Farewell, Mother — the time has come for me to break the cruel bond, and to be true to myself and to the one I love in this life.

Farewell, Mother — you whom I loved, and who were harsh to me; from you came a misery that shat-tered the dreams of my childhood and dried up the wellspring of life in my frail being.

Was that out of deference to that man you took as a husband, thinking he would be a father to me after my father, and a support, after death with its cruel hand had struck down my true, tender father?

I do not know!

Or was it perhaps weakness on your part before his harshness, submission before his arrogance, and love of peace in his clam-orous world?

I do not know that either. I heard you quarrel with him at times, and I understood — young as I was — that it was because of me. But you surrendered in the end, and it was as if a thick fog wrapped your being, carrying you away and turning your gaze from me. I was blotted out of your world, and I lived like a stranger in your care.

Had it not been for this, I would today be another person in my strength and in the depths of my soul.

I hid my anguish and my fear in my small heart, and I would flee to my room, hiding on a seat in one of the corners, whenever I saw that man coming through the outer door into the house — sometimes whenever I heard his

voice, or whenever terror swept over me at the hour of his coming.

Yes, I would hide my small existence in the darkness of some corner, in dread of the specter of assailing care, embodied in all its horror in his looming figure.

And how many memories crowd now in my imagination, filled with fear and pain and anxiety — and with soft, beloved waves of happiness. They caress the sides of my soul, and cannot spare me their stubborn, cruel pursuit.

I do not reproach you, Mother, for loving my little sister and indulging her — whether that was love of her, or a courting of her father, who loved her — for I too loved her with all my heart.

Do you remember, in the days when I was still new to the loss of my father, and the loss of his love and his care, when the man who had taken his place called me, a box of sweets and sugared almonds in his hand, and put in my plate every broken, misshapen piece, then called my little sister Nihad and put in her plate the finest the box held? With my small mind I compared what was in the two plates. And before I knew it, I found myself flinging my plate to the floor in front of the supposed father, and running off wailing. Then you followed me, Mother, scolding and rebuking, unaware of the wound dealt to my small, innocent dignity.

He errs, Mother, who thinks the child does not perceive and notice what grown-ups perceive and notice. Rather, children are often more sensitive, and probe

more deeply into the obscurities of passing events, than grown-ups.

And years later, Mother, when I fell into that long illness — did I not pass my days alone in bed while you were heedless of me, leaving my care to the little maid, who was not good at nursing and tending me, but hurt me without knowing it?

You came one single time, with an overflowing love in your eyes; you looked into my eyes and asked me:

"How are you, Mama?"

I answered: "Well, thank God."

No sooner had you laid your lips on my burning forehead than I felt the tears dripping into my heart and rasping in my throat. Scarcely had you left my room when I buried my head in the pillow and began to weep. I wept long, Mother, not knowing whether my weeping was from a joy that flooded me or a sorrow that had seized me. But I felt that I needed love and tenderness in my sickness, my weakness, and my loneliness.

Oh, that love which I missed, and hoped for from you then — how precious it was, and how far away!

Every morning my sister Salwa and I would go to school — she provisioned with kisses of tenderness and love, and I with the lump that weighed on my chest; and on the horizon of my imagination, his looks of hatred and your look of indifference — you, the mother who had no mercy on a sensitiveness that broke the little orphan's heart.

The school marks would come to you both, and I would be