My Cousin — To Those Who Have No Wealth

To those who have no wealth.

He said to her in his quavering, breathless voice: What is this? What do I see? And why this anxious withdrawal I find you in?.. Weeping eyes, a bewildered soul, a body holding itself as though choking on aches and pains, and the absent look of weary listlessness. And this paper in your hand? God, what is this? A card? A picture card! I knew it was the picture of that fool, your cousin!! Woe to you, hand it over. I am certain that it is — isn't that so? Yes, hand it over, hand it over. I have told you again and again: no, and a thousand times no. Leave him, do not think of him at all, and turn away from him entirely. It is out of the question that I should go along with you in this matter. Your cousin!! I take refuge in God Almighty: I absolutely do not want him, and I never will.. Poor — poor as nothingness. How strange, by God!! What would you eat and what would you wear in his house? Would you be content with black bread and clothes like rags? And that is all he has. Is it enough that he loves you and sings you love in prose and rhyme? What a simpleton you are.. No, this shall not be.. Suitors, God be praised, we have in plenty for your sake. So think of something else and do not stir my anger. You are my daughter — understand this well..

— Father—

— No, hold your tongue; do not cast about for an answer. I am a father, not a son. You have from me the right of upbringing and guidance, and I have from you the right of obedience, so do not be defiant. Throw that picture from your hand. And do not try to persuade me. I am strict and stubborn.

— Father, let me say one word:

— I shout at you and I say no. No...

— Father, one word, only one word.

— Hold your tongue. I say with my whole voice no.. no..

— But Father, I hold that life is the right of every human being; let me have my portion of that right, as it belongs to every human being upon this planet:

— Woe to you: and what right do you mean? Who told you that the women of this world have any right to life?..

— God forgive you, Father. Every human being in the world has his right, be it woman or man. Both are free creatures, each bearing the responsibility of his freedom.

— Shame on you, unbeliever! Is this what school taught you? Wretched learning! By God, had I known this from the first I would have snatched you out of it with the speed of lightning.. But ah.. the sword has outrun the blame.. Good God — she says she has a right to life!! And that she is a free creature!! And.. and..

— Father, let me make it clear to you.. Yes, we all have a right to life. We come to it by a definite path in which there is no confusion and upon which there is no dust; and we all love life, and evenings awake in the light of the moon.. God in His glory has given each of us a life for his spirit and for his mind.. And you — had you remained in an isolation like the silence of the graves.. you would never have known the pleasures of the life God willed for you.. and so with my mother; and I too have a right to this natural portion, if God makes it easy for me..

— And what do you mean by all this, foolish girl? Do you want me to accept your cousin's love for you?

— And why not? Is he not my cousin?

— Sakina! But have I not told you that he is a fish whose scales the little pebbles have eaten away, and in a state of the most abject poverty...

— You are mistaken, Father. He is a gifted man of letters, and that is how men of letters usually are; he is not like the destitute. Is that not enough!.. What would you have my cousin be? A millionaire, or a monopolist? Or a great man of money? Look at him, and compare him with your son, and think the matter over well. Does your son live better than he does? Or have the great heaps of money in your strongbox won you and your son such esteem and standing in the assemblies and the societies as my cousin enjoys! And then, what personal difference is there between me and him — other than the difference by which he surpasses me, since he is a gifted man of letters, as I have said, and fame and renown all but crown his name, while I possess nothing, nothing at all, of all that. And if your son boasts of the breadth of his estates.. he, for his part,

glows with joy at his comprehension of life and of life's capacities, and of the ways of judging it under every kind of circumstance, on the widest scale..

— Do not be defiant, little one, and do not give anger room in my breast. I say that he is poor — that is, he has no bread; and life, as you know, is founded on bread, and bread alone.. If a loaf comes his way today, it is hard for that loaf to come his way again on the morrow. He drifts along; he has no trade, he does no work; indeed I never see him but turning, turning like a laden whirligig, walking right and left like a man poisoned — to say nothing of his being, as is well known of him — felled by the fair ones — so that he attaches himself to no one particular woman: they all hold a lofty place in his soul.. The last thing I have to say to you is this: give up thinking of him, for taken all in all he will not do. And be assured that I will not indulge you on this subject in the least.

— You have been truly unjust, Father, and gone to extremes in injustice. This man you forbid me loves me to a degree for which — God is witness — many a woman envies me. As for your saying that he is needy to the degree you described — that, of course, is not so. And grant even that he is, as you were pleased to say, "the heart's beloved and its whole concern" — he who loves people, and whom people love, will not want for a loaf on the morrow. Besides, he does practice a profession, and an excellent one it is: for every piece he presents to the radio he is paid tens of liras — and blessed be those noble liras that flow to him by such a road. As for your saying that the fair ones have felled him — by God, no. One fair one alone has felled him, one he has loved for seventeen years down to this day, and loves still and always will;

and it is the refusal of that fair one's family to accept him that has drawn this turmoil upon his working life, so that he fell like a man floundering in a net:

— My daughter, give heed to what I am aiming at for your sake and desire for you. I have come to you at this hour to acquaint you with a matter of great moment, which concerns you. Mr. Fouad, who asked me for your hand last week — his mother came today for the same purpose. I want nothing to show from you that suggests refusal or non-acceptance. For this rich, comfortable man is not one a woman may win whenever she pleases. Therefore I say: leave the matter to us, and do nothing but what we call upon you to do, without the least hesitation; otherwise you will force me to take a hard line with you — and in any case, what we want must come to pass. You must always stand with the accomplished fact. Mr. Fouad is the worthier husband for you, and with him you will find life dearer and sweeter. So beware, my daughter, beware of failing to seize this precious opportunity; do not let it slip. Mr. Fouad is a fine young man, with the distinguished appearance that draws women and pleases them. And above all this, he is wealthy — and that is what we want.

— Ah, Father, how much my heart is made to suffer, and my imagination weighed down, by such frightful pictures as these, which blacken the world in my eyes. What is this you are saying? Mr. Fouad is young!! And pleasing!! And rich into the bargain!! Is this the whole of the life you hope for me? Have you asked, have you inquired, how far he loves me? Are you certain that with him I shall live the most comfortable of lives, as you imagine? And then, are you certain of him — that his heart is steadfast, and that there is no other tie with women besides me? And who told you that I trade in my beauty? And who told you that my feelings are sick to such a degree? The trade in beauty, Father, is soon spent and gone; and perhaps it runs out faster than one expects — and if that should happen, say, what capital would be left me? Indeed I hold that the radiant, beautiful life belongs to the one from whose soul beauty does not perish except with the perishing of life itself; for the beauty of

the soul is the beauty the heart thirsts after, and in whose regions the spirit takes its beginning.

— But I have told you: do not be defiant. We are your mainstay in this life, and we have, in fact, everything we want.. Throw that filthy paper from your hand.. fling it far away from you, to the ground. And I ask you once again: by what road did it reach you? Are you in touch with him in secret! This angers me.. it angers me and rouses me.. Do you want people to say of us — of our house — what would shame us and pain us all?

— No, Father, I want nothing of the kind.. This paper reached me by a good road — by way of my brother: he gave it to me so that I might read in it a tempting notion. It speaks in plain, expressive words of the life of a man wallowing in happiness and luxury, as you all claim:

— Ah.. very fine. Then it is the picture of Mr. Fouad, the new suitor — is it not?

— Naturally you would know it. Yes, sir, it is exactly that: the picture of Mr. Fouad, whom you would have me take against my will merely because he is rich and moneyed — and because in his house there is plenty of bread — though it is he who turns and turns like a whirligig laden with sins, he who walks right and left like a man poisoned. Yes, it is exactly he, sir; and my brother gave it to me, not so that I should see him in this picture amid a degraded company of women — my brother's purpose in it was to stir me and whet my interest in him, and to make me understand that he is loved and sought after.. God forgive my brother: he missed the mark and failed of the target. Rather he drove every man far from my picture of things, from my thought and my feeling, and made my heart love, and drew near to my spirit and my soul, the person of my cousin, who has been afflicted with my love since long ago. I say afflicted with my love, because his love for me has been an affliction that weighed heavily upon him: for my sake he has suffered at your hands, and tasted the two bitter things. And in spite of all that, no fair one has felled him but a single one — and she is I.. I alone, and no other woman. So here is the picture of Mr. Fouad in the midst of this company of naked women, as though they were sellers of forbidden love.. And now.. yes, now I throw this filthy paper from my hand, and fling it far away from me, to the ground.. And by this you should mark the vast difference between my cousin and these heaps of poisoned, forbidden bread.