His majesty the Devil

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 2

 "How am I to prove that?" the doctor repeats to himself as he paces with measured steps through the hospital corridors, while everyone around him examines him with looks of curiosity and anticipation, suspecting he might do something reckless—and how could someone like him be let loose in the streets without supervision! There is a rule in the hospital: whoever does not wear the designated coat for doctors or staff is a madman. The doctor had not thought of that rule when he rushed out of embarrassment from Helen's call.

  A cleaner grabbed him by the shoulder with fear and caution:

  "What are you doing here?"

  "What stupidity is in this question? I am the doctor."

  She withdrew her hand and stepped back a pace, looking at him from head to toe: no taste in his clothes, no arrangement to his hair, and how could he possibly combine slippers with trousers! What kind of chaos is this that bears the title of a doctor?

  "And where is your coat, sir?"

  He looked at himself, closed his eyes for a moment, then smiled a faint smile carrying within it mockery of the law:

  "I left it in Helen's office... Dr. Helen."

  "Very well, I apologize to you, sir."

  A yellow smile appeared on her suspicious features before she left him and headed toward Helen's office, while the doctor continued his reflections regarding his research in psychology, which posited that evil is a psychological state viewed by man as one of the solutions he carries in his pouch to justify and anaesthetize conscience for success, crime, failure, and many other things—meaning it is a hidden choice at the threshold of human consciousness and will regarding winning things and achieving desires. Even religious prohibitions and heavenly punishments will never prevent this evil, no matter what happens, and evil remains an available, within-reach solution if man wishes to use it, stemming from the psyche far more powerfully than from the mind, even making the mind subservient to it if it so desires. Indeed, the matter of good and finish—or rather, good and evil—is nothing but a psychological affliction or an illusory choice for which we set justifications and obstacles against everything else so that nothing remains for us except it. Evil is a psychological issue far more than it is a philosophical or religious one.

  At the same time and in a place separate from the doctor's imaginary-psychological world, the cleaner entered Helen's office to interrupt her smile with her anonymous caller and inform her about the person wandering around without his coat. "I'll talk to you later," she closed the call with this sentence, blew a breath into the air, and then added:

  "Yes, yes, this is his coat."

  She pointed to the other coat hanging on the rack.

  "He forgot to wear it because I was on a private call, so he went out and did not wish to disturb me."

  "And what is the solution now?"

  "Never mind, I will go to him; finish what you were doing."

  "Very well."

  Helen took the coat and hurried swiftly toward the doctor with her heels striking the ground loudly, almost falling to the floor from the sheer speed. The doctor saw her rushing toward him, so he stood up with lips welcoming her with a smile of pity:

  "That spiteful woman told you."

  "Not from that angle, Doctor."

  He asked her as she helped him put on the coat:

  "From which angle then?"

  "I do not like to see you alone."

  He smiled at a sentence whose meanings held a touch of love mixed with a great deal of kindness.

  "Do you know, Helen, what the most important psychological things are for a human being?"

  "What are they?"

  "That one learns or tries to coexist with one's fellow human beings, for the psyche flounders with its different surroundings at every stage of its growth, a surrounding full of the intermingling of things."

  "That is true. And now, tidy your attire well and prepare yourself as soon as I check your daily schedule. I hope you have not forgotten the appointment for your session with the patient."

  "Is it a male or a female?"

  Helen exhaled into the air, then raised her eyebrows and shoulders:

  "I do not know, but I will look at your schedule and verify the matter. Must I do everything myself, Doctor?"

  "I wish that, and strongly so. How I wish you would be present with me during the session."

  "In the first place, it is a preliminary diagnosis and not a therapeutic session; perhaps his condition does not fall upon your shoulders, and he will be transferred to those specialized in his case. Secondly, it is not advisable for two doctors to be in one place; the matter is not comfortable at all—disturbing and unsettling."

  "I know that; not all dreams come true."

  "And now, go and prepare yourself."

  "Very well."

  He returned to the office, whispering to himself: "People's sorrows... never end."

3

  As soon as the doctor prepares himself and mentally gets ready to face his patient in Helen's office, the latter went to the director's office following a direct summons for her before directing the patient to his doctor. She entered upon a grim-faced man who was suppressing his anger inside and venting it with cigarette smoke while reviewing the security camera screen; he turned it off as soon as she entered:

  "Good morning, Dr. Adham."

  "Dr. Helen... I want you never to forget—never—that you are an intern here, and what prevents me from rejecting you is not the intermediary behind whom you take shelter..."

  Helen frowned and interrupted him: "Dr. Adham, I do not take shelter..."

  The other interrupted her with sharpness in his voice and a bulging in his eyes:

  "I have not finished speaking yet, Helen. You will have plenty of time to say whatever you wish."

  "Very well."

  "The hospital needs you for only one case. I need you personally for this patient alone, because we cannot understand anything except through you; in fact, he speaks to no one except you. Haroun... a special case of schizophrenia, the case of a human being trying to heal himself without resorting to anyone. Therefore, I hope that you will not tamper with the hospital's rules again. Is what I am asking difficult or incomprehensible?"

Helen pressed her lips together with a slight inclination of her head:

  "Understood, but I cannot understand anything from him at all, except for some chronologically distant events interspersed between them. I cannot determine the turning point at which he arrived at his current state."

  "It does not matter what you understand from him; whatever you wish to know, I am the one who will clarify it for you along with all your questions. I understand his condition only through you, because he refuses to speak with me about what I wish to know and ask him, even though I have lifted every restriction that might be placed upon him, yet I have succeeded in nothing. I directed him to the most brilliant therapists and diagnosticians I know, but they faced the exact same result. Through you, we will understand the reasons related to his life leading up to here, but I will clarify for you only what serves your studies and nothing more; anything beyond that concerns the patient and the hospital."

  "Do you think there is a treatment for his condition or not?"

  "At first, we will try to diagnose him: is he truly ill or is he faking it, even though there is no definitive cure for schizophrenia?"

  "Faking it?"

  "Yes, as I told you previously, he arrived to us from the health center belonging to the Ministry of Interior, and what I did not tell you is that he was imprisoned because of several crimes: the last of which was two dead victims, the middle of which was murder, and the first of which was attempted murder."

  Here Helen realized the gravity of what she was about to be bound to until further notice. She swallowed hard as she asked:

  "Until when am I required to stay close to him?"

  "You are not obliged to follow up on him; we will monitor him, and you just continue your training and finish what you came for. But whenever we need you, we hope you will be available, and you certainly deserve credit for that."

  "Very well, I deeply apologize for what happened."

  "Never mind."

  Helen stood up and turned her back to leave, but the director spoke:

  "Doctor…" (She turned back to him) "Keep him busy and let him talk about whatever he wishes and however he pleases, as soon as the doctor finishes with him. My friend has a specific theory regarding extracting speech from people of that sort."

  "And how is that?"

  "Although it does not concern you and he did not approach it academically, it will benefit you when you treat people whose speech is difficult to extract naturally between patient and doctor. The doctor will try to press on certain points that would gladden, sadden, or stimulate the patient to read body language, and then he places every sign related to the event within a story, choices, or a historical event so that the patient speaks his mind according to his interpretation of the event. After that, you know the rest of the diagnostic journey and pointing to the type of illness, its branches, and its causes."

  "It is not bad, but… do you not find it closer to interrogation than to a natural conversation and the required relaxation? One must feel a sense of trust before the person we are talking to, not anxiety and tension because of him."

  "If it works for diagnosis, then there is no harm in it, although the doctor's method does not show interrogation or annoyance at all. I, too, used to wonder about his ability to find out what no one else could figure out, until he explained the matter to me. I admired the behavior, yet I was not convinced of the validity of the result, until I watched some of his applied sessions alone on the computer screen; I knew then that he is the right man in the right place."

  "Very well, we shall see. Goodbye, Doctor, and I repeat my apologies once more."

  "What matters to me now is that you understood the reason for my adherence to the hospital's rules."

  "Yes, I understood."

  "Thank you."

  Helen walked out of the director's office while interrogative confusion toyed with her features: how could a specialist doctor fail to understand a patient who is trying to heal himself by himself, while he stands aside watching what the patient is trying to do unconsciously? And furthermore, how does the patient feel that he is healing himself?!