A Picture Every Month — Read This... and Go Back Where You Came From!

He... is a seller of mastic gum. Cares have left broad lines across his cheeks, and time has swept one side of his locks with a white brush, which has only added to the dignity of his bearing..

His permanent post is before his spread-out wares, and if you want to know his place exactly, he stands at one of the northern corners of the "Burj."

My friend told me about him as though she were relating a legend out of vanished ages... and I did not believe her, for I could not grasp the meaning of what she said; I had almost forgotten the legend, had I not passed by him yesterday!...

He was withdrawn in his corner, as though the din of the city had overwhelmed his senses and carried his spirit far away, leaving him silent — but for two eyes dancing in his pale face... And although I do not care for "chewing gum," I found myself holding out a coin to him and asking him to weigh me out its worth of his yellow grains... He paid no heed to the blazing gleam in my palm, but turned his face calmly, murmuring the customary phrase: "Your eyes' honor... welcome, welcome..." Then he wrapped up the yellow grains with faithful hands whose movement scattered awe and perplexity through my soul; nor was my perplexity wiped away by the phrase that followed my steps: "Enjoy it in health... may safety go with you."... And I did not know why gladness flooded over me, and my soul filled with a vigor that drove me to walk with fiery steps to my work... Nor do I know why there danced in my imagination, at that moment, the image of a plaque I had caught sight of just as I was about to enter the office of a director occupying a high post in the State, on which his honor had written, in broad letters, this sentence: "Read this, and go back where you came from."... And I remembered how I recoiled on the instant, as though stung from a serpent's hole..

Our age grows ever drier, and our anxious souls grow harder with the dawn of every day; what we need is breaths of fragrance with which to perfume away the anxiety in our breasts and the scowl on our faces; we need handfuls of dew whose flow will surge in our breasts and refresh the human being within us... Otherwise... we are marching with rapid steps toward dryness... and how easy it is to snap dry twigs!