Those Tender Hearts...

Mrs. Jadhibiyya Sidqi, a guest of Lebanon this summer, is the winner of the short story prize in Egypt for 1955, among 28 entrants..

She received her education at the American College and has four collections of stories: "It Is Love," "My Heart Wept," "The Kingdom of God," and "Curtain, O Night."

Mrs. Sidqi is a member of the Egyptian "Story Club" and of the "Writers' Association" headed by Dr. Taha Husayn. She keeps a literary salon that gathers circles of men of letters every Tuesday evening.

In her stories Mrs. Sidqi inclines toward analyzing the feelings of the Eastern woman and uncovering the hidden depths of her self, which still suffers repression and withdrawal.. And perhaps at times the storyteller makes swift pro-

gressive leaps that carry her beyond the bounds..

The story "Those Tender Hearts" is a living example of her stories.

Night.. night.. the darkness.. the blackness.. and the stillness, like a great mute demon carousing through the vast palace from one end to the other.. You could almost see its shadow made solid in my mother's room, and the room of "Umm Wahiba," our old nanny, and the room shared by me and my sister "Samia," and the somber dining room.. with its heavy chairs and its long table.. and that enormous mirror with its gilded frame covering the wall.. I was born.. and grew up.. and found it in that room.. Why they put it there.. I do not know. Perhaps so that the eater might see himself in it and give up some of his habits.. lighten the stuffing of his cheeks, for instance. Or not thrust out his tongue like a chameleon, wrapping it around the food while it is still on the fork..

And the great demon.. that black stillness.. slides every night down the banister of the wooden staircase covered with a plush carpet.. from the upper floor to the ground floor.. where there are rooms without number.. five of them made ready for receiving guests.. and one for taking music lessons

in. For there, beside my sister's "piano," stands a porcelain table bearing the "violin" in whose embrace — or with it in mine — I forget the world and everyone in it. They also placed there a soft sofa and two chairs for our teacher..

Our darling.. that room.. we love it more than our bedroom, where our books and our toys are.. and collections upon collections of pictures of the actresses and actors we had taken a fancy to. But the music room is the apple of our eyes and the core of our hearts.. Being denied it inflamed our attachment to it, for my mother allows us no romping about the house except by a set order.. We enter the music room for one hour in the afternoon, for practice only.. But.. can that stern command suffice.. and those generous palms that rain down upon the arm of whichever of us disobeys — to hold back two little she-devils of ten and thirteen years?..

No.. by God.. Like the legend of the ghoul who allowed his captive to look through all his palace save one room he forbade her.. so she worked the impossible and opened that one too. So it was with us.. we schemed by every path, every device, every riddle.. We wait for the night, the darkness, the blackness.. and slip out of our room.. in each of our palms a slender candle, by whose light phantoms dance upon the walls, and each one's features look deathly yellow, like the dead, in her sister's eyes.. terrifying features that play and merge into one another like a picture in water.. and drops of melted wax fall upon our fingers and sting them.. and we moan in silence.. like conquering raiders enduring horrors for the sake of the raid. And we begin the descent from the upper floor.. and the old staircase groans, and its protests