The Minister of Transport issued a decree appointing Engineer Ghazwan Jabr as Director-General of the General Railway Authority in the capital of a certain country.
Ghazwan could not bear the thought of parting with his personal chauffeur, Abboud. The man was not only a skilled driver but also an amusing companion. Abboud himself welcomed the prospect of moving to the capital and continuing to serve his benefactor.
The road to the capital was riddled with potholes filled with water and mud, and Abboud was unwilling to risk driving his modest car through them. After all, he would soon be leaving it behind in the Authority’s parking lot and receiving a much grander car once Engineer Ghazwan assumed his new office.
Whenever he spotted a pothole, he would say, “With your permission, sir, I’ll steer clear of this slough.”
Ghazwan heard the word a few times but did not ask about its meaning. He assumed it was one of Abboud’s playful inventions. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him.
“What exactly is a slough, Abboud?”
“A slough, sir, is a pit or depression that fills with water and mud after a heavy rain or when the irrigation channels overflow.”
“How did I not know that word? Both of my parents are from the countryside!”
“Well, I’m surprised myself.”
“Live and learn!”
“For your information, sir, there are creatures that simply adore wallowing in such sloughs.”
“What creatures?”
“Creatures accustomed to wallowing and crawling.”
“And why do they do that?”
“Either to cool themselves down or to rid themselves of the itch caused by ticks and other arachnids and parasites.”
Ghazwan did not wish to appear ignorant before his driver, whose pure rural imagination was so fertile today, so he refrained from asking for further clarification.
Gradually, however, images of wallowing beasts and crawling creatures took root in his mind. At first, he recoiled inwardly as they invaded his inflamed imagination. Then, with an involuntary nervous gesture, he swept his hand through the air as though brushing them away from before his eyes.
Abboud noticed the gesture but said nothing.
Soon the road was free of sloughs. The countryside grew greener on either side, and Engineer Ghazwan felt a sense of calm descend upon him. A pleasant numbness seeped through his body—the same sensation that steals over one just before sleep.
“Do you think, sir,” Abboud asked, “that railway tracks are flooded with sloughs as well, just like the streets of our cities and the roads between our provinces?”
“It seems to me, Abboud,” Ghazwan replied, “that the matter of sloughs runs deeper than I can fathom, considering I first heard the word only a few minutes ago.”
***
At the headquarters of the General Railway Authority, the new Director-General delivered a concise and useful ten-minute speech. He stressed the need for all employees to work together in raising the quality of service to the level of neighboring countries and in a manner befitting the new era.
The floor was then opened for comments.
The Authority’s Director of Operations sprang to his feet. A microphone was brought to him, but he bypassed it, producing a marvel of his own from a handbag he was carrying. He had designed the rather oversized microphone himself and saved it for this occasion, and, out of sheer spite, had concealed it from the previous director.
The microphone’s head resembled the front of a locomotive. It was attached to a handle fitted with four finger holes, rather like the folding brass knuckles carried by street toughs. The contraption allowed a speaker to slip all four fingers through the holes and grip the microphone so firmly that only a person of exceptional determination could wrench it from his hand.
The Director of Operations, with an obvious itch to speak, lavished upon the new Director-General more honorifics than Ibn Battuta ever bestowed upon the Marinid Sultan Abu Anan. He then proceeded to summarize the Director-General’s speech for colleagues who had either succumbed to drowsiness or occupied themselves during the address by sending WhatsApp messages to their wives or mistresses.
His commentary lasted a full quarter of an hour.
Before the first respondent had finished pouring out the jewels of his verbal smithy, a second commentator sprang up, eager to seize the microphone from the Director of Operations with all the ardor of an impatient lover.
Waiting his turn had felt like eternity marching across a razor’s edge. Once the microphone was in his hands, he spoke for twenty minutes: five minutes inventing fresh honorifics worthy of the new Director-General; ten minutes summarizing the Director-General’s speech, then explaining the Director of Operations’ commentary and commenting upon that commentary; five minutes speaking in the manner of television panegyrists, extolling tyrants with theatrical enthusiasm.
This second speaker sought to compensate for his lack of engineering genius with a surplus of linguistic genius.
A contagion of microphone-mania spread through the audience.
At that point, the Director-General glanced at Abboud and signaled his desire to leave the hall, leaving the crawling creatures behind to compete with one another in plunging ever deeper into the slough of oratory.
Translated from the Arabic original by the author
