On the Margins of the Naseema Talks: The First Beloved

O educators, be gentle with these souls, opened wide to receive goodness, and love, and beauty; for a word from you, or a gesture, or a wink, may spread lasting joy in the depths of these souls, and open the doors of hope, and so of rising, for tomorrow.

And likewise a word, or a gesture, or a wink may cast doubt into them — and woe to the soul that doubt invades — and then do not ask how talents turned to stagnation, nor how those lofty resolves were crippled. If you do such a thing, then you are ignorant indeed:

She had reached ten, or nearly: a girl whose whole will was merriment, her spirit all but leaping out of her movements; playful whenever she could find a way to it; tireless, never wearying of contriving pranks at every opportunity, until we came to believe nothing from her without weighing, reckoning, coaxing, and scheming — and with all this caution of ours we could not help falling for it and surrendering at times, whereupon she would peal out for us her silvery, rippling laugh, while her two green eyes filled with tears of I know not exactly what.

She is, with all this, delicate of feeling; she avenges her dignity as the Japanese soldier avenges his homeland: either he fights with a valor without equal to recover his plundered right, or to ward off from himself the humiliation of enslavement — or else he kills himself without any hesitation or fear!

She had begun to appear among people with a serious mien, in the manner of young girls. But she is still somewhat shy; she respects her elders with a marked respect, and humors the little ones and pets them, with the gentleness owed to those younger than herself; toward her comrades and her teachers she bears the devotion of one who finds in devotion a duty whose sanctity may not be touched.

When she speaks with strangers, or with those older than herself, it is in a soft voice and a sober tone that breathe esteem and confidence.

Such, in part, was her way before we moved her from her first school to a new school she was obliged to enter, while she still kept of the old one memories, and friends, and teachers who remain in the inmost core of her young, faithful heart.

But she had spent hardly a few days in this school of hers when she came to me one evening asking, with reproach and challenge in her tone: Mother... don't you know Miss Hayfa?

I said: Indeed I do; long ago we were schoolmates in the same school.

She said: Then why have you never once spoken to me of her?

I said: No occasion arose for me to mention her. Her look hardened, she knit her brows, and mockery showed in her tone as she answered — But Miss Hayfa, Mother, needs no occasions to be mentioned, because, as it seems to me, she is not one of those personalities that are forgotten quickly and easily...

I said, trying to suppress a broad smile — And in what does she excel all others?

She answered with a rushing, frantic enthusiasm:

— She excels in everything, Mama... in her soft way of speaking, in her manner of pronouncing, in that flush that covers her face if anything displeases her, in her small, exquisite figure, in that smile that never leaves her lips however hard she may try, in her spectacles, in her dress, in every single thing about her.

She is sweet, sweet, and I love her.

I said, my patience run out with her endearing chatter: The important thing in all this is that you study the lessons she asks of you; after that, love her however and as much as you please...

A few days later she came to tell me, her face lit with an overwhelming radiance of happiness — Mother, do you know that Miss Hayfa wears nothing but black?

I said: Yes; she is in mourning for her parents.

But why did her parents die? she said.

I said: As the parents of all people have died, and do die.

She said, pressing on: But she is still young.

I said: And there are those younger than she who lose not their parents only but all their kin between one night and the next morning. I saw her swallow a lump

in her throat, and I looked away. Then she walked off, but like one walking toward no fixed goal, and sat down at her table — but did she really study? It seemed to me she did not, for every now and then she was asking me questions I had never supposed her thoughts could compass at such an age.

And that night I heard, from my playful, harum-scarum little one — I heard philosophy speaking with her heart and her tongue, and with her mind...

Days passed that were filled with talk of the teacher. I spent on them all an educator's effort to draw my girl away from thinking of her favorite teacher, and I began to fear obsession for her, dreading that she would waste her free hours in chatter instead of going over her lessons.

Then one day she came complaining of a pain in her eyes, and a film over them, and a burning when she stared. Alarmed at this, together with her father, I took her at once to an eye specialist; and there, after the doctor had asked her what he could not but ask, he brought her into the dark examination room and set before her, some meters off, a chart on which the letter M was written reversed and upright, turned to the right and to the left, in lines varying between large and small; then he began to ask her about the position of each letter, one by one, until he had finished — and I think my own breath had almost finished with him — when behold, all the letters, without a single one excepted, were inverted with a consistent order: what pointed upward she answered she saw pointing downward, and what was to the right became with her to the left, and so on!

I saw the doctor peer into her eyes from behind his electric lens; then he turned on the light, patting her shoulder and laughing, and saying:

— And now... tell me why you want to hide away these two eyes, sweet one. Is there at school some companion of yours whose spectacles please you, so that you wanted to model yourself on her?

And in a tone brimming with tears, with a surrender that walked through his ringing laughter, she answered the doctor — No, it is the teacher — it is Miss Hayfa and no one else...

And the doctor understood the well-woven ruse, and counted it in her a rare intelligence. So he did not charge the examination fee!!

And her father understood that his daughter would imitate none but certain particular people, and so forgave the white lie...

And I understood — alas — that upon the educator's shoulders heavy loads are laid, the lightest of them this imitation that takes hold of the pupil without his consciousness attending to it or his memory being taxed by it. So I held my peace, reluctantly...

Weeks passed that were filled with talk of the teacher, in whose every movement, or turn of the head, or smile, or murmur, or flash of anger, my daughter found something that must be remarked upon; and she would interpret it all favorably — indeed she saw in it goodness, and beauty, and loftiness of noble character.

The days of examinations arrived, and Naseema sat up — with all who sat up — night after night, the more so as she wanted to make up what she had missed in the first term and to live up to the headmistress's good opinion of her,

and to convince me that she could read at night, after her studying, whatever she pleased and for as long as she could keep vigil and endure.

The appointed day came, and Naseema's turn came to take her oral examination. She stood before the table of the teacher Hayfa, drew a paper from among the papers, and passed her test as well as she could ever have hoped. But she had hardly taken a step to return to her place when a voice rose from among the pupils, saying to the teacher: Naseema drew a paper before that one, and put it straight back and exchanged it for the other!

A flush mounted the teacher's face; and it was not hidden from the keen-witted child that her teacher had believed her schoolmate at the first instant — she was stunned! And everything grew confused for her when the teacher made her take the test over again, even though she had repelled the trumped-up charge with sincerity and pride...

Naseema passed the examination better than the first time; but the thing that did not pass with it was the respect she had treasured in the inmost core of her guileless heart!

She was set at ease, too, about the result, since that result gave her schoolmate no satisfaction to drink; but the thing about which she was not set at ease was that trust, lost the moment a few passing winds had stormed against it.

The idol my daughter had worshipped for a time in the depths of her heart, and before which she had burned incense standing and kneeling, was shattered — alas.

But what was not shattered in her was that unyielding pride, which grows day upon day the more the trials tell upon her and the more people lose their worth in her eyes.

And I saw her come into the house that day as though dragging her feet: no leap of joy at meeting her little brother, no new "prank" bringing merriment with her into the house, no jumping, no rippling of laughter, no kisses.

She asked for an Aspro tablet to quiet the violent pain in her head; and when I brought her the tablet she raised her face to me, and behold, the eyes were tears... and what tears.

I rested her dear head on my breast, hushing the precious sobs; and she burst out weeping, and in something like a nervous fit she clung to me, saying to me, in a tone holding the pleading of the disappointed and the pride of the vanquished: I shall love no one but you, Mother; believe me, I shall never love anyone but you, for all people are wicked — yes, all of them except you; you alone, you alone.

And from that day on, Naseema has not once mentioned her favorite teacher...

Has she truly shaken from her heart the last grain of that love, I wonder — or has she kept, in one of its corners, a faded picture for remembrance??