I remember, too, that during that month we spent together I was more constant in attendance upon May than her own shadow, hoping to reach the depths of her soul and to profit from her learning and the breadth of her reading. Nor was she any less desirous than I of being with me and talking with me alone. But — alas — those private hours and solitary conversations that punctuated our stay, and which made me happy to a far degree, could not bring me to that far point I desired — the understanding of “May” as she is — to that magic spring in which the torrents of genius and brilliance had gathered, and from which “May” drew without measure.
There is no doubt that May bore a special human stamp in which no other human being resembles her; and I know of no description that does her fuller justice than the one she sent me in the first letter she wrote me, introducing herself, which is this:
“Is it true that you have not yet arrived at my picture? Here it is, then: summon up a girl brown as coffee, or as tamarind as the poets say, or as musk as the lover of al-Amiriyya says; and set upon her a nebulous stamp — let the rhetoricians permit me this contradictory expression
— of longing and yearning and bewilderment, and a hunger of mind that is never satisfied and a thirst of spirit that is never quenched; and accompanying all these, a great readiness for delight and joy, and
a greater readiness for sorrow and pain — and this last always prevails — and give this ensemble the name of ‘May.' Then see who, at this hour, can match her pen.”
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