May at the Rihanis' Freikeh

... Albert Rihani was telling us about May "in Freikeh":

No one is left to tell people about "May's" days there except Albert Rihani. Ameen Rihani died one year before May.

And Saada, Ameen's sister, died...
And "Freikeh" and Albert remained.

And in Freikeh "May" lived after her great ordeal, beside the Rihanis — Ameen, Saada, and Albert. Ameen carried her, all but bodily, to Freikeh.

There, "May," you will recover the serenity of your mind and heart.

There, there is no gossip and no idle talk... clear air, fresh earth, and an easy life.
Come, May, with us to Freikeh...

And one day in early summer, May moved from her house in Ras Beirut, in the Rihanis' company, to Freikeh...

To a house neighboring the Rihani house, no more than an arm's reach between them... And "May" stayed two days — after much insistence — with Ameen, to move afterward to her seclusion, in the house standing on the edge of the Freikeh valley.

Her days in Freikeh had a great deal of quiet and rest in them, but she was almost in a kind of isolation, living alone in the house, for she refused to have anyone come to serve her.
What did "May" do in that seclusion? Was she writing? Was she dreaming? Was she suffering?

Things no one knows anything about, not even Ameen Rihani himself, though she was everything to him in those days...

She told us once, said Albert Rihani, that she was writing a new book. We pressed her to show us something of it, but she did not... It may be that she wrote and it may be that she did not... We know nothing!

And what else do you remember, Albert?
— Yes indeed: those evenings we used to spend at May's, in her house — they were among the most delightful of evenings... We would carry the Lux lantern — Ameen, Saada, and I — on our evening visit to "May" every night... And I do not recall that she ever spent an evening at our house, or came by, except once: she had refused to receive anyone in her house, so she received some friends, one single time, at ours.

And in those evening gatherings, we would sit at the pinochle table, and I remember perfectly that "May" would laugh a great deal whenever she caught my sister Saada having stolen the "Joker" and hidden it in her hair.

May lived clear of mind in Freikeh, active, doing everything for herself, but she was very reserved even with those closest

to her... She would not accept a visit from anyone...

And she would rise very early, at dawn, and go down along the paths of the valley... The owner of the house there still remembers her well, and whenever I pass by him in Freikeh, he tells me about the sad woman who used to rise before the sparrows and sit on the overlook of his house...

And "Nawafil" remembers her — the woman with whom "May" lodged. Her name was Nafleh, but May called her Nawafil. She knew no other woman of Freikeh.

Even the paths of the village May never walked, in her days with us... And we respected her wish and never once tried to draw her out of her seclusion, nor did she care to come out of that seclusion.

Three months, summer months, passed over "May" in Freikeh — she inviting us to eat tabbouleh she made with her own hands, or we making it and carrying it to her house...

And our summer there passed in the blink of an eye... And May returned to Beirut, and from Beirut to Egypt...

And in Egypt the news of my brother Ameen's death reached her, and she sent us her condolences; and when she herself died, we did not know whom to console for her...