Curtains the Color of Blossoms

Like most girls of today, she understood love as a kind of game and a means of passing the time; and he was of that small class of young men of the age who hold a woman's honor sacred and believe in virtue. How, then, did it come about that they fell in with one another? And how did each of them share in the writing of this story, which must be counted among the marvels and wonders of these days!

Suad lived in a house where everything spoke of wide standing, ample wealth, and rich living. There was the automobile owned by her eldest brother — the second director of the private bank her father owned in the city — carrying her whenever she pleased to wherever she pleased with whomever she pleased: to dancing parties where she made the acquaintance of scores of young men of every color and every kind, to excursions long and short, and to evening outings in the company of her girlfriends, indulging in varieties of frivolity and amusement, some innocent and some half-innocent — and it would not do to say more than that.

All this while Suad was still sixteen years old, pursuing her studies at one of the well-known schools of Beirut.

The advertisements fill the streets of the city. The students of the American University of Beirut, men and women, are performing the play of Qays and Lubna. A historic event in the world of the stage — the play that cuts the heart with the noble sentiments it carries.

Qays and Lubna is the most splendid of the love tales in the history of the Arabs. Suad knows that the headmistress of the school, with some of the teachers, is accompanying a large party of students to see this beautiful play — so why should she not be with them? She has grown weary of dancing parties; let her make a change today and go watch a literary, poetic play. But she has no inclination toward acting, and does not like to see actors coming and going on the stage, now shouting, now carousing, imitators and pretenders all!! And besides, she has no taste for poetry and does not understand poetry — how could she sit for three hours running listening to this verse play? But... what would her classmates say of her? And would it not be shameful to confess before them her inability to understand poetry or to savor it?

Crowds of students, men and women, pour into the theater of West Hall. Among these crowds one notices many faces of the country's men of letters, journalists, and men of thought.

All the seats were taken and the hall was packed with spectators. The curtain rises on the tents of Banu Ka'b on the outskirts of Medina, where Qays, Lubna's beloved, appears, courting her in verse... Who could this be, playing the role of Qays? That dark face, radiant in its darkness, is familiar to Suad — no, she knows it through and through; why then can she not quite place it now? And those two wide black eyes — how often they stopped her as she went down the stairs of the house on her way to school or coming back from it... Suddenly Suad's imagination carried her to the building facing their house in the Ras Beirut quarter, where in one of its rooms lives the handsome student Samir. It is he, without a doubt. What strange chances led her here to listen to him and delight in his voice! How often she saw him standing at the window of his room, absent, silent, his eyes trained toward their house, staring at her room even when she was not in it!! And how often she wondered at the meaning of that long standing and those bewildered, wandering looks Samir sent whenever occasions allowed him — and often they did. The actors went on with their performance, and all of them played their parts well, and Samir soared in the role of Qays until the spectators thought the soul of the ancient Arab poet had passed into the soul of this slender youth, and that the passion which had gnawed at the heart of the worn old poet was the very passion gnawing at the heart of this young man of the twentieth century...

Suad began following the course of the play with pleasure and eagerness, and behold, she understood every scene and spectacle going on around her, and behold, she was a bundle of feelings set ablaze as these sweet love verses reached her ears:
Do you remember our sittings on the meadow,
complaining of our love and going to extremes in our complaint?

But she never sat with him, in meadow or in wood; but he never declared any love to her nor showed her any feeling — how then can she covet all this, how can she hope that Samir would dedicate such verses to her??

And she listened with every fiber of her being to Samir courting his beloved Lubna — played by one of the women students of the university — and Suad wished she were a university student and had played this role herself; then she could have answered Samir's feeling with a feeling truer and stronger, and then she could have reached the utmost of her hopes and the sweetest of what she loves!!

The scenes of the play grow tense and its events entangled: Qays's father, having consented to his son's marriage to his beloved Lubna, goes back and insists, together with his wife, on divorce, because Lubna has borne him no child. Qays is at a loss how to reconcile his true feeling for the woman he loved and who loved him with the filial devotion he bears his parents, and he cries out from the depths of his soul:
Father: would you tear ribs from my ribs?
Father: would you burn two hearts and destroy them?

And Samir, as he delivered this poem, was a mass of feeling melting little by little, his tears running down his cheeks, until a large part of the audience was sobbing aloud, and Suad took from her pocket her red silk handkerchief to wipe away a hot tear she could not hold back...

And Suad marveled at herself: how had Samir been able to move her so? How could she weep — she who had never in her life cared for such painful scenes of love?

The play ended with a thousand and one questions in her head, all of them revolving around Samir, who had managed to become the axis of her thinking and the hero of her imaginings that night.

That night was Saturday night; and on Sunday morning Suad rose early from her bed, arranged her toilette, then put on over her pajamas her splendid garnet coat and went out onto the balcony that overlooks Samir's room. Samir had preceded her, standing as was his habit, sending his wandering glances toward Suad's room. Eye met eye and heart beat for heart, and Suad smiled a smile of greeting to Samir, and he took courage and answered the greeting with a smile and a bow.

Sunday was not over before Suad had arranged an evening party for her friends, girls and young men, Samir among them. Samir was the center of the party. Everyone spoke of him and of how finely he had played the lover's role in last night's performance. The bolder of the girls began putting question after question to him: Did you mean what you said? Can an actor play his part well if he does not truly believe what he is saying? Suad was the boldest of them all and asked him: Had he ever loved before this day, that he could play the lover's role with such skill?

And did he truly believe in this kind of chaste love?

Samir seemed embarrassed, shaken, gazing at Suad and listening to her with every fiber of his being; and when she stopped her questions he began speaking to her with all the force in him of the meaning of chaste love, of the sanctity of this love and its purity:

"The aim of love, Suad, lies in the contentment of the beloved's soul as she takes comfort in her lover; and in this spiritual delight she reigns over the lover and fills his whole being, because his beloved is happy, far from every care, free of all misery...

"If only you knew, Suad, how happy the true lover is when he sees his beloved enjoying happiness in life! If only you could taste the flavor of true love — then you would share my opinion, and you would know that the youth of today are astray, lost in their love, not knowing how to feel their way...

As Samir spoke he was like a flame of fire, and Suad was looking into his two black eyes with glances full of cunning and guile, wishing she could silence him from this idle talk with a torrent of hot, burning kisses, to quench the smoldering love that had flared up in her heart.

The music was sending its soft melodies through the air of the salon, and the young people swayed in a transport of gaiety and frolic, all of them given over, pair by pair, to rings of dancing!!

— Don't you love music, Samir?
— I melt with passion for music...
— Then get up and let us dance to these enchanting tunes.
— I hate dancing, Miss, and my taste cannot stomach it.

And Suad let out a peal of laughter that shook the whole house and drew the eyes of the dancers, men and girls, so that some of them came to ask what it was about. Suad said:
— Did you hear what Samir says? He hates dancing and his taste rejects it... as if he were living in the Middle Ages." And the dancing young ladies laughed

laughs with mockery in them and derision, as if to say: Poor thing! Pity him!...
One of the young men came up to Suad asking her to dance with him, and she granted his request with pleasure, after throwing Samir a glance with which she tried to stir his jealousy and his interest in her.

As for Samir, he shrank into himself as if struck by a dagger blow, but he tried to conceal his pain as best he could. And when he could not master his feelings, he went out of the house onto the balcony, listening to the strains of the music far from the dancers! But he could not feel at ease in this atmosphere. He felt like a stranger to everything going on around him. Could his own soul be lying to him? Had he not, in his heart of hearts, wished more than once that chance would allow him to meet Suad — she toward whom his heart had so often yearned, wishing he might be favored with one of her glances? Here she is now before him; here he is, invited to her house — indeed, she presses him to dance with her. Why then does he flee from her? Why does he feel a tightness settling on his chest and seizing all his nerves?

Suddenly Suad appears on the balcony, a cigarette in her mouth and in her hand a second, lighted cigarette, which she offers to Samir, saying: Here, I have lit you a cigarette to drive away some of the cares piled upon you, Samir.

— Thank you, Miss Suad... for I do not smoke.
— But I have often seen you smoking as you stood at the window of your room — what is the matter with you this evening! So saying, she stretched out her hand, trying to place the cigarette in Samir's mouth, while he stood rigid as an idol... And she marveled at this strange creature in whom no vein throbbed and no feeling stirred — he who in last night's performance had displayed a kind of love that would set him in the ranks of the greatest lovers! And here he is, looking at her with looks full of all the meanings of love and passion, and she encouraging him in it — why then does he stand before her frozen, as if there were no soul in him and no life!!

Samir felt that he needed solitude, to be alone, so he made his excuses to Suad and asked her leave to go. She was astonished at this and tried in vain to make him stay! Hardly had he bidden her farewell when she returned, furious, to the dance floor, gave herself free rein, and, in one of the mad soul's fits of frenzy, went gulping down glass of wine after glass, passing from one young man to another, dancing with this one and dallying with that, until her strength was spent and she dropped from exhaustion onto one of the seats in something like a feverish frenzy!!...

The guests went on in their revel, drinking and eating and dancing, until one o'clock past midnight. Then they took leave of Suad and left her a prey to anxiety and forebodings. She dragged herself to her bedroom, trying to find in it some rest to calm the storm of her disordered nerves.

How strange! What does she see? Samir's room still lit? And what can he be doing at this hour?

So he was not what he claimed? There he is, bent over his desk, cigarette smoke gathering in cloud upon cloud in the air of his room!! The lying trickster!! He does not smoke!

She tries by every means to draw his eye to her, and cannot.

She lights the room, then puts out its light, time after time — he takes no notice!

Then she stands at the window and beats her hand on the iron grille — not a hand of his slackens, not a tilt of his head... At last she resolves to sleep, and in evident agitation begins ridding herself of her clothes, throwing them here and there, her eyes all the while trained on the window, watching Samir: will he look up at her? Does he see her? Why, oh why, does he not look at her?

A sudden thought flashes in her head!

How dreadful!! But... no... no... she will not lose this golden opportunity... She puts over her pajamas her beautiful garnet coat and slips out of her room like a snake, after putting out the light.

— You madman!! Is it you?
— Yes, it is I... Why did you leave us, Samir, and come to sit up alone until this late hour of the night?
— But you are mad... Do you not know that you are risking your reputation, your honor, and the honor of your family?
— My honor? And my family's honor? You are a simpleton, Samir... But I am nearly suffocating from this smoke filling the air of your room... And yet you do not smoke! Allow me to take off my coat... And she flung her coat onto Samir's bed and stood, in her sheer silk pajamas, like a houri of Paradise!...

Samir could not believe his eyes. But it was Suad herself, and in his room at this late hour of the night! What was he to do? What to say? How was he to extricate himself from this trap Suad had thrown him into? Suad noticed Samir's bewilderment and the depth of his confusion, so she came toward him caressingly, took his hand in her own two hands, and said in a trembling, seductive voice:

— Samir... my darling... there is an invincible magic in your eyes, and on your broad dark forehead shine the marks of true manhood, and on your lips wander sweet phantoms of crying love and insistent desire... Why then this rigidity? And how long this coldness?

So saying, she took his head between her two hands and threw herself upon his lips, raining down on them a shower of red, burning kisses... And as she kissed him she strove, with all the strength and cunning she had been given, to display every art of temptation and seduction she possessed, to rouse his senses and inflame his feelings... Samir surrendered to this new experience, the like of which he had never known in all his life; a kind of numbness took hold of him, and he uttered not a word nor showed the least sign of resistance or refusal. Suad saw the effect of her enticement upon Samir and resolved to get from him the utmost she could; she drew him by his hands to the nearby seat and began playing with his hair and his head, Samir yielding like a small child on his mother's breast...

The wine had gone to Suad's head and taken full hold of her, making her forget all modesty and manners; she cast shame to the winds and appeared before Samir in a provocative, shameful posture... And her reddened eyes looked at him with abjection and brokenness, as if they were pleading!! Suddenly Samir started up, as if waking from a troubling dream, and said:

— Suad... Suad... For shame... What have you done? Can I believe my eyes?
— Samir... my darling... I am yours... take me in your strong arms... He did not let her finish, but sprang from his place like a thunderbolt and rushed for the outer door, leaving Suad in her wild, mad frenzy...

A year and more has passed since this incident, in which Suad has not once met Samir; and when she is asked about him

and about the measure of his love for her, she answers with a mocking laugh:
— Oh yes... he loves me... but he loves me with a platonic love. A year has gone by and he is still composing a matchless ode about me!!
But it will never appear, so it seems to me.
As for Samir, he still stands, silent and bewildered, at the window of his room every evening, gazing with longing and dejection over there... toward Suad's room — and he sees nothing but curtains the color of blossoms, shaken violently by the wind.