A story by Mrs. Evelyn Hitti Kanaan

Suhad was not lazy and idle, nor commonplace and dull, that she should take to bed early, as she meant to do on the night of December 31 — a night for which all manner of coincidences and justifications had made themselves ready, chief among them what has been imposed, on the appointed evening of every week in Lebanon, from the autumn of 1953 through the winter of 1954 until... — I mean the absence of electricity from the quarter where she lives with her family. That appointment takes on the menace of a burdensome guest, straining matters and embarrassing them — for Suhad's husband has no patience with the long dark hours, and her children give themselves up to shouting and wailing, and she struggles to give them their supper and make up their beds, until they sink into a heavy sleep — the end of an epic that began at five, its events, with their heroes small and big, unfolding by a faint light of kerosene and candles. Then follows the farce between Suhad and her husband, when they sit facing each other in the hall by the fire after supper: the woman, in the grip of weariness, opens her jaws wide and shuts them, only to open them again with a dull, worn-out sigh. And the husband, robbed of the friendly voice of the radio, takes on a form of drowsiness quite unlike his wife's yawning: he nods and nods, jerking his head after a snatch of sleep, then peering at her through the slit of his closed eyelids — and does not find her. Then he heaves himself from his chair to his room, the oil lamp keeping him company, to finish reading a detective novel in bed.

And she had been under the covers for some time — a long time, it seemed to her — in the adjoining room. And the hour... do not ask about the hour, that elastic hour, the hour now.

— What time would it be, man?

— Close on half past eight; in a little while the light will come.

— I forgot to tell you. The neighbors have reserved a table for us, with them, for New Year's Eve tomorrow. And in truth the dark is not without its merits — for a night's rest before another night's wakefulness is more profitable and more fitting.

— That is your philosophy. I wish you a pleasant sleep. As for me, let me settle down to my story, in which the gang has all but succeeded in getting the killer away. Or would you have me wait until the evening of January 2 to learn what happened in this thrilling pass?!

— All I care about is that you take care not to send up the lamp's flame while you overdo your coaxing of

the light. And she thanked her Lord that she has no taste for detective novels and cannot abide them. And what she expected came to pass: not many seconds had gone by before the flame shot up and the smoke breathed out its black tongues with their poisonous, deadly smell, and the chimney threatened to break. So he shouted for her

to see to the matter, and