Story of the Month — The Nun of the Workshop

At night she was alone — always alone — taking shelter in a modest room in one of the quarters of Beirut. She would lock its door from within and open it to no living soul!

In the morning — before feet and wheels grew thick — she would take her way to Sitt Nour's workshop in the capital, wait there for the sweeping-woman and help her set its things and implements in order, and begin work before the coming of the working girls.

Her eye was on her work — if questioned, she answered with gravity and precision, and she asked nothing unless her need of an answer pressed her to it.

And in the Beirut evening — turbulent and teeming, clashing and surging with goers and comers, spilling into the cafés and taverns, crowding at the doors of the talking-picture houses — she would cross that roaring sea to her room without a wave striking her, or a breeze stirring her, or a spatter of mud clinging to her shoes.

Her name was Najwa. Eighteen years of age. Her face dark and sunburnt, with a certain attractiveness and an ordinary beauty.

"Poor Najwa," her companions would say, "she would have done better to be a nun in a convent!"

— And he — was a poet known in literary circles, working as a writer on one of Beirut's papers, at a salary that assured him clothing and food. He was one of the youths of the surging sidewalks; a band of his comrades would gather round him when he left his work, and they their work and their schools, and off they would roam and frolic... their wanderings ending, most often, at the showing of a new film.

And how often they stood on the sidewalks to sift the girls passing by.

"This one is sweet — and this one comes with a big dowry — and that one's figure is like a lance — and that one is dark and the other fair..."

And if it chanced of an evening that Najwa passed — that worker in the making of hats — the poet's comrades would turn to him — they would turn to the pole of their circle, and one of them would say with swagger:

"We are picking out this girl for you as a sweetheart."

And another would say — seeing that she paid heed to no one: But she is difficult, it would seem.

And another would say, when she vanished without her eye straying from her path: This girl might be a nun!

His way ran past the workshop — he saluted its door morning and evening every day with a mechanical glance which, by force of habit, knew its way to two eyes within, which the onlookers scarcely sensed turning toward the door at the hours of going and coming.

And Sitt Nour — the owner of the workshop — would sit on a velvet seat, before a gleaming table, beside the entrance... Many a time she caught the straying glances of a young man, but she could not find her way to the target they struck.

"My life, how handsome he is," she said in some deep place within herself. And she asked about the lean, dark, attractive one, but not one of the girls of her establishment knew him. One of them said:

"We see him at times with a band of his friends on the road."

And another said in a bantering tone: Ask Najwa, madam; ask the nun — she knows more of the matter than all of us.

Then Sitt Nour turned to the girl absorbed in her work and asked her with disdain: Do you know him, Najwa?

And the nun of the workshop answered — answered with a word no one expected:

Yes! I know him, madam. He is a poet and a writer, and an editor on one of Beirut's papers. And her cheeks flushed as she finished, saying: And he is also our neighbor in the quarter.

At which a devil of a girl said: If Najwa does not know him, then which of the girls would you have know him?

He passed by the next day, and drew the eyes of the working girls — all but Najwa's.

And the owner of the workshop — famed for the abundance of friends she had among the upper class — seemed to wish to add him to the roll of her friends; so she stole his face with a camera, enlarged that stolen face, and set it in a frame in the hall of her lofty palace, seated like a mountain on the sword-edge of the sea. And she resolved to hunt him down whatever it might cost her.

Najwa fell ill.
For several days she failed to come to the workshop, and the poet's feet did not tread a single tread before the door. So the devilish girl said to Sitt Nour:
Did I not tell you, madam, that he loves her?
And Nour laughed, saying: No — it is that she is ill.
She is a nun. And a nun neither loves nor is loved.
"But then, why have his steps ceased before the workshop? Might not the bantering words hold their share of truth? Might not a nun love, and be loved?"
Yet Sitt Nour — saying this word in her secret heart — had never before that hour conceived that the being who deserved, in her eyes, to be hers, could belong to one of the working girls of her shop, so contemptible in her eye. And she felt pity for her workshop girl, since a young man of the modern, cultivated youth keeps company with a girl of the common people only to pass the time.

Riyad, the attractive poet, had placed his collection of poems on the printing press, scrimping to bring it out with a few counted coins that were no surplus over his daily necessities. But a weighty matter kept him from spending upon it — and the press needed the money to settle the workmen's wages.

Could Najwa's illness be that weighty matter?

And Najwa wished to sacrifice her happiness for the sake of one who was sacrificing his slender fortune for her recovery. So she said to him, when he visited her one day:

I possess nothing but a counsel; I fancy that with it I can repay you for your devotion and your kindness.

— What I do for you, Najwa, I do for myself. And does a man ask a reward for what he does for himself? But speak — I love that you should speak, that I may hear you speaking.

— For the sake of your collection standing at the press, I will point you to one who will undertake its completion.

— Point the way, my friend — but do not point me to one of those men who wait for me to say a word in their praise, that they may pay its price. I will not immortalize matter with thought, nor feed thought a crust at matter's table. Do not point me there, if it is one of those you mean!

— I point you to a woman, not to a man.

— Point me then, my friend — if you wish to be rid of me — to some girl of the dowried sort; you shall see me fleeing from them to you. To this very hour it is the heart filled with sincerity that wins me, not the coffer filled with money.

— I point you to a rich woman who gives for the sake of giving.

— Say it at last, Najwa!

— I point you to the owner of the workshop. She is a beautiful spinster who has cut her ties with life. And you poets sing of woman for nothing — so no harm if, for once, you console her at a price!

The bell rang at the kitchen, and the maid opened:
— Whose name shall I announce to my lady?...

And how great was the astonishment of the mistress of the palace, when her eye beheld the one she had beheld in her longings and her dreams.

And Riyad marked her astonishment — before he greeted her. And the talk between the poor poet and the rich lady ran long, and that talk — straying from the subject — led her to show him his portrait in her hall, and to let him glimpse her heart through the crack of the door.

Najwa found her health again, but she did not find her friend. And she knew what her mistress harbored for him.

And the owner of the workshop passed before the working girls, and when she reached Najwa she fixed her with a particular look; and the suffering girl, before her mistress's particular look, could do nothing but gasp and weep.
— What is it, Najwa? I have never seen you weeping until this hour. Come with me!

The two women withdrew into a room. And Najwa tried to dissemble before her mistress, but her tears betrayed her, and she said, sobbing so that her words broke:
I bought him, madam, with my heart — and I sold him for nothing.
— No. You have not sold the heart you bought, Najwa. Come with me to my house; I have made ready for you what you desire.

And the palace door opened. And the two women entered.

— Here is the girl you have loved, Riyad. As for me — I am the woman whose ill fortune willed that she be drawn into this corrupt society, where hundreds of hearts lay bared before her. Yet she has not found, to this hour, one heart that beats with her heart, nor one eye that trembles with her eye. I am the woman to whom not one of those who sought her ever said that he loved another — none but you alone. So permit me to be frank, as you are, in presenting you now with two drafts: the one to spend on the printing of your collection, and the other on your blessed wedding.

Riyad said:
Permit me, madam, to refuse your gift; money has all but turned me from my path, and what I need now is a heart, not money.

And Najwa said:
Were it money, I would have given it up to you, madam — but it is a heart, it is love.

The nun of the workshop lives today, with her husband, in her clean and modest house. She is the mother of several children. And many of the daughters of her sex remain spinsters still.

And the comrades of the poet — whose collection has not been printed to this day — still stand every evening on the sidewalks, sifting the girls passing by, each of them waiting to find a girl "rich in money and in beauty."

And that repentant Magdalene left her palace and her workshop and withdrew — she herself — a nun in a convent!