Remnants of the Chains

She is a friend of mine. Yesterday they seated her upon a dais of roses, surrounded her with a blaze of colored lights, filled her hands with pearls, and heaped upon her neck jewels and gold and diamonds; then they called her: "a bride."

How her mother and her friends showered her with praise; how her father embraced her; and how her dear brother kissed her... Yet she remained in a daze, her lips fettered by a deep silence; the wick of tears was held back in the gentleness of her eyes, and a cast of despair, of suppression, of injustice lay over the beautiful brow.

Do you know what ails her? She did not accept the husband whom her father chose and with whom her mother was content!

For her mother had raged: since when has her daughter a will of her own in the husband chosen for her? How dare she pronounce upon the fate to which she is to pass? Can she proclaim her will — has she the right to say "no," when the family have determined, and resolved, and set their minds?! And how the father's fury flared: what could move his daughter to refuse? Is it her feeling of aversion to the man?

O how near his end would be, O the ruin of his house, O his fall from the eyes of men, and O how long he would linger in their mouths — their tongues chewing him over, their spittle kneading him and kneading him! Has his daughter feelings, then? And from where, pray, did she come by them? Woe to him — how did it escape his notice, he who kept watch over her conduct, who stood vigil over her upbringing?!!

As for her, she rose up against them — and her face was all but slapped. She threatened to take her own life, and they wished her dead before she should become the occasion of talk against them. She begged for mercy, and found none to show her mercy; she was overborne, and she wept — and they pressed on with her by force and by tyranny!

What is left to her, after all this? Is it with this mute bowing of the head, this sorrowful gaze, that she is to greet her wedding night? Was it anything but abject submission before the heaps of money that turned the heads of her people and held their very breath, blinding them to everything else?!!

My grief for her! Would that I knew what played upon her thoughts as she sat among the roses, the tears gathering in shame at the corners of her eyes!

Do I know — was she thinking of rising up one last time, to try in it her fate and her portion? Or had she resolved to sink into her silence for a while, and then, after a while, to run toward she knows not where... making for what she does not know... hastening to what she cannot tell?!!

Or did she perhaps understand that she would submit to her new path, having been made to swallow the first draught of it mixed with aloes and colocynth? Will she linger and wait? For what could she be waiting? For death?!!

Thy mercy, Thy mercy, O my God! She is of the age of the flowers; hers is the beauty of legends; whoever sees her face glorifies the power of Thy fashioning hand. It is a sin that her existence should know the yearning of waiting and a craving for extinction; a sin that her dreams should come and she find them rubble, that she should hasten toward the fancies that so often caressed her, and find them deceit and wreckage!!

She recoils from the man at whose side she is to pass through life! If there is no escape from him, then by Thy right, O my God, fill her heart with love for him; turn her aversion from him into fondness for him; weave in her depths a leaning toward him and an attraction! For the roses about her will wither tomorrow, and all the breath in them will perish; and the lights glittering around her — their radiance will die down, and the reflection in them grow faint!

But she! If the troubled feelings in her breast are not changed, if the mute terrors in her heart are not driven out — then oh, my pain, that there should touch her what touches the lilies and the flowers!

Beirut College for Women