they say she is mad; and Esther Wakim says no —

she is only a woman worn out, in pain, despairing of everything...

My head was spinning with thoughts as I crossed the threshold of her room. What shall I say? What shall I do?

I entered.. and found myself before a woman whose hair had gone white, and who had tied it with a black ribbon. I greeted her; she did not answer... and went on staring at the ceiling..

I felt all my bones coming loose and the sweat pouring from my body..

Is this a madwoman?

Is this a woman of sound mind? Questions turning in my head and ringing in my heart.. and I stood there, lost.

I will not go out.

After a long while, she looked up at me and said:

"In the year 1929, in the month of January, I gave a tea party at my house in Cairo, and among the guests was Yacoub Sarrouf, and the talk turned on communing with spirits.. Dr. Sarrouf believed none of it, yet did not dare deny it. He said to me: I promise you, May — if the communing of spirits is real, and I go before you to the other world, and you are in an ordeal, my spirit will come to your aid in your ordeal."

May fell silent, stared at me, and said:

"Are you, I wonder, the spirit of Yacoub Sarrouf?"

In that hour I felt that fate had bound me to the destiny of this unhappy woman. I sat down, and May began to talk to me,

unburdening her breast for the first time.

She told me of her relatives — some of them wanting her alive so as to exploit her, and some wanting her dead so as to inherit from her.

And they came to me in Egypt, while I was still in my grief for my mother, saying..

Travel, May, to Lebanon. In Lebanon are your own people; it is a shame that you should stay here alone. And I carried myself to Lebanon, thinking to find in Lebanon a support for my weary head and my torn heart, and consolation for my sorrows...

And in Lebanon I met with bitter grief; and in Lebanon I was carried to the Asfouriyeh as a madwoman, and they bound me in the jacket... and in the Asfouriyeh I tasted death many times over.

And I remained eleven months. Until I was moved — I do not know how — to this place.

I asked her: Why do you not receive your friends, May?

She said: In the eleven months I spent in torment I saw not one of my friends' faces. Why did they not ask after me? Why did Ameen Rihani, for one, not ask after me?

My visits to "May" were repeated — and it was as though her friends had learned that she was at Rebeiz's... And Rihani, after visit upon visit, had managed to see her.

We resolved to bring her out. And we brought her out of the hospital — for Dr. Rebeiz refused to release her without a sign from her relatives, and the police helped her to gain her freedom — and May moved to Ras Beirut.

And we took to frequenting the house, spending our evenings with her and delighting in her charming talk.

Then came the great celebration at the American University of Beirut, when she delivered her lecture — and after that May went out into the free life.