After lunch the father sat down beside the radio to listen to the news. Samia was reading in a book thick of bulk and small of print. Her brother Nihad, who is younger than she, now paced among the chairs, sighing with impatience, now looked out of the window at the road, waiting with worn-out patience for Mama to finish putting on her dress and take him and his sister Samia to the cinema—for there was a new film about Tarzan.

And here is the new maid, Zanbaq, come carrying a pail to mop the floor of the next room. She set the pail on the floor and began to mop. But now she stops her work and looks through the door toward the radio. She stands frozen like a statue, and her pupils grow wide. Nihad asks her what is the matter. She answers him in astonishment, a little fear having crept over her:

Who is the man in the box? —

What box? — That black box.

And she pointed to the radio. Nihad understood that she did not know what a radio was. She had come recently from the mountain, from a far-off village, and had never seen a radio before. It occurred to him to make fun of her—he being well known for his love of teasing. Without smiling, and without his features changing in the least, he answered her as if he were saying something ordinary and understood:

— Demons and the spirits of the dead speak in the box. — The spirits of the dead? Demons...!!

And poor Zanbaq's eyes grew wider than before. — Yes, all the spirits of the dead. And all the demons....

Nihad's father was beside the radio listening to the news, so he could not hear the talk that was passing between the maid and Nihad; and Samia, sunk in her reading, noticed nothing. No one heard him but Zanbaq, so he went on:

Whoever turns the knob of this box hears the spirit of a demon.

Zanbaq answered him in utter terror: — Which demon is speaking now? — Black demons... white ones... — Ah. But I don't understand what he is saying.

— She had turned on the radio while you were away, and I don't know how she fiddled with it until its sound rose to the very top; we heard a din and the sound of crying and wailing. We