...The magic wheel, in one of the great halls of Beirut, turns and turns. And in its strange, ceaseless turning, hearts and eyes turn with it, and ears catch its every rustle — for upon this wondrous wheel the fortunes hover...

...That night I was at a family gathering, and I noticed two faces in the company. One betrayed an unbridled nervousness: its features scowled, then

froze in a frightening gloom; he knit his brow and clenched his fist, as though worry were eating him alive... And no sooner had the wheel made its final turn and the winners’ fortunes been announced than he flung his ticket to the floor and muttered nervous words, cursing luck and the lottery.

In the other face I glimpsed a contented optimism, a calm assurance, and something of unconcern, as though luck were at his beck and call: if it slipped from his hand this time, it

would not slip away the times to come. Luck was his slave; he would lay his hand on it in some hour or other...

The announcement of the final results — his ticket a loser like its fellow — was met with banter and joking. He neither resented it nor flared up, but with much calm and composure he turned to us and said: “Our appointment with luck is next month.”

Truly, how strange some people are — or rather, how strange are some people’s stars!

I know many of my friends, acquaintances, and neighbors who live life in assurance and calm, in a strange surrender, and their luck and their stars come to them at home, in their beds, at an hour they do not reckon. And there are others whose luck flees from them while they strive after it laboriously, and from afar they hear the cackle of that strange thing, laughing at them and then vanishing — and their hopes vanish with it...

What, then, might this luck be? What is it? Where is it gathered? How does it come? Is it mere passing coincidences that come into life blindly, over which we have no power? Why do some people drown up to their ears in blessings and good things, driven to them from every road... until they weary of them, while another set of people suffer the bitterness of deprivation despite vigil and struggle, as though ill stars lay in wait for them behind every door...

I do not know whether it is passing coincidences, or magical powers, that steer our fortunes in the direc-tions they will; but I know that there is, above coin-cidence and above magical powers, something deep that springs from our very core — not from around us. From