Talk of the Heart — Pictures from My Childhood

... Do you remember, when the almond trees in 'Jalalina' were white, beguiling brides, how you would race your companions climbing the trees, to pick out the loveliest blossom and pin it at the parting of my hair, claiming that it looked more splendid there?

Do you remember the day you set your legs flying after a butterfly whose color had caught my fancy, to bring it to me fluttering and faint? Was not that venture of yours a kind of manliness that pleased my womanhood?!.. And your heart brimmed with a distant, rosy dream... But your road in life did not lie along mine!

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... And the day we took the shade of the sprawling carob tree, heedless of the blaze of noon, reading verses of lyric poetry whose meanings, for the most part, escaped our understanding — when suddenly your tousled head brushed one of the rebellious locks of my hair... Do you remember how I broke off reading, and, for some obscure reason I did not grasp, left you alone and downcast, and ran off to my mother to take shelter in her bosom... From what was I fleeing? And why did I not come back to you?... And long you waited under the carob tree, perplexed, absent of mind, working at a tune you had never mastered, and coaxing your rosy dream... But your road in life did not lie along mine!...

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... And the day I took from you my first lesson in hunting — and how skilled you were at hunting! all the sparrows of our village used to flee before your little gun!! — do you remember how you stood behind me, helping me a little, pointing with a sweet whisper to the hiding place of a sparrow that had turned its breast to us in careless unconcern?!.. Why did my shoulders tremble at your grip, and at the heat of your breath on my neck?!.. Was that the doing of the sparrow, which started at the sound of the shot and flapped, then flew off complaining?!

... And our eyes met in a loud laugh, and perhaps it was that laugh of ours that saved the situation... And after that, when our outings at dawn to hunt the mountain sparrows grew many, I began to avoid leaning on your arm, and taking the help of your strong grip in climbing the rocks and leaping over the billan thorns — as if something in me were opening, as if something in my depths had awakened!!

And not once did you confess to me what clamored in your depths... And by my instinct I divined that a day would come when no night would part us. But the days that followed mocked you and me, and our rosy dream was fated to be smothered in its cradle...

Because your road in life did not lie along mine!

Aphrodite
August 22, 1952