Story of the Month: She Missed the Train

It is the first page of the book of life, a green page on whose margins danced splendid hopes and sweet, laughing dreams.

Two small children, Ayda and Sameh; she is ten and he is eight, and both gaze smiling upon life and come to it merry and hopeful.

On the page follow sweet pictures from the memories of their childhood — a playful, merry childhood, enjoying an abundance of the father's tenderness without the affection of the mother, who had died.

A picture of her on a swing, the two little heads drawn close together as they went swinging along, and the father's heart swinging with them.

And a picture of the two of them awaiting the train's return, as was their custom at every sunset, until, when they heard its whistle rending the silence of the sky, the two little hearts leapt with delight at the coming of their father — the stationmaster — in his navy-blue suit with its shining yellow buttons.

And a third picture, perhaps stamped more deeply on Ayda's mind than any other:

The two little ones bent over their desk, their father before them directing, watching, and teaching, until, when they had finished with it all and each went stuffing his copybooks into his small leather satchel in readiness for the morrow, the father gazed at her a long while and then asked his customary question:

— What will Ayda be when she grows up?

Ayda has no need to think long about the matter, no need to strike the flint of thought — what could she wish to be more than a teacher? A teacher who commands and forbids and tyrannizes over the copybooks with her red pen?

The father listens, laughing, and asks:

— And Sameh — what does he say?

Sameh toys with the locks of his glossy black hair, and there leaps into his imagination the picture of their neighbor 'the doctor'... his leather bag in his right hand, gold-rimmed spectacles on his eyes... How he wishes he had a wondrous stethoscope like the one the doctor carries in his bag, and those dignified spectacles... Sameh parts his lips and says in his anxious, quavering voice:

— I shall be a doctor...

The father rubs his hands with satisfaction and says: Well and good, children... a teacher and a doctor — and who on the face of the wide earth is like me!...

Then a tear of joy springs from his eye, and he looks tenderly at his two children, secretly praying God to lengthen his days so that he might see how the days would make of Ayda a schoolmistress and of Sameh a doctor.

On the page there is a fourth picture, and a fifth, and a sixth, in which a new face has its share: Mukhtar, the aunt's son, training the two little ones to climb the oak tree, to chase the colored butterflies, and to build lofty castles out of heaps of sand and stones. Mukhtar, and Ayda, and Sameh... a trinity of merriment, freedom, and mischief!

The happy trinity grows up, and the wheel of the days hurries them along, to halt with them one day — and behold, Ayda is a young woman whose twenty years brim with dreams, setting off toward the school, this time a teacher and not a pupil; a sedate young woman, not a playful child; charming and enchanting, with love and youth and the longed-for hope glowing in her features...

Then one glance at her right hand, and you glimpse a radiant ring — from Mukhtar, the aunt's son, pledge of the sacred bond!

Mukhtar — companion of childhood, intimate of youth, and partner of a lifetime; and on Ayda's lip there forms a smile brimming with the warmth of memory, before she opens the next page of the book of life...

— 2 —

Mukhtar and Ayda — the eye cannot mistake them, though it may not know the gloom drawn across the two brows and the sorrow swimming in the eyes.

Ayda has begun to waver between obedience and rebellion, as she pulls off the engagement ring to offer it to Mukhtar, a sharp constriction in her heart and hot tears in her eyes.

Mukhtar seizes both her hands, begging and imploring:

— Won't you think the matter over well, Ayda?

Ayda shakes her beautiful head and says:

— How long I have thought!

— And the result?

— What must be, must be!

— And I, Ayda — am I nothing worth mentioning to you?

— Forgive me, Mukhtar; I do not like to hear this from you, you who of all people best know the truth of my feelings. I had hoped you would play the encourager's part.

— No, I am no encourager of yours; I refuse to let you be the victim.

— But in sacrifice there is a delight — to feel that you have shared with others and given for their sake.

— I see you have become a philosopher.

— And why not, so long as I draw from this philosophy a consolation that lifts me toward the highest heavens?!

— Another philosophy...!

— Call it what you will, so long as I satisfy my conscience.

— What conscience is this, that condemns two souls to separation and turns them by force from a road along which they had already gone some distance, surrounded by the brides of fresh hopes?

— The end justifies the means.

— What end is this? Be sensible — not all people are doctors.

— Nor are they all as clever as Sameh.

— What an obstinate girl!

— Obstinate? No matter; I feel contentment welling up in my depths.

— Is it contentment at parting from me? Had I known the end would be like this, it would have been easier for us to part at the very start of the road.

— There is nothing to be done; my position that day was not my position today. For now, after death has dealt so cruelly with my father, I must be to Sameh a mother, a father, and a sister...

Mukhtar bows his head and swims in a sea of thought before raising to her two eyes filled with the meekness of surrender, and says:

— Then I shall wait!

Ayda starts and says vehemently: Wait? No... I will not have you wait for a term I cannot tell whether it will prove short for us or long. Go, my dear, go — and do not forget your mother's longing to see you 'a bridegroom...'! Go, released from every pledge and covenant. How many girls there are in God's wide world!

Mukhtar goes, only to return to pleading and refusal and entreaty on occasions to come, while Ayda holds fast to her resolve, her insistence, and her sacrifice.

And Ayda folds over the second page of the book of life, for she has been wearied by the flickerings of light dancing above a candle that burns to shed light in the eyes of others.

— 3 —

Alone, alone; a thirst in her soul and an emptiness in her heart — not regret; no, she is not regretful, and Sameh is climbing the ladder of success two and three and four rungs at a time.

But it happens sometimes that a sad feeling stirs within her. And sad feelings live only in the corners of solitude.

Who could have reckoned that fate would intervene so mightily in her life — turning her from a road strewn with the roses of dreams, in whose skies the doves of hopes hovered in merry flight; afflicting her with this loneliness, sentencing her to this waiting, and confining her to live between home and school a monotonous life which, though duty accepted it, the seething nature of youth refuses her and will not consent to?!

And Mukhtar? Can he have forgotten her? Five years have passed since their engagement was broken; how often he entreated her and tried to turn her from her resolve, yet his entreaty did not prosper, nor did persuasion avail with her!

But why, one wonders, has he not married? Has he — the successful contractor — been kept from the world of feeling by the world of money?

She wonders at his case and is perplexed by his holding back. Can he be waiting?...

She thinks it unlikely, for he no longer visits her save rarely and out of courtesy, on occasions that require his visit — Sameh's presence during a holiday, or the coming of a feast or a season.

How often she sits for hours trying to analyze his position and does not succeed, or keeps swinging between doubt and certainty, waking only to the insistence of the stubborn red pen, calling her to pass with it over the heaps of copybooks...

— 4 —

Good, good! Let Ayda be glad of soul and content of eye and spirit. Tomorrow he returns, and she will rest from a promise that bound her to teaching for years, and be freed of a debt she has paid off in full. Tomorrow he returns, and life will return to the house, and the ringing of laughter will echo through its air.

Where are the father's eyes, to see — and where is he, to pour upon his two children a flood of blessings?...

And Mukhtar, Mukhtar... still free and unattached!... And why should she not be frank with herself and say that her heart still holds much love, and much admiration, and much hope?

Tomorrow, tomorrow... and with these same dreams into the near tomorrow.

And Sameh returned! He returned with gold-rimmed spectacles on his eyes, in his right hand the diploma of medicine — and on his left arm hung a young wife!!

Ayda was thunderstruck, beside herself... A wife — when he himself still needs her care, her help, and her watchfulness... Truly, Sameh, your share of tact is small and meager; such selfishness Ayda never knew of you, and never counted it a trait in you...

Sameh begs pardon at length, explaining the motives of the marriage: he feared that some plucker might reach the charming flower before him, so he hastened to be the first at the plucking!... And he hopes his good sister will see in his wife a new sister who will be a help to her in life.

Never mind, Sameh, never mind: the heart that had room for you will not find its inmost chambers too narrow for your wife...

As for this new intruder, Mona — how like she was to false gold coated with a thin layer of glitter that much rubbing wears away, until the blackness soon shows in its true state, without embroidery or sham... Indeed, scarcely had a few months of her residence in the marital home passed before she began to reproach Sameh with the sister's favor over him and his submission to a female who ruled over his affairs.

Fie upon spite — how it gnaws like the woodworm in the vessel of happiness; and oh, these people — how they measure people only by the measures of material things!...

As for Ayda, she shut her eye and stopped her ear: she neither sees nor hears. What is this interloper to her, busied as she is, away from her, with Mukhtar — who had dazzled her when, after Sameh's homecoming, he came again to frequent them, in the radiance of distinction, charm, and manliness.

As for poor Sameh, his wife's obstinacy cut him to the quick — her insistence in demanding the new: a new dwelling, new dress, new furniture, as though she did not know the condition of a rising doctor and the pocket of a rising doctor... So he forswore beauty and loveliness, and cursed the hour of rashness and haste that had bound him to this creature. And he cursed his hand when he found it powerless to stuff her mouth with what she craved, so as to buy her silence and her satisfaction.

The cup overflowed at last when she announced to him that she would not live beneath one roof that sheltered both her and his sister, and that she would never accept for herself second or third rank in this house. It appalled him that she should slap the hand stretched out to her in love and welcome, and it galled him that she should be so lavish with her taunts; and so he chose divorce — and separation.

And so it was.

But the troubles did not end with her going, nor were they uprooted by her departure; she left behind her a whirlwind... a whirlwind in the depths of Sameh and of Ayda alike.

And oh, the gaping thrust the two of them received in the very core, when Sameh got a letter from Mukhtar saying that Mona had smitten him with love and infatuation, and that he found in himself every inclination to marry her, now that she had become free, bound to no creature by any tie...

He closes his letter with many excuses, poured into a thousand molds and one...

Oh, the horror of what Ayda heard, and oh, her disappointment in Mukhtar — had he fallen into the snares of beauty as the bird falls, he whom she had known to be averse to tinsel and colors, thinking with reason and not with feeling? Had Mona, and not she, been the object of all that attention he had lately shown?

How did she not notice, when she was all eyes and ears?... Truly, how great her blindness was!...

Ah, curse the fates — how harsh and unjust their decrees! Would that he had never wakened in her a hope that had died, or all but died... never courted her again with smiling wishes, never made her covet a place in the processions of happiness...

Mukhtar, Mukhtar! O setting hope, O joy uncompleted, carried off by the raven of ill omen... And Ayda folds the fourth page of the book of life with trembling fingers, and suddenly raises her hands to stop her ears against it, that there may not reach her hearing the whistle bursting from the nearby station, resounding, overwhelming, cruel, as though it insisted on reminding her that the train of life has passed her by... twice...