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, protest
ing: 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?
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