— “Won't you sleep a little and rest?”
She shook her head slowly, absently; she knew no difference between light and darkness, and it was all one to her whether the birds sang or fell silent, whether the sun rose or sank!
Her husband bent down until his eyes were level with hers, took her head between his hands, and said: “Set your tears free — perhaps they will set your pain free!”...
She said, agitated: “If only I could, Rashid, and so relieve my soul of its slow strangling! And you, my dear — you have work waiting for you in the morning.”..
When she heard the sound of the bedroom door closing, she sighed sorrowfully, rose, and sat down by the window, staring into the darkness. Her tired eyes could not make out the white stone or the sleeping flowers that colored it, so she closed them and waited!..
At last the white phantom appeared to her and began to flutter over the garden beds and draw near the window, walking, flying, trying to cross to the inside, crying out for help: “To me, Mama — my throat hurts and I am almost choking!”
She struck her arms into the empty air, then fell back panting and trembling. The voice had been stifled, the phantom had vanished, and the fearful stillness came back to fetter her breath. She whispered in a shaking voice:
“When will you be able to come in and cross the window? When will you come back to my arms,
Khulud? They are nothing without you, and my lap is empty!”
The mocking silence that followed her words appalled her, and she cried out, trembling: “O Lord, when will You call me to Your side? The one I love is with You — so take me to the one I love.”..
Before she knew it, her husband was standing with her, shaking her hard and asking: “Whom are you addressing, Najwa? Are you talking to the night, or to the silence?”
She raised to him a look worn thin by pain, and found no answer....
He spoke again, in a gentler voice:
“Najwa, talk to me — I am your husband, who breathes by your love and lives by it.” She felt her throat and said in despair: “What use is talking with you? You have forgotten her; you no longer remember her, and you will not let me speak of her.”
He wrapped his arms around her and said, his eyes glistening with tears:
“How could I forget Khulud, Najwa? I hear her voice in every movement, as though it had made of the horizon of my hearing a dwelling and a refuge; I see her phantom in every scene, as though it had chosen the reach of my sight for its sanctuary and its shrine..... But I have not forgotten you, Najwa; I have not forgotten that your presence has become my greatest consolation for her loss, and that your life has become dearer than everything of price!
She took refuge against his chest, weeping over it a weeping unlike all weeping — dry and burning!..
“I want her to come back to me, Rashid. My breast is frightened and terrified, craving the warmth of her little body; my heart weeps the pain of a dreadful emptiness whose cruelty none knows but bereaved motherhood! God blessed me and gave, after long barrenness and deprivation; He gave my soul the holy water to drink, and it grew drunk and elated! That water has broken off and run dry, Rashid, and I feel a thirst more deadly and deeper in its horror! Do you remember how joy carried you away the day you saw her when she was an hour old, and you set about kissing me, dancing and gleeful, your kisses falling one after another on my hair and my eyes and my cheeks?
“Do you remember how you gazed at our angel a moment and cried: We shall name her Khulud, Najwa, for she is immortality for us! And what do you suppose I gave her to drink with her milk, and fed her with her food? I gave her the blood of my heart to drink with every embrace and kiss, and I filled her with the juice of my spirit with every look and glance......
“Do you remember how I screamed at the doctor like a madwoman the day she once fell ill, and demanded that he do the impossible to cure her, as though he were God who grants and gives? He fixed me with a hard look and said: I am a human being like you, and I will do what lies in human power!... She recovered that time, and my heart went back appeased into my ribs; but today it spins between my sides, wild and terrified, seeking the one who lived in it and found rest there ... Would that deafness might stop my ears against her voice crying out for help ... And tell me, in God's name, how am I to forget the picture of her face