I, my friend, am the captive of a spell that has taken hold of me and possessed me until I can no longer free myself from it. I am driven in everything I do — I say it contented and at ease; and it makes no difference to me whether it was amulets and charms that bewitched me, as you and my mother believe, or whether it was nobility, perfect womanhood, and goodness of character that bewitched me, as I believe. What matters is that I am happy in this spell and jealous of it. Why deny it, my friend, when I have always known you frank and brave? I am certain it was my mother who sent you to me, in the hope that you might succeed in persuading me where she had failed. Come then, let me tell you my story, and afterward judge between us as you please.
My mother would always seize on my wife's absence to say to me:
My heart, my son, burns with sorrow for you whenever I see you, in the prime of your youth, beside your aging wife who bears no children. Sometimes I would dodge this talk, and sometimes I would beg her to leave me be, for I was happy with the one I had chosen for myself and accepted. But I will not hide from you that a few months ago I began to listen to my mother's talk, and her words began to sink into the depths of my soul. Among the things she would say:
How can you bear it, my son, to be granted no children, when ten years have passed since your marriage? By God, I do not know how happiness finds its way into a house empty of children, who scatter the tedium and
boredom that overtake a married couple from time to time.
What my mother says is true. Boredom had begun to creep in between me and my wife: when we spent an evening at home, the long hours would pass without our exchanging a single word — I reading, she knitting; one of us might yawn and the other answer with a longer yawn. Is not such
A woman of letters who has distinguished herself in the writing of the short story, and who won for it the third prize from the broadcasting station in London.
She has broadcast and published dozens of stories on the Near East station and the Syrian station, and the magazine al-Risala and many others have published her literary pieces.
She holds herself above cheap literature, and her stories bear a lofty, idealistic stamp.
She is working to publish her collected stories in a book, and here she presents her splendid story: "The Blue Curtains."
stagnation a frightful thing in the life of a young couple? I used to bear it contentedly in the past, but I had come to find it unbearable. So then — I want children. And why should I not dare to settle this matter? Am I the only man who will sacrifice his wife for the sake of children? Hundreds and thousands of men sacrificed their wives before me, and they had their acceptable excuse. But I do not wish, my friend, to go on deceiving you as I deceived myself in the past. Behind everything I have told you there was a bewitching young woman to whom my heart had
attached itself. The children and the boredom I told you about were nothing but excuses I invented before my own conscience, so as to be rid of my poor wife and win the one who had not yet passed her twentieth spring. And I thank God I did not succeed in what I aimed at — see to what lengths self-deception can sometimes go.
The young woman was a neighbor of my mother's, and I would find her there whenever I came to visit, as if she and I had an appointment. My visits to my mother multiplied: I used to visit her once a week, and soon I was visiting her every day; and the cunning girl wove her nets about me, until, once sure of her prey, she began to dictate her conditions. She would not accept me as a husband unless I divorced my wife and wrote her a bond for a thousand gold liras, payable to her the day I took my wife back, and unless I presented her on our wedding day with a diamond ring weighing no less than ten carats. I accepted it all. But the knot of knots was how to broach the matter to my wife — gentle and at peace in her home, striving for my happiness and caring for me as if I were her pampered child. It occurred to me to stir up a quarrel between us that would end in separation, but I did not succeed. How can you scowl at one who smiles at you? How pick a quarrel with one who keeps peace with you and bears your harshness with an open heart and a wondrous patience? A terrible oppression seized me that all but killed me. I was perplexed, dazed, agitated, not knowing what to do. I had bought the ring and written the bond, and nothing remained but to divorce her and contract marriage with the one my heart yearned for. Then I hit upon a way that pleased me. I would tell my wife I was traveling — it was my habit to travel from time to time on account of my trade — and ask her to go to her family during my absence, which this time would last longer than usual. Then I would write her a letter confessing everything, and what was between us would end on the easiest of pretexts. What a