holiday appealed to him:

A — I am afraid to answer your question, lest I say something that contradicts the teachings of my father, the priest... But in any case, I do not think of the future; my thought is for my day alone. Come back on the day of the feast and I will answer you, he said teasingly.

Then a man came out of the barber's salon with the scent of perfume wafting from him, and I put the question to him straightaway:

Q — Are you all fragrance for the coming of the feast?

A — I love the pocket more than anything; if it is full, then wel-come to the feast — and if not... put down whatever you please.

I left them at that point, and as I passed the A B C building it occurred to me to go in, since people of every class go there.

I asked one of the shoppers — I learned afterward that he was the engineer Herdman, one of those in charge of the Litani project — what the holiday means to him. He said:

A — The holiday is a hope that dawns upon us, so that we feel we have been created anew, as Christ was born, and that we live — if only for one day, or only once — in concord with God, with ourselves, and with others.

As for Dr. Asaad Abu Haidar, whom I also met at the A B C, he saw no call for seriousness, but answered my question in jest:

— The holiday, as you can see, suggests to me bankruptcy, and the spending of my money in the shops on everything harmful and everything beneficial alike — and yet, at the feast, how sweet it is.

But the sweetest answer I obtained was from a venerable old lady, about a wish of hers for the feast. She said, in verses

of her own composing, something after the manner of zajal poetry:

"I asked my Lord for life until the twenty-fifth, that I might be present at the feast of the Nativity, and see the people united, the Magi with the shepherds and the angels crying out, and the children in the streets rejoicing and clapping their hands."

And there I stopped... among the meanings of the holiday. Each of them sees it through his own self

— a season of joys or of sorrows. But before the holiday of which Fouad Suleiman said:

"... a faith that drives us toward God ... and a tenderness that binds us to our poor brothers..." (1)

the human soul, however dark and overcast it may have grown, cannot but brighten at its coming, and hope anew...

(1) Fouad Suleiman: Tammuziyyat, p. 142