He is in a place surrounded on every side by closed doors, and these doors have big, shiny knobs. Salim approached one of these doors and turned the shiny knob to open it, but the door did not open; so he left it and approached another door and tried to open it, but it too was locked. Then anxiety began to creep into him, and he hurried, agitated, to a third door and tried in vain to open it; and he did the same with the fourth, anxiety and fear overwhelming him, and he began running, panting, from one door to another... finding all the doors locked, none of them opening, while the terror in his breast all but choked him...

— May you bury me, mama — Salim, get up! What's the matter with you? — Nothing; a bad dream. The quilt came over my face and made it hard for me to breathe. Go back to your bed.

Salim felt no inclination to sleep again after he had reassured his mother and she had returned to her sleep; and he was ashamed before himself of the panic that had come over him, even if only in a dream.

Strange, this dream — how simple its interpretation! Here he is, two years without work, ever since the glass factory closed — the one founded in the days of the war, which flourished for a time. But some while after the war ended, shipments of glass poured in from Europe and America, flooded the market, and were sold at the cheapest prices; the result was that the owner of the factory went bankrupt and was forced to close it down. So Salim found himself out of work along with a number of his comrades, and they went

about asking how and why the factory had failed, and why we were deprived of work, and how they could allow foreign goods to threaten us with hunger. After that Salim kept knocking on the doors of livelihood, one after another, and finding them all locked in his face. Tomorrow afternoon they will give him an answer as to whether there is work for him at a sewing factory — and this is his last hope. Will the answer be no, as in the dream?

What is to be done if they answer no? He is the head of a family; his father died in the first year of the war, and he was forced to leave school early, despite his wish to go on studying... Salim's thoughts go back to his school days: how he had longed then to learn chemistry and its wondrous secrets! But when his father died and left them nothing to live on, they found him work in the glass factory, and his sister Farida learned sewing. His pay at the factory and what his sister earned barely sufficed to keep them. Now two years have passed since he left work, and they all live off Farida's needle a life of want; she is paid low wages, for seamstresses are many and the competition is fierce; and then their wretched house, with its entrance among narrow, filthy alleys, is enough to drive the customers away.

As for his little sister Asma, she goes to a half-free school, for they refused to teach her free of charge because her sister Farida practices sewing. And his poor mother is sick and feeble in strength; she has grown old before her time, and her health worsens year by year. When they sent Asma to the pharmacy to fetch her medicine, the pharmacist refused to give her

anything because of the length of the account of debts against them — and all of it with coldness. Salim's nerves grew taut at these painful memories.

But the pharmacist is in the right; they must pay him — and the butcher too, another bill. Poor Farida spends day and night bent over the sewing machine or over cloth she is stitching, while he has done nothing for more than two years! But he hopes that tomorrow they will take him on at the sewing factory; they made him fair promises last time.

*

Salim came back in the evening from the sewing factory and entered the family room with a scowling face; he pulled off his jacket and flung it onto a broken chair unfit for sitting. His mother noticed his anger and did not speak to him, contenting herself with taking the jacket and hang-ing it up. His sister Farida was stitching at the machine, and his little sister Asma was arranging her books in her satchel; she said, addressing her mother:

The New Chen Yu

CHEN YU

• It keeps its quality for a long time

• It dries quickly

• Its colors are magically attractive

• Its new brush makes it easy to use

For the fingertips and for the lips