physician, Dr. Wadih Safadi, decided that I must have a companion to spend the night with me; so Sister Susanna brought me a young Japanese woman who had taken her nursing certificate and entered the school of midwives. I agreed with her that she would spend the night in my room — and she might sleep, since there was no need to keep vigil — for 1,500 piasters a night.

At the pension where I had been staying before my illness there was a black woman called Alta — that is, Aliya — who did the washing and ironing of clothes. She lived with her old mother and her daughter in a wooden hut built in the pension garden. After I entered the hospital she went on caring for my clothes, and would visit me at night when her work was done.

She visited me one evening — before Easter week — and saw the Japanese nurse in a second bed, asleep, snoring a disturbing snore, like a laborer who had spent his whole day carrying loads. She asked me who the girl was; and when she learned that she slept in my room and charged me 1,500 piasters a night, she knit her brows and curled her lips.

She came back to me the next morning — the Japanese girl had gone off to her classes — and burst out the moment she entered:

— I haven't slept all night. I could not bear to see you “exploited” like this. I have just spoken with Sister Susanna, and she says you only need a companion to spend the night in your room and call the nun for you if your condition should require quick treatment. I will take that girl's place. Pay me what you like, or pay nothing. I and my mother and my daughter do not forget you. Send the Japanese girl away, from tonight.

I return to the eve of the Saturday of Light, the hour when the rains were pouring down like the brooks and like the streams. I began repeating that line of that French poet:

il pleut dans mon cœur comme il pleut sur la plaine.

And the tragedy of my life came surging back, followed by the tragedy of an emigration that was to have been a short journey of four months — then war was declared, and here I am in the fifth year.

And there surged back the tragedy of my brother's murder — that poor man who was called “the father of the poor,” who for forty years had done good to the wretched classes, laborers and black slaves; and three black men repaid him by slaughtering him as

one slaughters a hen. And I began to curse that ungrateful black hand which had robbed me of the one man who was supposed to shelter my days.

Suddenly the door opened.

Before the door stood a paravent, a screen against drafts, shielding me from the currents of air whenever the door opened; and Aliya's head appeared, the water streaming from her dress. She went into the bathroom adjoining my room, and in a moment had taken off her dress and put on a coat she used to wear at night over a thin shift that showed the build