will scatter, each to his own quarter, seeking money, bread for the children. Tomorrow we shall depart, my ewe, and these dwellings, with their precious days and nights, will become memories passing through our minds, aching, painful, attended by chokings and shot through with sighs... Tomorrow the land will stand empty of its people, and the houses of their dwellers. Tomorrow our blood will run, our voices will rise in cries, and there will be none to hear our complaint, none to heed our calamity; our death and our life will be all one — for no reason but that we are of the people, weak and poor."

And Watfa turned her gaze this way and that, bidding the grounds farewell and drawing up memo-ries... This brook — how often she had come down to it to drink of its sweet water and fill her jar; and those hills and these green plains, where she had passed the flower of her life, free as the butterflies, greeting with joy the herald of morning and the breezes of evening, delighting in the seasons of summer and winter, reveling in

the splendor of spring... and griev-ing at the dust-gray of autumn. And these dear hollows caked with ash — they were the hearths... the hearths of her tribe and the haunt of their evening company. How often she had sat by them on tran-quil evenings, pounding the coffee mortar and preparing the coffee, kindling the fire as a signal to the neighbors, while around her the young women of the Arabs swayed with grace and moved with pride.

The girl wept and the ewe stirred; and voices rose, calling Watfa to join the singers in their song and the dabke dancers in their dance. The girl folded in upon herself, walked with heavy steps, and stood in the middle of the ring, absent of mind, her eyes brimming. Her sorrow had overflowed and betrayed what her soul had hidden... All were struck dumb at the look of their girl; the questioning drew long, as did Watfa's silence; the flame of merriment guttered out, and the people dispersed in knots, guessing and surmising, until the first threads of dawn broke, attended by a strange clatter. The anxious

people listened and called out to one another, asking. Watfa climbed a knoll and sent her gaze abroad... It was the strange, new, intruding owner, come with his gear and his numbers, to turn over her land, tear up the roots of her tribe, and efface its landmarks...

The girl closed her eyes and her imagination ran on, comparing the past, with its pride and its might, and the present, with its shames and its submission; and she moaned the moan of the stricken, and her voice rose, hoarse with sorrow and choked with tears.

And the girl came down from the knoll with despair in her heart and resolve in her soul — the resolve to die upon the face of her land, wrapped in the garment of her pride. She walked in majesty to meet the newcomers, and drew her dagger...

The women screamed, the men roared, the two sides closed, blood flowed — and the curtain fell upon a new tragedy, one of the many tragedies of Arabism... in the land of Arabism... the fruit of the neglect of Arabism's own sons!

Haifa, January 1, 1947