How they described her, how they painted her, before I ever knew her..!
They said: “She is a girl whose mind has been felled by adornment. All day long she is absorbed in what she will wear tomorrow; at any given moment she is thinking of the latest fashions, which she would bring from the very heart of the European countries if she could. She is, besides, strange in her ways, repelling whoever tries to endear himself to her; harsh in her speech, wounding in her sarcasm. Nor can she abide any place unless it rings with the clamorous music of the age, and she will converse only with those whose tongues have been twisted by some foreign jabber, French or English... And she, and she...” — until I met her and came to know her:
There was nothing in her appearance to tell of the love of simplicity that shone pure within her soul. The locks of her hair were pinned up in an obviously artificial wave, while her eyebrows rose in an arched line that ran on until it met her hair; the tops of her cheeks were tinted with heavy red, and then she would color her lips in a way that strayed a little beyond them
here and a great deal beyond them there..!
But I saw her with my own eyes — she whom they had branded with impiety — spending her evenings on the college's wide balcony that looks out on sea and mountains together, reading in a low voice from a book with an elegant cover. At first I could not make it out; but the tears she shed, and the dignity and solemnity she showed, drove me to follow her from my window until I caught the name of the book — and behold, it was “The Holy Quran” in its English translation.
And she — whom they had branded as fierce — was always eager for the coming of a small child who visited her on certain days, barefoot and thin of body, wearing a worn-out woolen garment. She would fill his pockets with coins and sweets and give him clothes, patting his small shoulder, until he went back with tenderness having kindled his pale cheeks.
And she — whom they had branded with sarcasm — would take stands of true nobility whenever she heard one of the girls make a sly dig at another girl or run her down; she would confront her with the eloquence of her own sarcasm, defending the absent, maligned girl in an
honest tone that held as much deliberation as it held truth and devotion.
She felt that she lived in a world that shied far away from her own dreaming, gentle world; for she was steeped in the tranquillity of faith, drawn to the wide, noble world of love. But the mockery of those around her, and the insolent sarcasm of those she knew, could never turn her from that deep love of goodness which she forever spread among all she knew, and toward all she heard of.
Woe, then, to those souls whom our judgments scorch with fire and our folly sears with sparks, yet who turn and breathe upon us, out of their affection and their kindness, what storms the conscience and the spirit alike.
And woe to those souls: in the slaughterhouse of our errors and our injustice we deal them poison and bitterness, reckoning these our means of weakening them and our way of striking at them — and lo, before our very eyes they go forth into the fields of their being, wrapped in resplendent light and radiant strength, overflowing with mercy toward us and great compassion for us...
O the bliss of those souls — their bliss!
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“The Sorrowful Sisters” and Other Stories (Book Advertisement)
“The Sorrowful Sisters”
and Other Stories
Najati Sidqi
Published by Dar al-Ma'arif of Egypt
On sale at all bookshops