Pictures and Memories

In that last week of the year I was worn out with sewing, like all the women who work in the schools and set apart the Christmas and Easter holidays for turning garments and changing their fashion: this one to be shortened, that one lengthened, that other turned from a loose "formal" robe into a dress to be worn at any hour — and so on...

And for the first time I ventured upon the color red — what a calamity! Fair-haired, and wearing red! — so I bought a piece of rose-colored velvet and cut it out as a wrap to warm me when I rise from sleep and to slip into for ease when I come back from work.

The day was one of the harshest days of deep winter, a day of lightning and thunder, and the cold came in waves upon waves, rapping on the panes, which were coated on the inside with a film of vapor that then gathered into little heaps melting away in minutes; then the waters poured down and came in under the balcony doors and through the cracks of the windows. And while I stood before the mirror, the seamstress unpicking here and setting a pin there, my daughter's cry rose in the house:

Mama! Oh Mama! Come — our neighbor Almas is dying!

I hurried, and saw the neighbor's sister, her dress soaked through to her skin, weeping and begging for help: her sister had fainted after a night of fever, and there was not an uqiyya of coal in the house to heat a cup of water.

My little girl said:
— Don't be afraid of the rain — take my raincoat. God keep you, Mama.

And she hastened to make ready what warm laban and other things were at hand; so I took off the pieces of the unstitched red garment and put on my school dress, and she brought me her little raincoat and laid it over my head and shoulders and handed me the tray, and I hurried off with it down the slope to the neighbor's house, her voice answering the seamstress's:

— Slowly, Mama, slowly.

The whole house was something like a small room without a window; the landlord who owned the "hara" had been accustomed to store the winter's fuel in it. Then the poor neighbor came with her five children and asked to rent it, and our friend agreed, moved out the coal and the firewood, and moved in the children.

The dark, sallow woman lay stretched on a mattress laid on the floor, reaching from the south wall to within one arm's length of the door... The mattress was pressed against the east wall, and against the west wall I saw an old cupboard, one meter high, with a pair of chairs set on top of it. And in the corner, a meter from the cupboard, was the drainpipe of the water closet of the upper floors; it had cracked, and filthy black water seeped from it, dripping into a tin can set under the pipe!

The woman, cold as ice, was shivering under a thin coverlet that did not hide the bones of her shoulders and hips, and her teeth were chattering with a nervous motion. I gave her cognac to drink, and a cup of laban, and she murmured between her lips: "God preserve your daughter. Sister, feed the children — they went to sleep without supper."

The children? Two of them sat on her mattress toward her feet by the wall, a little one beside her, and two on the floor between the cupboard and the mattress.

She rested a little, and warmth crept into her body, and she said:
— The day before yesterday I did washing at So-and-so's house and came back feverish; I slept the whole of yesterday, and this morning the neighbors' pipe cracked, so I set the can under it to protect the bedding and the children; and the foul smells rose, so I opened the door, and the rainwater came in on us — ah! ah! I don't know what happened, how I went mad and screamed and wept and blasphemed against my Creator, and said: I am a sinner, O Lord! But these — what is their sin?

At that minute there came in upon us a neighbor, noble of stock and of heart and of hands. She said:

I saw you from behind the windowpane hurrying down the slope, and I came to help Almas with whatever I can.

And what she could do was food and clothing and a promise of help that lasted a long while.

★

After this Almas told us her story:

Until the birth of my fifth child I was living in perfect comfort; my husband worked, our house was full, our clothes were clean. And every feast I bought my children new clothes — until there came to live near our house a woman called "Yusufiyya," and I do not know what she did to my husband... And one day she moved and settled in the suburbs, and he followed her and left us. Months passed and we did not pay the rent of the house, and I was forced to live in this cellar.

Her children were listening to her and hanging their own glosses on her tale, speaking of their father's moral crime with a matter-of-factness that made my soul shudder. They said, one after the other:
— And may you bury that "Yusufiyya" — if at least she were beautiful!
— He leaves my mother "for an old woman"!?
— My mother doesn't dye her hair and doesn't wear a set of false teeth like that...

★

My friend and I joined together to bring relief to this family: a charitable association well known in the country undertook a monthly allowance of flour, and a benevolent priest arranged work for her in one of the schools.

I visited her one evening and saw on her arm a baby girl no more than eight days old.
— What is this, Almas?
— This is a "foundling." I have undertaken to the nun to care for her in return for a monthly wage, and the convent has given me these tins of milk, and the feeding-bottle, and everything I need to keep her warm.
The child was a marvel of loveliness! Radiance and fineness of form, a neck and lines and limbs like a drawing of a Cupid in the museums, and hair and skin as the poet said:
............ like gold dust strewn upon a mantle!
And I loved this white baby whom riotous love had cast at the nuns' door, and I would take her to my house on some evenings and clean her and dip her in lukewarm water. And often my charitable neighbor and I would look with dread toward the future of this bewitching beauty and wish she might die a child and be at rest.

The death of children was only natural in such a cellar and such misery; the poor little one sickened and died, and Almas carried her on her arms to the burial ground, after wrapping her in an old blanket, and handed her over to the gravedigger, who was used to the burying of foundlings in this fashion. No coffin, and none to mourn...

And the husband persisted in his straying. I went down once to visit Almas and saw him seated on a chair, dressed in a suit of gray broadcloth and a silk shirt as fine as shirts are made, with a necktie of red silk and red socks and gleaming shoes — I had every right to recoil from the sight of this human beast, and before long I rose to go; the children followed me and clung to me, and when I was outside the room they whispered as grown-ups whisper:
— God keep you, Sitt Salma — speak to him, so he'll leave Yusufiyya and come back home!

And the days passed, and the picture of this black misery changed. Almas worked hard and faithfully for the sake of her children, and managed to rent a spacious room with two windows. But has patience no limits? Have not women too — as Dr. Georges Hanna says — bodies and souls?
And so, I met her one day in the street. Her clothes were still the clothes of want and suffering; but her face — I almost did not know it. She had plucked her eyebrows and set in their place a line of harsh black paint, and daubed her face with white and glaring crimson pigments, so that her deep brown skin showed the color of violets. She greeted me with warm eagerness, and when she saw my dismay — when she saw my staring at her strange face — she said:
— May God cut short the life of the man who made me wretched!!