Naïve Young Men

Dear Iqbal...

By God, I can advise you only with what Abu al-Tayyib said — may God rest his soul:

Let no enemy's tears deceive you;
have mercy on your youth against an enemy, and mercy shall be shown you.

Lofty honor is not safe from harm
until blood is spilled along its sides.

Or with what legend has handed down about the man who turned Christian: the sheikh said of him, "He does not diminish the number of Muslims by a single man," whereupon his friend the priest hastened to add, in agreement, "Nor does he increase the number of Christians..."

You would have me, my dear, solve for you this problem which you claim is so thorny that it has no solution except your accepting him as a husband once more — after he cast you far away and never looked at you or at your only child throughout the past five years.

Leave him — let him go to hell. Perhaps, just as he brought evil and ruin upon the sons of his own town, he will bring upon those whose tracks he followed the same shame and disgrace he brought upon us... For he in whom there is no good for his own people and his homeland — rest assured — there is no good in him for his enemies either!! And to lighten your heart I shall tell you a story that resembles your own. It happened to one of my school friends, whom I met recently; she told me her tale — a tale which, as you will see, breaks the heart with grief and sorrow...

You must surely have met him — the man with the disheveled hair and the patched, tattered clothes, who carries on his chest a drum bearing a tray on which a foreign flag is fixed. Sometimes he stands on Jaffa Street in the city of Jerusalem, at the point that separates the Arab quarter from the Jewish quarter... and sometimes he cuts through the Jewish streets, the sound of a drum about him like a death-knell announcing a calamity... And he remains this way from dawn until he has bidden farewell to the first watch of the night, so as to obtain the few piasters with which to drive off the pangs of hunger that rarely leave him!

This man, with his gray, disheveled hair, who looks as though he has entered the sixth decade of his life — you would be astonished to learn that he has not yet passed thirty.

This is the man I shall tell you about, whose story resembles the story of your husband, and the story of many whom glittering gold and wanton Israelite women have led astray...

Ali — for that is the name of the hero of our story — was the son of the sheikh of the village of ( . . ), who enjoyed great influence among the people of his town. He never left the village for the city except when his father sent him to represent him in the government offices or at the popular festivals which his father, in his old age, could no longer attend.

One day Ali was obliged to spend the night in the city of Jerusalem, and he chose the "Hotel Lebanon" as his refuge for that night, for he was certain from its name that it was an Arab hotel...

He sat in the hall of the "Hotel Lebanon" eating his supper in some contentment! For near his table stood another table at which sat a girl straight and slender as a lance, with great dark eyes, a mouth of pearls, and finely arched brows — uniting in herself the magic of the eye, the beauty of a painting, and the splendor of imagination...

And this beauty kept moving about, strutting through the hotel's spacious halls with movements that were all allurement.

The clock struck twelve, then one, then two after midnight, and Ali wrestled with drowsiness and mastered it! He remained open-eyed, his mind astray, flying in a delicious fancy that hovered about the hall where he had eaten his supper...

At eight o'clock the next morning he awoke to violent shaking... He began rubbing his eyes to open them... and there he was, staring as though he had fallen from a height!! His heartbeats quickened, his breathing rose, and he was dumbfounded, as if possessed, when he saw himself before yesterday's beauty, a cup of coffee in her hands and a sweet smile on her lips. She said to him in broken Arabic:

— Good morning, khawaja...

— Good... morning!! But...

He looked at her with the look of one astonished and inquiring, and, as though she knew what was passing through his mind, she replied:

— Yes, yes, I am the lady who sat near you yesterday...

— How strange, my lady — how could you be the lady of the hotel yesterday, and consent to be a servant now?

— I have been the hotel's servant for years; only, yesterday was my day off...

And she smiled at him, having taken leave to withdraw with a gentle nod of her head... A smile spread across his face — but a smile that was a mixture of amazement and bewilderment...

He had wished to travel back to his village, but he changed his mind and excused himself to his father by sending one of his men with all manner of invented excuses... He stayed at the hotel, met the servant again, and whispered in her ear words that at first drew a show of displeasure — but soon her lips parted in a smile that held the answer...

And after that came an appointment — and a meeting!!

This girl, my dear Iqbal, was not one of the hotel's servants. She was one of the girls who work for the Jewish "Keren Kayemet" company, whose specialty is buying land from the Arabs by any means, sacrificing for it even the last shred of self-respect.

And so this wily Israelite managed to take possession of this simpleton's mind. She promised to marry him, and he sold her the last land he owned in return for extravagant prices — prices which, however, return to them by one way or another, mostly by way of wine and beautiful women...

And after his father died of the grief that seized him over his son's deeds, the people of the village drove Ali out of the village... And after even his wily girl abandoned him, he found no recourse but to carry this drum as a means of begging, and to wait opposite the hotel at the point that separates the Arab quarters from the Jewish quarter — where the Jewess catches, every day, some poor simpleton in the very same way that she caught him in her snares!!

He waits, my dear, and he will go on waiting — until she who robbed him of money, happiness, honor, and manliness takes pity on him, and that will never be; or until nature takes pity on him and the hand of death snatches him away, to relieve him of this misery which he brought upon himself by himself.

Even if he should return to his town or his village, he will never return to his former state — for once the germ has mixed with the water of the well, it is impossible to root it out.

Finally, I hope I have eased your burden, and that you have learned from me a lesson you will not forget.