A Day—or Part of a Day: Saber El-Ganzouri Tells Death Through the Eyes of the Soul

The Writer’s Stories | Adam in the Parallel World
By Saber El-Ganzouri

Tawasul News continues its literary series “The Writer’s Stories” with another selection from “Adam in the Parallel World,” a short-story collection by writer Saber El-Ganzouri.

In “A Day—or Part of a Day,” El-Ganzouri approaches death from an unusual perspective: the voice of a soul watching its own body being washed, carried to the mosque and lowered into the grave, while remaining able to see, hear and revisit the people and memories it left behind.

Through calm, contemplative prose touched with gentle irony, the story transforms the funeral from a final ending into the beginning of another existence. The grave becomes a second womb, while the body and soul wait for the moment of a new birth and an eventual reunion.

A Day—or Part of a Day

By Saber El-Ganzouri

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the day I died.

That day passed with all its sweetness and bitterness, and now its memories brush against me like the gentle breeze of an April morning.

I often thought about that day and tried to imagine it.

How would I die?

I was never as concerned with “where?” or “when?” as I was with “how?” and “why?”

I imagined many possibilities: a car accident, a heart attack, drowning and countless other things...

But what actually happened was that I became a leaf falling at the beginning of autumn, pulled towards the earth by gravity.

It was a wonderful day. I laughed a great deal.

Everyone around me was either weeping or screaming, while I had surrendered completely to a deep sleep.

As I lay on the washing table, the men preparing my body believed that the smile on my face meant I could see Paradise.

But I was laughing at them—especially at the man who tied my limbs, wrapped part of the white shroud around my neck and placed small pieces of cotton in my mouth, nose and eyes.

I wanted to resist him as he folded my arms and placed my right hand over my left upon my chest.

But since I could not resist, I laughed and surrendered to them until they placed me inside the wooden box they called a coffin.

I still do not know why they gave it that name.

I left the house carried high upon their shoulders, as though they were celebrating me.

I could see and hear everything.

They carried me to the mosque, where they honoured me by praying over my motionless body.

Then they lifted me onto their shoulders once more and walked towards the grave they had prepared for my arrival.

My feelings were strange...

I could see a body that no longer moved or breathed, while a soul without a body or shadow could still see and hear—yet no one could see it.

Then came the moment when they removed me from the coffin.

Amid the noise, whispered words and the rising sounds of farewell, my body—which I had heard them call “a corpse”—descended with them into the grave, while “I” rose towards the sky.

The earth took what belonged to it, and heaven took what belonged to it.

I had never felt sadness as deeply as I did at that moment.

What grieved me most was knowing that I would never sit with my friends again.

My first moments inside that damp grave felt like entering a new house—one I had to explore and learn how to inhabit.

I was like someone guarding his own body, watching and waiting to see what would happen to it.

The body adapted to its new homeland and fell into a deep sleep.

But I remained alive.

I could still feel, see and hear.

I sensed my existence in the same form, image and shape, as though I were a portrait painted from clouds.

There was my wife, standing before the photograph taken on our wedding day.

There were my children.

And there was my first grandson, who had entered the world after my death.

My friends were still sitting in the same place by the riverbank after dinner.

They still remembered me.

One of them suddenly said that he could feel my spirit sitting among them, in the place where I had always sat.

Their entire conversation was about me.

I laughed with them, and they laughed too. They recalled our memories together and said:

“May God have mercy on him.”

I remain a soul suspended above the handful of earth that once formed my body.

The body has returned to the womb of the earth, and both of us now wait for the moment of the second birth, when we will meet once again.