cannot govern a kingdom is deposed.
Whoever goes about wearing the garment of blessing
without giving thanks for it — God strips it from him.
In place of my dear one's face, since parting from him,
I have taken a cup from which I drain what I drain.
How many say to me, "You have tasted parting!" I tell them:
the fault, by God, is my own fault — I do not deny it.
Would that I had stayed! That would have been wisdom entire —
had I but followed wisdom when it showed itself plain.
Would that my eye had not fallen on a single town
in this journey of mine except to pass it by.
O you for whom I spend out my days and use them up
in grief — and my nights, I do not sleep them:
no resting place gives ease to my side, and likewise
his resting place has known no ease since I went away.
I never reckoned that fate would strike me with the loss
of him, nor that the days would strike him with the loss of me —
until fate ran its course between us with a hand
crabbed and grudging, denying me my right, and denying him.
I used to tremble in dread of my fate's treachery,
yet I was not spared the very thing I dreaded.
By God — O house of merriment whose traces
are worn away, whose courts have crumbled since I left —
will time ever restore our delight in you,
or will the nights that spent it bring it back?
In God's protection be the one whose dwelling you became;
may a rain-cloud pour upon your grounds and make them green.
He keeps for me a pledge that shall not be lost, just as
I keep for him a pledge of faith I shall not lose.
The remembrance of him splits my heart; and when
a memory of me passes over his heart, it splits his.
I will endure a fate that grants me no joy
of him, nor grants him joy of me in any state,
knowing that my patience is followed by relief:
the narrowest of straits, if I but think, I widen.
Perhaps the nights that have wasted my body with our parting
will one day gather me and gather him together.
And if death carry off one of us,
the other, on the second morrow, must follow.
And should this separation last for us forever —
what can we do against the decree of God?

its stream is flowing, until she comes to the torrent and sits upon its bank, dipping her feet in the flood, and then she says: "So much for the one who was cheated! By God, this one hour in this palace is better than al-Zawra!"...

I believed in her, making of her house a Kaaba for men of letters and men of learning, to which the poets of her age made pilgrimage — the likes of Jarir, al-Farazdaq, Kuthayyir, Jamil, and others — anticipating by this accomplishment the famous literary women of the West, the likes of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, Madame Récamier, and Madame de Girardin.

And shall I complete the chain and undo its links, link by link, that you may believe, gentlemen, in the power of this creature they call woman? By God, she lies latent within you as the very life that moves you and drives you lies latent. And what aspect of civilization, modern or ancient, would you have me set before you that you may believe? Nay, what aspect of art, of love, of beauty, of history, of learning has not been the shadow of a woman??

Come, glorify woman with me, for in her you find nothing but your own souls.

Come, believe with me that the power of woman is greater than the power of thrones!

Did not Mrs. Simpson — an ordinary woman, like many of our own women — shake the greatest throne standing in the modern age?

Did not Edward the Eighth, as he renounced the throne of Britain, declare:

"I have found it impossible to carry the burden of kingship and its responsibility as I ought without the help and support of the woman I love"?

And now, what is it that has carried us from city to city — nay, what is it that has tempted you to leave your warm homes and to sit listening to poets who bless and orators who blaspheme? It is woman! It is woman!!

Indeed I believed in you, my ladies, who labor in the cause of the wretched and the destitute!! The pain of privation is bitter, stinging, pitiless; and there is no way, madam, to uproot it or to soften it save the sweetness of your hand, the freshness of your smile, and the tenderness of your feeling.

And when you have done this — and behold, you are doing it — then know that man is the first of the believers in you, for you are then the shadow of a god!!

Musa Sulayman The American University of Beirut

A Million Bats

Among the most curious things the papers have lately reported is that the men of agriculture have discovered, in the Antelias district, a cave of "bats" containing thousands of bats — indeed they estimate the number at a million!..

The bat is a nocturnal bird that attacks fruit in the dark, and Dr. Elias Mubarak, head of the Plant Protection Bureau, has gone out with his assistants to combat them.

35