from table to sofa.. She has come to prefer a book to me — I, her companion.. She reads in it for moments, then clasps it to her in rapture, her head thrown back on the rest of her chair. And when she hears someone calling her she hides it, like a precious treasure, between the mattresses of the bed. I do not know.. what is this that she reads?.. that she keeps reciting so.. morning and evening.. every free moment she can steal from her day?.. It must be the Quran.. What business is it of mine?

And this sister of mine bewilders me. She was natural a year ago. But now she has changed.. She forgets me while I am with her.. is blind to my glances as though I were not there. She stands for hours before the mirror, feeling an arm that is rounding.. or a thigh that is filling out.. then with a trembling hand she pulls out her hairpins and it pours down in a flood over her shoulders.. And I stand agape, watching her and marveling at her doings. She takes off her clothes piece by piece.. she truly comes out of them like a rose shedding its withered petals to burst open from its heart.. splen-did, glittering. Even her shoes she kicks from her feet.. and she quivers, and goes bending with grace and dancing as the butterfly flies from a flower whose nectar it has sipped to another that it kisses lightly. Then she takes hold of the train of an imaginary gown and turns and bows and salutes people who applaud her.. whom I do not see.. but who, it seems, are forever demanding that she repeat her display. For she soon smiles winningly and answers their request with ardor.. and rises upon the tips of her slender toes in a poetic dance for a while.. then plunges, her hair streaming wild, spinning.. and spinning about herself with violence.. with.. with savagery.. She must be fevered.. or bent on wearing out her strength.. She

dances and dances.. until her body beads over with drops of sweat that glisten upon it as though she wore a gown of pearl sprays.. and she keeps turning, and turning.. stamping a foot upon the floor and clapping sharply.. a frenzy.. accompanying her dances until the beads of sweat run down in fine threads. And my sister turns and turns.. until I can no longer make out her face through the flying black storm.. which is her hair.

And pity fills me and I grieve for her in my secret heart when I see her flung upon the floor, gulp-

ing the air with her open mouth as though her nose could not serve her.. like our red fish, which never wearies, in its glass bowl, of working its jaws like a bellows.. What ails this girl?.. No matter.. no playing now.. So I go to my toy corner and pull out the only sound doll of my strange collec-tion, which includes a lame one, a blind one, and a one-armed one. I pull out my sound doll, over which we always quarrel and which I refuse every time to let my sister play with.. and I offer it to her of my own free will. But she does not sense me.. does not look

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