And I pictured the teacher commenting on our compositions after correcting them, as is his habit, and how the class would roar and rock with laughter the moment he read mine out! No... there must be another, seemlier wish... a scouting trip... a certain moving picture... a book......??!

I turned my face toward the window that opened westward, and there was the sea as far as the eye could reach, in the stretch of its clear, rippling blue, a mighty giant without violence or clamor; and to my mind's eye appeared a little boat cleaving the face of the water gently, carrying me off to where the catch is plentiful! And with a deep sigh that held some relief in it I bent over my copybook, racing the remaining minutes: "My wish is a fishing trip on the sea." And it warmed my heart to have found so novel a subject, and I forgot my trouble for a while. Am I not, in truth, a lover of the hunt in both its kinds, of sea and of land?!

•

The bell rang and the students poured into the playground, ring after ring, and I found myself before the strolling vendors... Until that very moment I had forgotten that I was still without my breakfast. My failure in my morning errand had sent me, without my knowing it, straight on to school. And my eyes wandered among the well-stocked trays: sesame kaak, brioche, ghraybeh, bananas, Coca-Cola... I paid the vendor ten piasters, and for all my hunger I found the brioche drier than usual, and I could not keep from comparing it in my heart with "znoud el-sett" — oh, the deliciousness of them! — rolled tight around the kashta and the syrup... like those to whose conquest the customers had beaten me... And I thought, perhaps for the tenth time, as I wiped the grains of sugar

from my mouth: "Tomorrow no one shall get there before me! I'll show them all what early rising means!"

•

It was not my mother's voice that woke me, at dawn; it was the voice of a bulbul in the tree behind my window. God! Who taught the bulbul that tender song? Perhaps it is the first time it has ever visited our quarter!.. In five minutes I was making to leave the house!. What a surprise for my mother, when she heard me fumbling the door open at that early hour!

On the way I felt taller and bigger than I had been yesterday! And I walked with my chest high, hur-rying toward the new shop, the shrine of my hope.. From afar the sign showed, written in fiery red,

and I came up to the vendor with a ringing good-morning, though something of trepidation stirred in me, like what came over me just before I fired at the sparrow, in my first days of hunting. And it was as if my arrival caused the vendor some confusion: he stam-mered in returning my greeting, and set about tidying up his shop with visible nervousness... I let my gaze travel around the place, and everything was just as I had left it yesterday: a few maamoul, a little qatayef and baklava... I turned to the vendor, questioning, seeking light, and before I could open my lips to speak he forestalled me, his palms propped on his belly, his eyes cast down:

"You want znoud el-sett?.. All gone, sonny.. all gone!"

In a single instant the grievous

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