The Bells of the Feast

Talk of the Heart

... This lively, repeated ringing — the ringing of the feast-day bells — wakes from the depths of my imagination legendary pictures of my distant childhood

How refreshed our lanes were in those days —
refreshed with distilled orange-blossom water,
sprinkled generously by the old women over the trays of ma'moul,
filling the houses,
carried by the little ones on their heads, amid the clamor of their merry village songs!
And perhaps the greatest joy fell to the baker, Uncle Abu Hasan:
his time was never too short for the grooming of his upstanding mustaches, save in the ma'moul season of each year!!

And the tale of the colored eggs, and the gathering of boys and girls that went with it,
in the church square, or at a bend in the road...
the hour when heads brushed heads in naive innocence, and breasts beat their first beats,
and cheeks flushed rosy in the gray of the twilight just before dawn,
and hands trembled as the eggs were knocked together:
you win or you lose!
And how many a droll tale of prowess at this game has been handed down, generation to generation,
to the lively, repeated ringing — the ringing of the feast-day bells!

... They called it "Pascha," and we called it: clothes adorned for allure...
and gleaming shoes, carrying our steps a-ring, that they might not be scratched.
And ribbons of silk crowning the braids, which were loosed upon the shoulders only at the feast —
these delights held the broadest place of honor in our family,
as sleep flew from our eyelids, waiting for the first peal —
bursting eager from the heart of the night,
announcing something obscure, at which our hearts trembled in awe: —
"A Lord is risen!... a victory of life over death!"

... A legend of pictures, living in my mind surging with colors,
and it pains me that it should be snuffed out thus from the lives of our children...
Else, what difference does it make to my two little ones in their drowsing,
for whom this lively, repeated ringing — the ringing of the feast-day bells —
means neither much nor little??