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From the news of Hama — Syria — comes word that a woman has given birth to an amazing child with two independent heads, the two bodies uniting at the waist to become one. We came upon the details of a similar story that occurred in the United States, and we have rendered it into Arabic in the hope that doing so may throw light on the situation and clarify many of the questions on the subject: How are such phenomena explained scientifically? And what are their causes?

After mental effort and hesitation, I arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Hartley to ask for a report on their amazing twins. Although the newspapermen called them "the two-headed baby," they are twins from the waist up, their body united below the waist. Medical reports record six cases similar to this one, but no child with two heads has ever been found — and were one born, it would not live.

Mrs. Hartley is a slender woman of twenty-eight, a pale cast over her face, her hair black and glossy, and she wears eyeglasses. She met me at the door of her home, invited me to sit down, then excused herself and hurried off to do her duty by her two babies: "They have two stomachs, so I have to change them a lot." We laughed at that. After she had dressed them in a pink suit tied at the neck with a blue ribbon, she laid them down on a small bed in the room, while I stood observing all this with a smile and with astonishment. Then her husband came in — a man of forty, red-haired, quick-witted, nimble in his movements; he had worked on a farm, moved from it to a mine, then became a mechanic. "They're two beautiful babies," he answered me when I expressed my admiration for them; and he had chosen two names for them. They were lying on their back, turning over from time to time, and I felt my bewilderment melt away at the ease so plain on the parents' faces.

After a little while I asked Mrs. Hartley to let me hold her two precious babies; she smiled her consent, lifted them up, and placed them in my arms. Their body was warm, a fragrant

scent rising from it, and they stared at me, scrutinizing, as I tried to make my arms a cradle for them. Naturally I could clearly feel that the lower part of the body was the lighter in weight. Danny was at ease, taking things as they come,