silence, while I talked to her and looked at her insistently; but she would not answer, would not lift her eyes from one small square of the carpet stretched beneath her feet... For the airplane that was bringing him from the West had crashed, and all its passengers burned, three days before the wedding... The terrible pain pro-duced no reaction in her during the first ten minutes; she was lost, stunned by the horror of the news, her gaze dazed, her feeling numbed by the enormity of the blow. Then the frozen stillness that had come over her turned into a violent fit, a terrifying frenzy of madness, followed by a weeping silence and a perpetual downcast stare that possessed her for six whole months. And at last I pictured her on the day, a year ago, when she spoke to me in her broken voice, saying:

— Do there exist in this universe, Da'd, people who resemble one another completely? I ask you because I glimpsed a traffic policeman at one of the intersections in Salihiyya, on the tram line, and I assure you that the resemblance between him and the one whose death clipped my wings is frightening! I turned my gaze from him and told myself that I was surely deluded. And when I returned home at noon — and this is my only way there — I found him standing, performing his arduous work, and I heard the beating of my heart grow harder and stronger, and I longed to leave the car, to draw near him and make certain of his

identity... but I quickly returned to the bitter reality, and I reached home with my strength spent and my nerves in shreds. The next day I wished not to see him — not because my wounds had healed and I feared their being torn open, for the wounds of the heart leave traces that never fade, but to avoid the painful trembling that had seized me when my eye fell on him the day before. But when I reached the same point, I found him standing there before me, busy watching the traffic, working the green signal and then the red in turn, whistling at offenders when need be, his fresh face expressing pride, his earnest glances speaking of manliness and dignity. And it happened that he opened the green signal for me, and I passed, and it seemed to me that he smiled a gentle smile. It is not strange that he should smile at me and greet me, as he came to do whenever I passed him, for traffic policemen treat the few women who drive cars with a gentler courtesy. And so I grew addicted to the sight of this policeman, and his presence on my way became an utmost necessity — indeed a pressing need. I came to take comfort in seeing him, and to answer the customary smile that formed on his face whenever he saw me with a slight nod of my head. And I shall not hide from you that I came to feel a great desolation if I crossed that road and returned without my eye falling on his upright figure and his handsome frame... The sight of him, Da'd, stirs my inner torments and wakes in my soul a passion and a longing and a burning that cause me excruciating pain — and yet how great a comfort I found in that very pain!

•

The memories and visions

that crowded upon my mind after Alya's departure wearied me and robbed me of my customary siesta. So the duty of friendship led me to the house of my dress-maker Rose, where I invented a little story for her to justify my interest in this traffic policeman who had worked a full year at the posts of the "Salihiyya" quarter and then suddenly vanished from sight nearly three weeks before. I gave her his description and asked her to question her brother, in the hope that he might guide us to him.

On the morning of the next day I received a telephone call from the dressmaker, in which she said:

— "You may tell your husband, Madam, about that policeman. My brother knows him, and declared to me that he is one of the finest men in the police department, and that some ten days or more ago he submitted a petition to the directorate asking for his annual leave and for the transfer of his work from traffic duty to administrative work. The directorate granted his request promptly, because he had refused to move from his tiring post — which he loved and had held fast to for a year — to other posts of lighter traffic and less fatigue..."

And so, after the passing of a year that was exhausting yet delightful to this policeman, in a place he loved and where he found companionship and consolation and a succession of varied pictures passing before him each day, he chose sacrifice and hid himself away in a corner of the administration, to perform monotonous work, where there are no signals and no faces, no smiles and no rebuffs...

Damascus — Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari