A Storm in a Heart!..

The rain pours down hard, its drops tapping with musical fingers on the windowpanes, and the hands of the winds toy with the pearly beads of water, scattering them here and there. Nature is somber, still, and the dusky clouds cover the face of the sky. Ah, it is the same weather and the same day... This is what was passing through Alya's mind as she pressed her pale face against the cold glass of the window. Memory had worn her down, and she watches the bubbles of water boil up as they strike the roofs of the buildings, the way a great cauldron boils over blazing fires.

It is the same scene. The still, quiet street, and the lofty buildings defying nature's anger and its fury. The cars crawl cautiously through this flood pouring from the sky, as a lost tortoise crawls, worn down by the burning heat, in a vast desert.

Oh, memory — how overwhelming it is! Has a whole year truly passed since that day when the hopes of youth, the joys of girlhood, and the dreams of love were scattered? Did everything go with the going of that day? The pictures of the past, with its events and its happenings, began to pass through Alya's mind and follow one another as a reel follows on the white screen. Here is Ahmad at the beginning of their acquaintance. They were at college together, side by side. He was a lovable, well-mannered young man who would fix long gazes upon her; and when her glances met his he would lower his eyes quickly, and his cheeks would redden. He would answer any request of hers, any sign that came from her; often she would deliberately drop her handkerchief, and he would bend down quickly and present it to her! He would extend the hand of help and aid to her on every occasion. Thus did Ahmad love Alya with a silent, mighty love, and she began to feel this love and to take delight in it. Yet what vexed her in him was that he never gave her the least hint of that love. If such a subject were raised when they were together, he would withdraw quickly or change the subject with tact and courtesy. So the days passed, one after another, her love ever growing; he never confessed to her, never disclosed his hidden secret. Yet in every glance and every gesture there was a whole story of that deep love.

Alya's tears began to pour in torrents as the sky was pouring, and her sobbing rose as she opened the sacred drawer that held her dearest treasures — in it were the memories of her lost love and her lost heart. It is her treasure, which she guards as the miser guards his gold. She opened the drawer with care and caution and began to touch its contents with tenderness and love. Here is Ahmad's handkerchief, with which he bound her hand; and this is the pencil he sharpened for her; and here is a withered rose he gave her. These, and these alone, are all that remained to her of Ahmad. She began kissing these things with eagerness and madness. Suddenly she was startled by a movement outside and hastened to shut the drawer. But it is the clock striking. She listened, counting its strokes: eleven. She breathed a sigh of relief. The hour of her husband's return from work had not yet come — he was accustomed to return at one o'clock sharp. Why, then, all this dread? She could bring these two remaining hours to life with the memory of her first and last love. Yes — what had vexed her in Ahmad was his stubbornness in concealing this love, which she herself had no strength to conceal, and it began to burst out in the form of contempt for Ahmad and attempts to provoke him by every possible means. She began to adorn herself and dress with elegance in the classes of Professor Hamdi, the young man newly returned from Europe and holder of a doctorate in letters. Thus she captured his attention with her overpowering charm and her overflowing femininity; then the attention turned to admiration, and the admiration began, day after day, to take another shape. Often sentimental subjects were raised in class between them — naturally, for instance, the marriage of the Eastern and the Western woman, and the Eastern woman's capacity for love, and whether love is necessary to marriage. The professor took the opinion of some of the students, boys and girls, and then said: 'And we shall hear, finally, the opinion of Miss Alya.' Alya stood up, but she remained silent, looking with wandering eyes at the professor, while she felt that Ahmad's glances were tongues of fire piercing her slender body and burning it. She was melting with passion and blazing with love. If only these wretched creatures would vanish from this room, that she might remain face to face with her beloved! And indeed the professor's image began to dwindle, and Ahmad's image took its place; and she seemed to be addressing him, her face flushed, her breath panting, saying: 'Marriage — and what is marriage? Without love it is a long, exhausting, barren road in a desolate wilderness. Nay, it is a perpetual prison for soul and heart in the hand of a loathsome, hated jailer.

Nay, it is the eternal curse that passes from the two spouses to the children, then to the grandchildren, then to the whole of society. But love — love is the open gardens and the fragrant flowers. The wretched hut is transformed, by the magic of enduring love, into one of the palaces of the Thousand and One Nights. It is the perpetual smile on the lips and the perpetual springtime of love; it is the happiness of life and the secret of existence.'

Nothing woke her from her heedlessness, and from her outpouring description of her hidden love, but the ringing of the bell. She fell silent, became aware of her situation, and hung her head, ashamed of this scandalously expressive outpouring. And she was astonished when, a few days later, she felt that the description of her love, which had found itself an outlet in Professor Hamdi's class, was being twisted away from the truth: the whisperings multiplied around her, and the professor's name flew about her wherever she went. And on a stormy day — as though she and the storms kept an appointed tryst — Ahmad stopped coming to the university, and she began to live in a hell, far from his tender glances. Can the absence of one single person from this clamorous life make it as still as the stillness of graveyards, and alter the features of all created things — so that the flowers no longer breathe fragrance, and nature is no longer laughing and radiant, and the air of the school is no longer steeped in gladness and love, and the moist, refreshing breezes of morning no longer carry that beloved touch? Ah — everything had changed with Ahmad's absence, and she stumbles through life as one walking in darkness stumbles.

Events developed with a speed she had never dreamed of. The professor's glances in class came to rest on no one but her, and he began to invent chances and occasions to stay alone with her, if only for moments. Then one evening, on her return home, she was surprised by her mother, who kissed her and said: Congratulations, my daughter! Today the wealthy notable, the father of Professor Hamdi, came forward to ask your hand for his son. So congratulations on wealth, beauty, and learning! Ah — what is this she hears? What is this overwhelming joy in the house? What are these beaming faces — her mother, her father, the servants, even her little sister? How wretched are the memories of that hour, and how awkward and painful was her position! Looks of rejoicing pressed on her from every side, while she — she, her heart dripping blood — her trembling lips uttered no more than the one word 'Mama,' and she fell down in a faint.

Not much happened after that miserable evening. She tried hard to object; she raged and wept and threatened, but none of it was of any avail. 'Ah, where is the beloved of my heart and soul? What have I to do with the professor's wealth and his learning? I do not love him, I do not care for him, I do not want him' — this is what she kept repeating to herself as she sobbed in her room. She is sick, sick in soul and heart. Day and night, darkness, morning and evening had become all one to her; nay, she resented them all, for they were hurrying her on to her inevitable end. The wedding preparations were in full swing, and the house was like a beehive — the seamstress and the upholsterer and the embroiderer, the relatives and the dear ones — and she was forbidden altogether to go to the university. But what had become of Ahmad? He had disappeared. Why did he not ask after her? Could he be ill? Alas, my soul grieves for him — every drop of his blood yearns toward me. And I love him, I love him. Only three days remained before their wedding. She awoke one morning repeating this sentence: Three days only, and the last ray of hope and the last thread of expectation will be cut off. Thy mercy, O Lord — Thou didst not create me for all this torment! She cast a glance at the window: the waters were falling from the sky like the mouths of waterskins, and the air was dust-laden and dark. She rose from the bed and began to pace the room like a lioness that has lost her cubs. Then she looked out at the desolate, dreary street exactly as she looks out now. And on this same day of last year — there was her beloved Ahmad, standing under that streaming downpour, the water pouring in streams from his head and his jacket, like one of the electric poles standing in the street.

Ah — he is gazing up at her window with distracted, bewildered eyes, wasted by fever and kindled by love. She flung the window wide open and called at the top of her voice: Ahmad, my beloved, my soul be your ransom! And she opened her arms as though she would embrace her distant beloved — and he opened his arms likewise and ran out across the street. One moment only. A second, the twinkling of an eye. There is her beloved, a mangled wreck beneath the wheels of the speeding car. O horror... She gave one scream and fell down senseless. A month laden with agonies she spent in the hospital, suffering the fever of the body and the fever of the soul. And at last she was wedded to her husband — but... it was her corpse that was wedded; as for her heart and her soul, they had died on that day!!