Story of the Month

On the occasion of Venezuela's celebration this month of the traditional feast of Carnival (al-Barara), Mrs. Noura Nowayhed Halawani presents to the readers, men and women, of “The Woman's Voice” this true story, in which she describes the life of the Latin people as she saw it and lived it — with its calm and its clamor, its love and its hate, its shallowness and its depth.

It is a captivating life, full of contradictions, but its gaiety and its radiance prevail over its gloom and its repression.

“Patience, patience, for heaven's sake! I cannot bear to hear these merry, laughing songs of yours; I am not happy like you, you who are drunk on the wine of dance and song. Pass by quickly, for Death may pass along this very road in a little while, to knock on this old door which your loud songs are rattling, and whose handle is melted by the fever of your mirth that infects each of you from the other. O Lord, forgive them, for they know not! And you, mother, forgive me that I cannot silence them; they are like the raging, clamorous waves in the face of a poor drowning man.”

Fernando clenched his small fist in fury and pain, and made no effort to wipe away the tears that followed one another down his face; his hands still carried the smell of shoe polish, the smell of the work by which he fed himself, and his handkerchiefs were stained with tears and sweat — tears from his red, weeping eyes, and sweat from his mother's brow, seared with fever! He turned from the window, covering his ears with his hands to shut out the echo of the songs that dripped joy and merriment, and murmured as he knelt by his mother's bed: “Mama, does the people's clamor disturb you? It is the Carnival — it has played with these people's minds and taken hold of their feelings, until every one of them has become a carnival in himself.” The ghost of a faint smile showed on his mother's lips, and she answered: “No, my child, they do not disturb me. The

Carnival is a healing remedy for every sufferer, and it is my faithful friend: it was the first to congratulate me, looking in upon me at your happy birth, and it stayed with me three whole days, whispering into my ear and into your two little jutting ears its softest melodies and its tenderest songs; and now it is trying to wipe away your pain with its own true hands.” Adelsia gasped, then wept; and Fernando burst into sobs and cried out in anguish: “Mother, don't cry — I am with you, and I will not leave you alone!”

The street fell quiet, but for the echoes of the departing procession's clamor. The mother fixed her gaze on her only son's face and said: “Fernando, there is something I must tell you, even if the words come out with my last breath. You never knew your father, and he never knew you. I lost him through my own folly, and so I cost you your father's love and his care.”

— But I love you very, very much, mother, and I do not want to know my father.

— Patience, patience, my child, and let me tell what I want to tell. I was in the first months of carrying you when I woke one day and found the house empty of your father. My waiting for his return grew long, and my hope of his coming back grew short. The days of my misery dragged on while I worked to earn my bread, and toiled to put something by to help me raise you — once I had become certain that your father had not strayed from the familiar pattern, but had passed into the arms of another woman who had drawn him with her freshness and her coquetry! Whenever I thought of this, I felt the flame of jealousy breeding in me strength upon strength and endurance upon endurance, and a strange new love growing in my soul: the love of revenge, of returning the stab to the one who dealt it. But when I took you in my arms for the first time — exactly fourteen years ago — I felt your pure love weaving about my hardened heart a fine, soft veil that bound up my pains and buried them in a deep, dark corner of my heart, heaping over them