The Sea (from the book "Under the Arches of Aristotle")

Arabic letters have been enriched this year with two precious books by the foremost master of literature, Mr. Amin Nakhle:

1 — "Under the Arches of Aristotle," a collection of chapters on the principles of literature — and who is worthier than the great man of letters to treat such studies?

2 — The Book of Kings, being everything the author has said to kings, or about them...

The Woman's Voice, which wishes Mr. Amin Nakhle health and long life, that he may pursue his activity and favor us with this matchless literary crown, excerpts this little masterpiece on "The Sea" from his book "Under the Arches of Aristotle."

In the dawn of childhood — when the water-jet in the pool beside the house is, to eyes newly acquainted with the sight of things, Niagara Falls... when the far gate of the garden is the gate of the world... and when the aged servant is a Sindbadess of the seas — I would often sit with the Sindbadess at the close of the evening, the season winter, the trees clamoring in the storm, and the rain, and the pitch-black night. And the servant would tell me the tales of the sea — and I had not yet seen the sea with my own eyes, only by measure: a ship plying the deep of the ocean, sailing it a thousand months, then never returning; a flag bearing the dust of a distant land; sailors green, and red; daughters of the water, half of them human and the other half fish, dancing upon the shores; winds that blow at the ends of the earth and come over the face of the water, calling out songs in strange tongues — and so on to the end of what was in those tales...

Until, when the servant had emptied the sea into my imagination and the hours had grown long upon me, I would doze off among thousands of ships, and flags, and sailors, and daughters of the sea. Then when the first light of day appeared and the weather had softened, and the Sindbadess took me out to the garden and we came up to the pool, I would say to my lady:

"— Poor sea of ours, this one! Not a ship in it, not a sailor, not one single water-maiden..."

And the servant would laugh with a mouth like the mouth of the basin, then say:

"The sea? It is vaster than the world — what is the pool of our house beside it!"

And I would say, astonished, my mouth puckered up till it was like the iron spout of the jet in the pool:

"Than the world?!!"

"Yes! Vaster than the world!"

And I would say:

"Then I love you as much as the sea — if only you would tell me what color it is!"

"The color of the blue dove; and the sun drowns in it and it flushes red; and the moon slides down, from the slope of the north, on certain nights, and the sea becomes a pool of molten silver..."

And so the sea remained the occupation of my mind, and the talk of my soul, through all my days of childhood.

Until, when I had come to the verge of youth and went down from the mountain country for the first time, there met me, beyond the shores, a broad blueness, reaching the sky at the horizon, heaving over the deep opposite the houses, then casting itself upon the sand... and I knew that this was the sea!

That day the blueness filled my breast, and roared its roar within my inmost soul! So that if I turned from it to some occupation, it was as though my eye still looked toward it wherever I looked; as though my hand were striking through its deep up to the armpit! An eye (blue, of course) following me through the city and keeping watch over me...

Thus did the sea take possession of my feelings the day I first came to it. But when I had spent a stretch of my life's days close by it, it began to draw back from me into its prison behind the shore; and all my dealings with it came to this — that when it foams and froths and slaps the rock, I pass my eye over it as though I were passing my hand over the lion's mane, patting it, and quieting its temper.