False Traditions... or Fate?!

My memory carries me now across the bygone years to the day I glimpsed you for the first time — a fragrant flower swaying among the daughters of thought, gathering from them a lawful perfume to add to your own bewitching scent. The keeper of that bower came up to me and presented me to you, saying:

— One of the cultured young ladies of our society. It was an acquaintance out of which grew a friendship whose foundations were laid by our kindred inclinations and like-minded views; for I was a lover of the arts, and you were an artist by nature — your fingers flowed with music over the strings of a lute, and played contentedly over canvas and colors, making dead matter speak and breathing life into created things. You had duties enough to keep you from thinking of me, while your image never for a single moment left my imagination. I pictured you as that girl for whom every young man yearns whose heart strives toward life and whose soul seeks a settled haven. Do not think I was the victim of passing fancies out of which I formed an opinion of you — no, no, by the purity and virginity of my love: I went and gathered news of you from the mouths of your acquaintances and of those around you. I lived with you through all those days while you were far from me, unconscious of my existence. I walked in your steps and learned of you things near and far, until I came to know more about your very family than I knew about myself and my own.

I went on promising myself another meeting with you, until my wish came true the day a musical recital was given for the students of your institute, you being one of them. I went to attend it with a longing to see you greater than my longing to hear the music. And do not ask about my joy at the moment I saw you come forward to the piano and take your place upon its stool, all eyes fixed upon you. Your fingers began to sport and play with the melodies, and I fancied you were playing for me, for me alone. My sight went blind to everything around me, and I imagined myself with you, a single room gathering us together, you sparing no pains to make me happy and bring gladness to my heart. Nothing brought me back to my senses but the applause of the audience announcing that you had finished — and before I knew it my voice was breaking sharp from my throat: — Bravo! Bravo!

After that I became the mark of every gaze, while I saw you, red staining your cheeks, bowing to me and inclining your head in sign of thanks and gratitude. At the end of the recital I came up to you and pressed your hand in congratulation, and you presented me to your family and your friends; and I shall never forget how you stumbled over my name — and how could I fairly blame you, when we had met but once or twice? I took my leave of you after reading in your eyes a long tale of bitter torment whose depth none can know but he who has suffered it. My one concern thereafter was to find a means of meeting you. And I got what I wanted, obtained by my own methods, my only spur being my love and my respect for you. Our meetings multiplied, and in them I tried to study your soul and your character, and I came out with a conclusion that gladdened my heart:

I was the first young man in your life, for you had grown up in a conservative circle. Forbidding obstacles had risen in the way of your studies, from which nothing had delivered you but your patience and endurance. I pledged myself to take you by the hand, and thereby won your affection and your devotion. With time I felt that you were fighting bitterly to meet me, for you feared what our meetings might come to in the end. You began to dread that my love should fall into your heart before you could learn what was in my soul. And what you dreaded came to pass; I saw it in every feature of your face, and glimpsed it in every word your lips let fall.

That was what I had wanted; I had lived through those days yearning for that very end, until your eyes brought me the glad tidings of it and your sighs conveyed it. A declaration from me gave you strength; you pledged me faithfulness and utter devotion to my pleasure, and I told you that two years lay before me before I could provide the life I wanted for you. You promised to wait until the end of your days, and you were true to your promise — my messenger to you told me so.. your eyes.

You invited me to visit your home after I had come to know your family, and I went with gladness filling my soul. And now I cry from my depths: no — would that I had never done it! Would that my feet had been struck lame before they crossed the threshold of that house. Do you still remember that night, and the ill omen it dragged down upon our two souls? Will you picture with me the hour I fell to talking with your parents, and they asked me about my family — who it was, from whom it descended, and to what country I belonged?

Can you forget, in God's name, the image of your mother the moment I finished telling my story? Her face lit up and she came toward me, exclaiming:

— My son! Twenty years have passed since you all parted from us, yet I have not forgotten that I suckled you with milk from this very breast, only one year before the days divided us. A firm friendship joined our two houses after our fathers had been neighbors through the long years; and when you were a child in your second year, you were still taking your mother's milk despite that age of yours — for you came into the light, my son, after ten years had passed upon your parents' marriage, and for that your mother vowed to nurse you at her breast three full years. And at the end of your second year I gave birth to my daughter — and your mother looked toward you, and I felt the earth reel beneath my feet from the shock of the surprise. And she went on completing her tale without sensing what had befallen me:

— From this breast of mine I quenched your thirst the day your mother left you in my keeping and went out to see to some affairs of hers. Amal was in the fifth month of her age, and you were at the beginning of your third year. So the days parted you as infants, only to bring you together again grown. Shake your brother's hand, Amal — and you, Shawkat: my heart stirred toward you from the moment I caught sight of you, and my instinct did not err, for I am your second mother, and this breast has a claim upon you. — And she asked me about my mother, and I told her that she was in Egypt visiting her family and that I would write to tell her of the reunion. When you placed your hand in mine, both hands were cold as ice; your mother looked at us with joy filling her heart, while my ears were deafened by the cackling of brutal fate, standing there to mock me; and with my naked eye I saw all my dreams and hopes turned to ashes tossed about by the raging winds.

I bade you all farewell that night, leaving behind me my soul and my whole being... God curse those false traditions! What right had my mother to make that vow of hers, and with it to seal my end? Perdition take that hour, and God curse those false desires. I did not sleep that night until the first gleams of morning announced the passing of one day of my life — nay, of my life entire. And my messenger came to me, as usual, and told me that you had spent the days just past sleepless and sobbing, cursing fate, now that you had become my sister. There was a meeting between us that stretched into hours, at whose end I bade you farewell in the hope that we should never meet again — for so God had willed, and there is no turning back His will. Yet I did not cease visiting your house after that, lest I stir your mother's suspicions. And on one of my evening visits your mother came

to consult me about a young man who had come forward asking for your hand. I knew him through and through, and knew that he was worthy of you; and my tongue hastened, in spite of me, to extol his virtues and set forth his merits. My happiness was of your happiness, my survival of your survival, and I felt that in your marriage to that young man lay every felicity — though I was convinced that you would find no peace of mind except at my side. With my own eyes I watched the effect of my words: your betrothal took place, then its quiet days ran out, and the wedding celebration followed.

And circumstance willed that my mother return from Egypt on the very night of your wedding, so that there was no chance to speak of your family in our house; rather I asked her, once she had rested from the weariness of the journey, to make haste and prepare to accompany me to the celebration. We arrived, and there was your mother waiting for you; and there was an embrace and a reliving of memories that brought back to me the image of that ill-omened night. And while the company around me was busy amusing itself, I was in another world. Then suddenly my ear caught a few words that fell from my mother's lips; they reached me with a clearness that paralyzed my thought and struck me dumb. Would that my mother had come back from Egypt before that day — nay, would that she had never come back at all, for she brought with her the cruelest surprise, one my heart could not bear.

You were not my sister, Amal — it was your elder sister. Your mother erred in recounting that incident, and the result of her error was my withdrawal from the world and my remaining here in this remote hermitage.

— God curse the war and its miseries, my neighbor! You are mistaken: the one you nursed along with Shawkat was Dalal, not Amal. You say Shawkat wrote to me telling me the story — but his letter never reached me, or I should have answered it from there.

In these words my mother's voice stole to my ear — and when? At the very moment I glimpsed you on your husband's arm on your way to the bridal dais. What, then, could I have done? I saw you smiling and thought you happy, and I chose to sacrifice my heart and my peace for the sake of your happiness — you who were, and still are, the source of my peace and my happiness. I strove my utmost to keep this truth from you, and asked your mother to let you go on counting me your brother, while I told my own mother the whole story. And fate stood mocking me anew — it still lies in wait for its chances to strike at me, as though it and I stood at opposite poles.

After your marriage I lived nearer to the dead than to the living, no mind to guide me and no feeling to inspire me. I learned that you had left Lebanon to follow your husband to the seat of his work, and I asked after you and was told that you were happy, God having favored you with a generous husband of wealth and standing. And I was asked, what more does a woman want than this? — and I laughed at them and at myself and said: poor souls, they think a woman lives without a heart, and that if such a thing exists, it is not fitting she should think with it or walk by its guidance. By God they wronged you, my beloved, when they said you were happy; for on no day were you more wretched than in what you were after your wedding. You ask me how I knew it, and I say: I read it in your letters to your mother. I read the lines and what lay between the lines, and out of the words I composed long pages about your state. You professed happiness while it stood far from you; you sought peace of mind while it kept clear of you. They spoke truly when they judged you happy, for they saw you with gladness filling your lips; but had they tried to enter into your depths, they would have drawn back humbled before the proofs of your devotion and your tenderness toward one who was everything to you — one on whose account the days bestowed on you nothing.

And today, when five full years have passed over your marriage, years in which you have become a mother, nothing is left me but to whisper in your ear a few simple words — perhaps they will carry to you the memory of our former days:

— Be a bondmaid to him and he will be a slave to you. And beware, my beloved, of repeating your mother's tale. Let your child die rather than give him any breast but your own; stop your ears against the crying of your neighbor's baby, lest your hand reach out to him and give him your milk — for who knows, perhaps fate will show mercy and go on to finish its story, and join two pure hearts together, to atone thereby for the anguish and the heartburnings it has left in ours.