wife and as a mother: you do not know the value of things, nor have you any grasp of the management of a house.

I did not object at first because I hoped matters would improve, but you never once gave me cause for that. I am tired, Layla — yes! tired — and you never felt how my strength was being numbed... I am going to my mother's so that we may arrange the divorce, and from there I will send you your expenses until we settle our affairs.

Jamil

Hardly had I raised my eyes when Layla pressed me with her questions: "What can I do in the face of this? I did not mean to drive him away like this. Do you think he will come back? He does not mean divorce, does he?" She was silent a moment, then said: "I am sorry for this behavior, and I know I must begin with you from the very beginning."

— "Let us begin with the quarrel that took place recently — and I suppose it had precedents!"

— "Yes, some arguments over expenses. He used to threaten to leave the house, but he would grow calm again after a little — unlike this time, when he walked out in silence and has not come back."

— "Was there any truth in what he accused you of?"

— "You mean what he said about my incapacity? I suppose so. I am not a capable housewife, for I grew up in a well-to-do family and never had to work in my girlhood."

Layla was thirty years old and her husband thirty-six; they had married ten years before and been blessed with a son and two daughters. They began their life relying on financial help from Layla's family, who had opposed the marriage at the outset. She referred to this, saying:

— "They thought Jamil was beneath me in station. He left his studies early, and that stood in

the way of his realizing his aims, for he had to take work that did not suffice for the needs of the household. He is very sensitive, and there grew up in him an inferiority complex — if I may rightly call it that — because my family used to help me with my personal expenses."

I asked her how her husband might be brought to come to my office, and she answered: "I do not quite know. I used to ask him to meet my father or someone else to solve our problem, but he never once listened to me, for he does not want to let anyone in on his troubles."

— "That makes the situation more complicated. But try to write and tell him that you have come to my office. He may not like it, but at least he will understand that you are doing nothing in secret from him. I will write to him too, and let him know that I have talked with you, and I will ask him to acquaint me with the other side of the story — his side, I mean. I will persuade him that I found faults in your conduct and called on you to correct them!"

When she came back to me, Jamil had not yet answered my letter, but she told me that he had been somewhat pleased with her, adding: "I telephoned him at his office. He answered me coolly and took a formal attitude toward me at first, but he changed his position the second time, when I made him understand how much love and respect I have for him. I begged him to come back, but he did not. My mother is still helping me, and it appears he does not approve of that?"

— "Did you expect that to be his attitude toward her?"

— "No: my mother has been good and kind to him. And yet, for all that, I do need diversion and help."

— "I understand your position; but make it clear to him that your mother will leave the house the moment he comes back to it."

By these requests I wanted to guide Layla's steps, so that she would keep her husband close to her after winning him back; and

she seemed to understand me, for her response was to promise to study household management so as to better her circumstances. When I asked what he thought of that, she said: "I wonder why he bears down on me so! Could it be a feeling of inferiority in himself, because I come from a more prosperous house, so that there is nothing there for him to reproach me with? If that is truly his attitude, then let us study his inner feelings before the household management."

— "Then try to look at the situation with his eyes: why does he feel inferior?"

And indeed Layla tried to clear away the fog that shrouded the situation, and to understand her husband's struggle to rid himself of his sense of cultural and social inferiority. She made this plain with examples from his conduct, and her voice grew soft as she recounted to me how he had striven all these years to obtain a better position and had not succeeded, and how all the help that was extended to him was blame and reproach.

— "His struggle was to secure my future and my children's future, so that we might do without borrowing from my family; and his failure went on breaking down his spirit all the more — while I gave him no support in anything."

— "Then you have understood why he quarreled with you over drawing out the money?"

— "I think I have understood more than that. What you saw from him was not because I took the money — I had a right to that — but because he could not bear the thrust that reminded him that he was not providing for us as the head of a household should."

I asked her to tell me about their sexual relations, because of their importance in the life of a married couple, and I learned from what she related to me that there had been no sexual problem between them until the past year, when coldness began to creep into him after the quarrels, and he would sleep