May's Last Letter to Rihani

Is it not that sacred spark which nourishes everything around you? Is it not the spark that has endured in its being since the first pages of "Ar-Rihaniyyat," which I discovered in the summer of 1911? And is it not so, that this vital, loving spark will remain forever astir within you? No doubt of it.

My dear friend, Mr. Rihani:

Upon your arrival at the first Eastern port after this absence in America, I welcome you in my own name, and in the name of the men of letters who love you, and in the name of this East that is proud of its brilliant Rihani.

How glad I was at this news, for your presence in these lands is a season of joy for me — I who have been awaiting this return of yours for six months, ever since my coming to Egypt. Three or four weeks ago I had written to our dear Albert asking him about you and about the time of your passage through Egyptian waters, so that I might be at the port to receive you. The reply came very late indeed, for it is now two o'clock in the afternoon, and there is nothing before me but the three o'clock train. However much I hurry my preparations for the journey, I shall not catch it; and my affairs are scattered, and the workmen in the house are busy at their labor, so I cannot suddenly dismiss them. Nor can I cancel the appointments and matters arranged for tomorrow.

As for the eight o'clock train, it would bring me to Alexandria around midnight, and at that hour I would wander about alone in search of a room in a hotel... There remains the eleven o'clock train, which spends the entire night on the way. If I traveled by it, I would guarantee myself a sleepless night, and tomorrow you would see me in a state that would not please you — the more so as my health has been unwell this week. The long, exhausting fatigue I have spent, and am spending still, on putting this house in order, together with the unbearable heat, have so worn me down and weakened me that I am obliged to keep to my bed for hours each day in search of rest. For all these reasons I fear that tomorrow, were I to travel, I would be in a condition that would trouble you, would not satisfy me, and would not grant me the full measure of the pleasure I seek in seeing you, talking with you, and listening to your news — the great deal I long to know of your journey and your lectures.

And so it is. You pass within three hours of the place where I am staying, and I am free. And yet it is not within my power to hasten to meet you as I had wished, in fulfillment of the hope with which I have consoled myself these many long months. Thus it is with man: he plans, and circumstances behind his back dispose.

My spirit receives you at the Egyptian port, on the quay of the Egyptian waters, beneath the sky of Egypt, which is the sky of the East you love so much. Indeed, from this very hour, before you set foot on Egyptian soil, while you are still on the open sea, my spirit goes out to you as an ethereal phantom that hovers about you on the deck of the steamer and communes with you in the sweetest converse two friends may share, and offers you pure thanks for what has now been bestowed of familiar human liberty... for yours in this success is a brilliant and ample share. My spirit robes itself in its most splendid raiment to stand beside you on the deck of the steamer. And from my spirit comes that pure shimmering upon the waves, making the waters before you a procession — a procession of honor, of love, and of thanksgiving — bearing you toward the Egyptian shore.

And if a cloud should appear in the sky at sunset, it is a symbol of my sorrow that tomorrow I shall be deprived of a rare opportunity. I do not doubt that you, like me, are sorry that we did not meet, if only for those brief hours of your passage through Alexandria.

Sorry like me, the more so since our dear friend Felix will not be there to receive you, and you will feel his absence and grieve for him — you who are a man of tender feelings as much as you are a man of powerful ideas. And ah, how bitter is my anguish over him, and how helpless my hand when it comes to writing about him! I cannot bring myself to write a letter of condolence to his family, for I lost him as his own kin lost him. I tell you truly, I fell ill from the moment I learned of his death. I had resolved to travel to Alexandria to console his family and bid farewell to his remains, but my strength betrayed me; and had I gone, I would have fallen so ill that I would have been forced to keep to my bed for weeks, there in Alexandria. And I, unlike all other people, am not permitted to be ill...