The Week of Sorrows

... Yesterday death was a heavy guest in our land; it came down among us with iron and lead, striking down and striking down, and no hand was turned against it, and no vein trembled before it..!

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Death was harsh and bitter: it had no pity on a homeland, and no pity on a wife and children — as if death had blood-scores to settle among us...

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It was a week of sorrows... Some of us cried out, and their grievous cry tore them apart; and some kept silent — neither crying out nor complaining, but moaning on in their pain...

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It was a week of sorrows and bitternesses, in which death hovered on its two black wings over the houses and the dwellings, the balconies and the lights — over the small houses and the high palaces...

Into every dwelling death entered, carrying terror and dread with it...

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It was a week of sorrows... in which death folded away whom it folded away, in a storm that wrapped up history with a swift, thunderous wrapping... and left blood in the square, and a history of blood...

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The gate of blood is the widest of the gates of immortality...

And whoever dies in the storm, history writes him down a storm.