Suad

She is a strange little girl in her first school year.

In her speech there is a boldness which, were it not for her self-confidence, you would take for defiance. And in her stance, as she answers one of your questions, there is the loftiness of one who has attained such command of logic as entitles her to give you a sound answer with no twisting or turning about... It is all the same to her whether you are convinced or not: she has stated to you what had to be stated, and if you argue with her, all she need do is repeat to you what she said, with composed insistence.

I knew nothing about her except that she was intelligent, and that her rich personality had begun to peer out from behind her movements and her words. And except... that she dawdled in bringing the school supplies she needed, so much so that at times she all but forced me to use severity with her, lest a lesson be lost to her or something new in it escape her.

Once I said to her, warning and threatening: if you do not come tomorrow with a copybook for dictation, I shall mark a zero in it for you and put you out of the class for the whole of the dictation period.

She said, without stammering: But what am I to do if my father does not give me its price? I said: Then let him give it to you... She said, her eyes flashing with a strange light: He does not have its price! With the price of the copybook he buys us a kilo of black bread.

And I saw a pupil beside her raise her hand, asking leave to say:

But every day she comes with her pocket money — she does not miss a single day.

The other cut her short, protesting: That is not my pocket money. I said: Then what is it, Suad? She said —

lifting her head high, as though glorying over the telltale in the truth of what she was saying — It is the five piasters that are the price of my breakfast every morning!

I said: And do five piasters suffice you for breakfast? She said: Yes indeed; with them I buy a large bun.

And I felt a tear glistening in my eye despite myself, so I fought it down before the pupils — or, more truly, before myself — so as not to be weaker than this child to whom life had grown submissive, the submission of the obedient, while she paid it no heed, whether it made peace with her or not.

I began looking at the pale face and the deep eyes, the wasted frame — at the firm features, the calm glances, the upright body; I looked at all this, wondering how this spirit had contrived to surge behind that emaciated husk.

In what atmosphere, I wonder, does this little girl live? What events surround her life, that she has been stamped with these strange imprints?

Is it want that has bequeathed her truthfulness, confidence, and poise? Or is it intelligence that has triumphed over

grave calamities and stood before them calm and unshaken, untouched by the stupor of misery, beyond the reach of material collapse?

Or is it those nerves which God grants to certain people, as though forged of steel or of something harder still?

I do not know — only that I admired her with an admiration whose effect showed in me, until I found myself one day following her trail. I happened to be passing through one of the poor alleys when I saw her stop a shabbily dressed man of middle age, pushing before him a cart carrying some lupine beans; then she whispered a word to him. Her eye fell on me, and she was not abashed; rather she drew her small frame up to its full height to tell me: This is Papa.

And I found myself moved to greet him and to tell him that his daughter was one of the gifted; but he paid no heed to what I was saying, for his whole concern was bent on making me understand that he supported a wife and seven children, and that what the schools demanded of his children loaded him with more than he could bear...

I searched in him for his daughter's personality and found no trace of it — except in that frankness with which he met me. And I saw in the furrows of his face something of a justified resignation: it was neither despair, nor revolt, nor contentment with anything.

But before I bade him farewell and went my way, I saw a woman slight of body and comely of feature, closer to a playful girl than to a woman with husband and children. No sooner had she come between us, and the lupine vendor introduced her to me, than she began beaming and smiling at me, pressing me with entreaties to go with her to her house close by and rest a little.

She was Suad's mother — her mother, in flesh and blood; but she was never her mother in her independent personality or in her noble qualities. She kept pressing one hand in the other as she spoke — and on her parted smiling teeth poverty hovered menacing, then slept and vanished. Yet I noticed in her one thing only: that self-confidence, that faith in what she wants and does...

What, I wonder, will become of this girl if she has the chance to continue her studies — having understood more than a girl of her year understands, and grasped more than a daughter of the alleys grasps — if this intelligence ripens in her, and this captivating pride keeps pace with her: pride in those values of the soul of which she now knows only that she will not swerve from them a finger's breadth?