The Gypsy Woman

A graceful pen, beginning to cut its path in the world of elegant letters, and catching the eyes that are drawn by the radiance of the written word ... Miss Hibah al-Wadi is in the final stage of her university studies — Arabic is her field of specialization. A connoisseur of literature, finely sensitive; many of our readers ask us about her. We present her to you today in this reflection, which joins lightness with depth ...

O reader of palms! Come, read these winding lines in our hands, and unravel for us their magic ciphers, which merge and gather in the hollows of our palms, then fade away over the backs of our fingers with a strange ease.

Gaze long at their artless meandering; look into their depth and how far down they run; then tell us what they say! These graven lines that hide the secrets of our lifetime in a strange, sealed silence!

Look into them, and seek out the glad tidings along their edges; then let your eyes dwell in thought and deliberation, and repeat to us what you have already recited to the hundreds before us; for here before you we feel the awe of the unknown and its majesty .. and we take it upon ourselves to hold that what you say is a certain, honest thing, drawing on your piercing insight and your possession!

Say what you will .. but be gentle with these dreams nestled deep within us — we four girls seated before you, reviving the custom of our grandmothers, seeking knowledge of the unseen from the lips of fortune-tellers! We feel the power of intuition that has captivated woman's soul and held it in pawn since first she was! Have pity, then, on this young girl who begs her fortune of you; take your inspiration from her fair locks dancing upon her forehead in pride and coquetry ... and tell her how destiny hides for her an easy comfort in the days of her tomorrow; then whisper in her ear a great deal about the guardian of her tomorrow — about his uprightness, his tact, his nobility and his honesty — and let loftiness course through her being, so that she seeks in her young man nothing but hope and goodness .. Lull her fear of a second woman on her path .. and assure her that she will become the peerless queen upon the throne of her house; then commend her to her youthful bliss, that she may build from the freshness of her dream a soaring hope!

Then take the second palm, stretched out to you in hope, and probe the mystery of its shape, and find out the dreams of its owner, and say to her: hers is a great soul, visited by spiritual longings for the exaltation of the homeland ... Tell her that she will be a help to those driven from their land, so that in her country no voice of moaning remains; let her know that the scattered ranks of the people will be knit together by the strength drawn from her patience and her resolve; and tell her of that which will smooth her brow and draw the contented smile from her brooding soul ..

Then take the third hand, and flow on in your intimate talk with her of all that delights her girlhood; and do not forget to tell her that an artistic pageant awaits her, and that many lips will murmur her name, for she will become a princess by her plaintive playing, here in her country so starved of music and melody. Then take my palm — and do not tell me of my awaited dreams and my departing sorrows; do not look at the line of life and recount to me its long stretch of joy and gladness; and do not attend to the line of the heart and speak to me of its chambers brimming over with passion.

All I want of you, O skilled diviner of my case, is that you tell me: how many girls have you seen whose hands resemble mine?

Tell me, have you seen many before me who live in a nebula of feeling and emotion and solitary sensibility? Have you touched what injustice does in the throbbing of their hearts, or learned what orphanhood and poverty stir in the recesses of their souls?

Has there passed before your eye a girl who does not know what she wants? Molded, like me, to be drawn to ethereal things without fathoming their essence; all-embracing in her love, excessive in her hatred, extravagant in gathering contradictions within herself ..

Have you scrutinized a hand through which run the veins of weakness, like my hand — infatuated with the love of good, yet falling short of attaining it?

Tell me that the number of those like me is small, that I may conclude that weakness is confined to the few, and take comfort that the feeling of faintheartedness and pain is limited in its range.

O reader of palms .. give us your own palm, that we may read in it the marks of hypocrisy and lying, and help us to understand why man lies to his brother man. Why do you run to such extremes of exaggeration, distortion, and repetition? And why do we go so deep in feigning our belief and our faith in everything you utter? And why do we go on nurturing in you a livelihood built on deception, while you go on nurturing in us a dependence more galling than deception, and more barren!

Rather, give us the page of your face, burnished with the bronze of the gypsies, that we may read in its regular features the lines of the freedom lying deep in your soul, and learn how the love of it is blended into your blood, until you have come to follow its call from land to land ..

Take me with you among the people, O gypsy woman, and teach me how you choose your words, saying to this one what you do not say to that one; point out to me the signs of cunning and evasiveness in souls, and the possibility of goodness and truth within them; and walk me through all the roads of the city until I am worn out like you; then bring me back to your fluttering tent, and light the lamp within it, and fill my mind with the colors of your native wisdom.