The Promise

Dear God! She will suffer in the city, she will serve and toil, but she will not complain.. Perhaps her tears flowed in silence, like darkness into darkness, without complaint, without moan, between her and herself, between her and her Lord... God be with you, Aliyya. God be with you!!.

*

She threw herself on the bed and could not stir...

"You are tired. Tired. Tired"..
her own self said, speaking to her..

She undid her braids and let her hair fall loose and free upon her shoulders..

Alas for her soul, how it yearns to complain, like a child orphaned by fate!. Alas for her heart, how it tries to release the sighs imprisoned in its depths!.

She promised not to complain, and she will remain strong, a keeper of promises..

She talks to her mother sometimes. Talks to her in silence, as her own self talks to her. No sound leaves her throat, no tremor stirs her lips. She closes her eyes and opens her heart and sees her mother as if she were with her...

— Today she set before me a mountain of clothes, and my back nearly broke from bending. Yesterday she raised her hand to slap me, then drew it back to her side. I will not bear the humiliation of her slaps, and she did well to draw back her hand...

Yesterday the two of them argued and quarreled over me — or rather over the holiday dress they would give me.. He said with anger and vexation: "She is a human being like us; she has a right to life and a right to rejoice in the holidays as we do! If you will not buy the dress, I will. Do you understand?"

He wiped away her tears with the palm of his hand, then looked at the ground.

— "I promise you, by the sanctity of this soil, that I will come for you as soon as I have gathered enough money.. Go now with your father and work hard, and the days will pass like the winds"..

— "I will go and I will wait.. I will not tire, I will not complain — I will only wait." And his eyes kept following her as she moved away with the light, the sunset wrapping her round like a phantom departing into the distance where dreams dwell..

And she answered him in a voice uglier than his: "Buy it and present it to her on a platter of gold, you generous benefactor." I wanted to laugh, but bitterness choked me!. What right to rejoicing have I? The holiday?? It is theirs; they spend it laughing and puffed up, while I pass it from its dawn to its dusk working and running and panting — and after that they say: "Happy holiday, Aliyya!" Yes, every holiday and my body is well, lifting their loads and carrying their burdens.. If only I could see you, mother, and grow calm, and renew in myself a departing hope.. And Naim? When will he come, as he promised? Does he not feel my anxiety and my fear? I fear my strength will run out, and he alone can restore to me what has run out of it"..

★

Four years passed after that, while she bowed her head to her master and her mistress. Four years in which the heat scorched her, the cold stung her, and longing tore her.. Is there no end to every torment, O Lord? Does dawn not follow night, and clear skies the rain? And Naim — what is the matter with him? Why can he no longer look her in the face? Her promise she has kept — but what of his? She does not know how much money he has gathered, how much he has prepared for the future! He comes only to go, and goes only to vanish, and she remains bewildered, tormented by anxiety...

Her father said, when he visited her the last time....

"Naim's case perplexes me! He is no longer what he was. They say he walks the path of evil in the city"..

And she burst out, crying:

"These are all lies, father, for I know Naim better than they do."

Her father looked into the distance and said in a whisper:
— "Why does he not come to take you, Aliyya? Does he not know that misery is choking you here?"

She bit her lip and found nothing to say.

Her father had hit upon the truth — and how many times had her father's wisdom known the truths of life... Today is the end of the month, and he will come to visit her; what news will he bring her? She will not ask him; she will wait for what he says...

He came in the afternoon, and she sat facing him while he told her of her mother and her brothers, and she listened anxiously. Suddenly he fell silent, then said:

"Aliyya. There is news here that must be told."

She cried out:

— "Has some harm come to him? What has happened?"

— "No harm has come to him, but he has washed his hands of you. You will not see him after today. So he asked me to tell you."

— Her hands froze in the air, then fell into her lap, and her tears began to flow in silence...

— "Would that you had brought me news of his death, father. That would have been better"..

Then a cruel fire flared in her breast and she cried out, sobbing:

— "Father, I want to speak to him — tell him to come"..

And when the old man kept silent, she raised her head to him and added:

— "No. I am mad. I do not want him to come. He is a weak coward who releases himself from his promises"..

She felt her father's hand on her shoulder and pressed her mouth to it, sobbing like a child..

— "Aliyya, come; you shall not serve after today."

She shook her head hard.

— "You are wretched here, my daughter."

She did not answer, did not move; she stayed silent until he bade her farewell and went, forgetting to take her wages as he did at the end of every month.

★

Month follows month, year folds up year, and misery stretches on, solid as the stretch of time...

A dryness moistened by tears, and tears dried by fire...

— My God, be with me, and let me accustom myself to humiliation..

One afternoon she stood on the kitchen floor, alone in the house, gazing into space..

— "Aliyya"!..

She opened the door and saw him.. in his flesh and blood..

— "What do you want?"

He stood before her, bewildered, hesitant..

— "Speak, and be brief. I will listen to you."

— "I have sinned against you, and I have no right to speak..

A tremor in his voice shook her heart to its depths.. an abject tremor she had never once heard in his voice..

— "Speak. Pardon is sometimes permitted."

— "No. I did not come to ask pardon, but to drop a weight from my shoulders.. I have a child. His mother was a poor woman I took pity on. She died two months ago, and he and I are now alone.."

She whispered in a hoarse voice..

— "Tell me. How did that happen?"

He understood what she meant and said, turning his face away from her:

— "She was poor and despairing, wrestling with the devil.. I saved her, out of pity for her.."

— "Did you marry her?"

He breathed deeply, propping his head on his hands.

— "No"..

— "Why did you not tell me before?"

— "I did not dare"..

— "And how do you dare now?"

— "I do not know. I have no explanation for it. An account with you, perhaps, that must be settled. A betrayal that must be explained.. I do not want pardon"..

— She studied his eyes and his mouth..

— "Where did you leave him?"

— "Whom??"

— "The child. Her child and yours."

— "With her aunt."

She hid her face in her hands..

"Did you love her?"

— "No"..

— "Why, then? Why?"

— "I do not know. I have no explanation for it. I wanted to save her, as one man saves another on the point of drowning"..

She hid her face once more and went rigid, but for the shaking of her shoulders...

— "Poor woman. And poor me."

He looked into the distance and was silent...

And she raised her head and looked where he was looking..

— "I did not hate you when you failed me. I despised you. Would that I had hated you... They said you were walking the devil's roads, and I did not believe it! And now you stand before me yourself, casting your sin down at my feet.. What a wretch you are, and what a weakling I am, carrying a heart of dough.. I will tell my mistress that I am leaving here, and I will go with you. To where the child is.

He started, and drew back two steps..

— "What is the matter with you? Is there nothing you would say?"

He shook his head, staring at her, his gaze wandering, his eyes glistening..

— "Wipe your tears, Naim, for weeping shames you"..

★

At last her mistress's footsteps drew near, and she rose and went to the door to wait, in her heart a strange tremor like the one that runs through the heart of a prisoner set free, his eyes embracing the light and his dreams embracing liberty... Freedom after captivity. Life after death...