...and I was not the most beautiful of them, nor the cleverest, nor the eldest; all that set me apart from them was a delicate sensibility and a tender feeling — and these are not things a person is envied for!
Each of my two friends had a distinction to boast of.
The first — Siham — was of striking beauty, tall, dark-complexioned; in her eyes the color green mingled with a violet gleam that looked like velvet whenever the sun struck them.
As for the youngest, her distinction was her eyes, from which shone such a brilliance that it was impossible to stare into them, and a mind whose keenness you could tell through the gleam of those two eyes.
As for me, I was not beautiful like the first, nor clever like the second; I was by nature inclined to solitude and quiet, a poetic temper prevailing in my soul which I could not strip from myself, for it is in my makeup and in my feeling.
Anyone might wonder at the growth of a friendship among this odd mixture of human beings, but his wonder vanishes when he learns that it was a friendship of childhood, grown up by force of neighborhood. Yes, it was a firm friendship, and it kept growing year after year, its foundations settling firm, until a storm blew upon it that shook those foundations and demolished them, leaving nothing of it but ruins.
And what was that storm? Or rather, who was he?
Do not ask me, and do not ask her, for not one of us could answer you. Because the lapse was not the lapse of any one of
us. It was the lapse of a love that was stronger than feeling and deeper than human ideals. A love that demolished everything... even the friendship of childhood, which nothing before it had ever shaken.
Our story began with a slip... the simplest you can imagine — a slip of names.
I remember that day well. We were sitting in front of the dining hall at the noon recess when a little girl came to tell Siham that there was someone who wished to see her. Siham wondered at it, but she went with the girl to the reception room, only to return five minutes later murmuring: If only he really did want to see me — he is a very handsome young man, but unfortunately he wants to see another Siham...
The days passed, and we had all but forgotten this little incident — had we not gone out one evening along the Corniche road for a stroll, when suddenly Siham was pointing to a young man walking with a group of his friends and crying: That's him — the young man I met in the reception room. The one in the brown pullover. And he was truly splendid, so much so that we could not keep ourselves from gazing long at him. As for him, he turned and greeted Siham.
When we returned to the house we fell to talking about him, each of us making her own comment on him. How we laughed that day and made merry! But we were taking no account of our hearts and their beating. And we came to see him often after that, and each of us, without willing it, began trying to draw him to herself.
I realize now how stupid I was, for it was impossible for me to win that battle when Siham had been given that deadly weapon. Yes... I realize it now, but in those days I would not open my eyes to see anything. I chose to keep my eyes shut. But fate opened them... and violently, and without pity, when Issam sent a letter to Siham. That was fate's first slap.
And though the letter was silly, like other love letters sent for the first time by a foolish lover to a girl more ignorant than he, I did not find it silly that day; no, I looked upon it as though it were my usurped right.
Siham gave us the letter to read, Amal and me; we feigned laughter while our hearts bled, and I felt that day a hidden tightness, and a strange emotion toward Siham that I cannot define — but it was not an emotion of love.
Then the letters came one after another upon Siham. At first she showed some interest in them, but she soon grew bored, and I remember that one day she said to me, "How silly he is — isn't he tired of sending these letters?" I pretended to agree with her, while I nearly burst from the feeling that came over me at that hour. To this day I cannot explain it. Was it a feeling of anger, or of sorrow, or of envy?...
I do not know. All I know is that the chasm within me widened, and I came to feel as if Siham were a stranger to me; and though she herself had not changed toward me, I changed toward her. But I did not show my feeling fully until the day she said to me, "I have grown tired of Ramzi. I never loved him at all; only I saw it
as a way of passing the time." Then I exploded like a volcano. I poured out all the rancor in my heart, and said to her these words which I still remember: