and the greens went off with the current, until my eyes swam and the world nearly spun around me, and I heard a voice calling me:

'Rabab...'

I turned, and there was my cousin dismounting from his beast; then he came near me and lifted me up to him, saying:

'You nearly drowned, Rabab!...'

'And what brings you here now, Shawqi?...'

'Say rather, why are you so late? And you alone... in this field?...'

'Do you suppose I was alone... or in the field?...'

'Where were you, then?...'

'In the company of a friend... the dearest of friends...'

'What are you saying?... What friend?...'

'Do you see that blackbird... that bird soaring in the sky?...'

'You were up there, I suppose, but you tumbled to earth and nearly drowned in the running water... You soar too much, cousin, and I fear this sky for you!...'

'Have no fear, cousin: if I fell once, I shall not fall every time... I am light, lighter than the breeze... and I have a wing... two wings, rather...'

'And have you not also a beak and a tail... or... beaks and tails...'

He said this laughing, then mounted his beast, set me up behind him, and off we trotted swiftly toward the village...

*

"And oh, this village, blackbird — how it looks now, with its scattered huts, its narrow winding lanes, its pastures sloping down behind the vineyards and the fields, where the shepherds go down with their flocks, and the watchmen go with their beasts, and the plowmen walk with their yokes of oxen, their chants mingling with the fall of hooves and the jingle of bells and the strains of the reed pipes... and the world at dawn and at midmorning and at dusk... and we in the field sowing the seed, and on the threshing floor heaping the sheaves, and at the press emptying the baskets, and around the hearth

telling tales and eating walnuts and almonds with figs and raisins; then our eyelids grow drowsy, and we quiet down and sleep, and dream — what dreams!...

And how many those dreams were, and how sweet they would have been, but for one dream that troubled me more than one night and more than one day: I would see myself walking half naked in a desolate, faraway place, with two

wings grown upon me that beat without my being able to fly; and when I woke I would find myself trembling, the darkness all around me... a darkness that followed me in my childhood, and pursued me in my girlhood, and came upon me most of all on winter nights.

Then when spring came, and I was returning from the field one evening, gathering flowers and singing, I heard a sound blaring

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