon return to this — or that — reality, you may experience feelings of depression or thoughts of suicide. You bear responsibility for seeking the necessary professional help if you experience these emotions. The intent of our undertaking, however, is to resolve issues and hopefully set you on track to healthier, more mindful living. Is that clear?’

He nodded. A moment passed until he recalled the recorder. ‘Yes,’ he said aloud.

‘What are the objectives of your requested Time Regression Experience?’ she asked. ‘What is it about your present that you are trying to fix?’

‘I’d rather not say, if that’s alright,’ he said. She paused again. ‘As you say, it’s for me to deal with how these experiences impact whatever life is like after our session,’ he said.

‘Fair enough. Hypnotherapy is indeed mostly a solo enterprise. I can lead the horse to water, so to speak, with the tools I’ve received in my training. But if you don’t actively believe in and want to undertake this journey, you’ll just be a man in a chair in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn in 2019,’ she said.

‘Why was there none of this preamble for our first session?’ he asked.

She paused.

‘That was a very different sort of session. This is the protocol for a non-standard session,’ she said. He nodded.

‘I brought a photograph. I’m not sure if it’s any use to you,’ he said.

‘It’s not necessary, but you may hold it, if it makes you feel more comfortable,’ she said.

He felt discomforted by her insistence that he get comfortable. He had not brought the photo to serve as a security blanket. He brought it as an object to lead the way to back to the dead. He had read once in high school, for AP World History, about the Egyptian Book of the Dead. He read that there were several writings out of Ancient Egypt that described the path from the world of the living to the afterlife. Those journeys involved amulets and spells and all of the deceased’s riches, packed into the colossal monuments to mourning that are the pyramids of his and Doctor Fahmy’s most distant ancestors. Where Doctor Fahmy saw a security blanket, he saw a photographic amulet. He assumed that Doctor Fahmy, in Bay Ridge, in the enclave of Egyptian and other Arab Americans who live in that space, would have recognised the photo for what it was. He was disappointed that she had not. But he could not show it. He would not turn back.

‘May I see the photo?’ she asked. He handed it to her.

‘!حاجة حلوة، الصورة دي’ - Haga helwa, elsoura di, she said - What a beautiful photo!

‘I think a great many people would like to experience what you’re about to experience,’ she continued. ‘They just haven’t asked or encountered anyone willing help them. I suppose my methods are a little out-of-the-box, even for hypnosis. How do you feel?’

Sam looked into Doctor Fahmy’s face. He noticed her eye twitch as he had before. A sign of anxiety. The sort of small muscles that he reckoned caused crow’s feet seized up and then released, seized up and then released.

‘Does it matter?’ he asked her. And then, realising that he was being disagreeable, he felt contrite. ‘I’m sorry,’ he offered Doctor Fahmy. ‘It’s the withdrawal, and I’m overcome with nerves, as you can imagine.’

‘You are about to return to the people in this photo,’ she said. ‘We are about to undertake something new and intrepid for us both. I absolutely understand the tension. But we have to march adroitly into this, or it won’t work.’

Doctor Fahmy explained that she would count backward from 10 and that by the time she had arrived at 1, he would exist decades ago, across an ocean and a sea, in a land of great, big triangular monuments to mourning.

As she counted, Sam felt his hand dig into the chaise lounge armrest, like his seat was about to take off for flight. He turned his face from Doctor Fahmy so she would not see tears roll down his cheek. He was afraid that she — or he — would misinterpret them as tears of sorrow and stop.