"Zahiya" shut the door of the house violently behind her and wiped away tears that hid the road from her sight. She tried to fix her thoughts on the material of the new lesson
she was to explain to her pupils, but her thoughts rebelled stubbornly and leapt back to the house, where the cruelty of life knotted thick clouds of the smoke of pain, choking the soul and burning the eyes!
Why had the years of happiness she had enjoyed as a child and a young girl with her mother and her sister fled suddenly, at one small stroke from the hand of fate? Why had that ill-omened night bared its fangs — the night that beloved sister fell from the stairs and the earth received her on its hard breast, a shattered body? Why had fate not stepped in to mend what it had spoiled, working unseen with the surgeon's scalpel to restore to Malak the blessing of walking and jumping and playing? And why was it not content even with that, but exchanged one soul for another and one person for another? It took the tormented young woman of today — she is "Malak," the laughing, playful child of yesterday — carrying the misery of the days on her two palms, climbing the stairway of life under a heavy load of bitterness and deprivation. Where had that clear look gone from the drowsy eyes? Had it dried up with the tears and settled upon the surface of the eye, a fixed and bitter shadow? Yes — for ever since Malak came back from the hospital and settled in the house in a wheeled chair, she has very often spoken the language of silence. The mother and the sister tried to bring consolation to her soul and to divert her with all the effort and patience their two souls contained; Zahiya sacrificed her days to fill for her sister the emptiness of a bewildered, drifting life that was neither life nor death. But after two years had passed, she came to know that what she had done for her sister's sake had been a medicine that spilled and was lost, watering the ground instead of healing a parched soul wrung dry by the hand that bore it. Then she came back to herself and remembered that she had a life of her own that demanded solace and release, and she turned the rudder of her activity toward the teaching profession she loved — having found it futile to summon even one passing smile to the lips of "Malak," who had raised between herself and her sister and mother an impregnable barrier of coldness and withdrawal. With the days her rancorous, envious glances at her sister grew longer, and her treatment of her took on the image of harshness and coarseness; "Zahiya" met all this with silent, sorrowful looks and with words of tenderness and care that only increased the crippled girl's resentment and hatred. The atmosphere of the house became an unbearable hell, forever charged with dry, bitter exchanges!...
Her thoughts having carried her that far, she arrived at the school street and stopped, waiting for a speeding car to pass so that she might cross — when suddenly a small child, not past his second year, came running by, trying to cross the road. She cried
out, calling to him as she ran after him, and caught him just in time, before the car could catch hold of the edges of his life; she carried him back to the sidewalk, trying to soften his crying. Sensing someone drawing near, she turned quickly and saw a handsome young man, violent agitation showing on the features of his face, running toward them. She said to him quickly, smiling:
"Don't be afraid — he is quite all right."
"I nearly went mad with terror, seeing him about to be run down. How can I express to you, Miss, the depth of my gratitude for this kindness of yours?"
His words shook her heart! The child was his son, no doubt — the piece of his very heart. She bowed her head and answered:
"Could anyone stand with folded arms before a scene like that? I am happy that I was able to return your boy to you."
For some hidden reason her heart wished he would say that the child was not his son but his sister's boy, or the neighbors' — but he answered, smiling:
Yes, he is my son, and all that I possess... Then he went on: "Our car is close by, and I should be glad if you would allow me to take you wherever you are going." She shook her head, trying to take a picture of the face that would vanish from her life as quickly as it had appeared:
"Thank you — I am going to the school, and it is on this street. Good day to you, and may God keep your only child for you."
*
She did not know why, in the classroom, she could not fix her mind on the new lesson once more. Her thoughts leapt back to the sidewalk where she had left the father and his son. And what of his wife? Was she beautiful? Was she happy? She was ashamed of herself and of the strangeness of these questions. When she came out of the school in the afternoon and found him in the car waiting for her, she could do nothing but accept his invitation to drive her home. A long conversation passed between them, from which she learned that he had lost his wife, who had died after giving birth to the child; that he lived with his mother and the boy, and worked as manager of a commercial house. Zahiya in her turn told him of her work at the school and of her mother and her sister — at which she bent her head slowly and closed her lips upon a stubborn silence.