A psychological shock after the disaster of the "Abu Ali" flood robs him of hearing and speech
Psychological treatment restores them... and the boy loses his memory!!
The story concludes in this issue
– 4 –
The problem in brief: In the last issue we left Ahmad in a state of turmoil and anxiety. He had fled from the Dawudiyya College in Abey when no more than a month had passed since his enrollment there... When he was searched for, he was found at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital, the government hospital in Beirut, and the Red Cross social worker hastened to his aid with the nurse Nihad Ghantous of Tripoli, who had taken great interest in Ahmad's case. Everyone was seized with anxiety over the fate of this youth, and they feared he might be swept into a life of vagrancy with the "night rats," the vagrant boys of his own age...
Where was Ahmad?... It appears that after his flight from the Dawudiyya, one of the nervous fits that struck him at times and left him as one bereft of his senses came over him in the street; and naturally, whoever found him unconscious in the street would carry him to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. At the hospital they revived him with stimulants, and when he came to he asked to return to Renée Arman; but they, following the rules, sent him under guard to the district police post so that a report could be drawn up on
the matter. At the post Ahmad claimed that he had lost the two liras that had been in his pocket, and since there was no further need to hold him and there was no charge against him, he was released after his statement had been briefly recorded... And so, when the Red Cross social worker arrived at the post with Nihad Ghantous, Ahmad had left about a quarter of an hour earlier, and no one could say where he was staying or where he had gone — and everyone's mind was troubled over him.
His reappearance a week later: The telephone rang in Miss Arman's house, a week after this incident, and on the line was none other than Ahmad! He spoke to her, asked after her, and told her he had gone back to the Dawudiyya... He met her at the Red Cross office, and Renée doubted the truth of what he said, noticing a certain trickery in his conduct and fabrication and lying in his talk — especially after she telephoned the Dawudiyya College in Abey and they denied having seen Ahmad or heard his voice since his flight a week before...
The Islamic College of Education and Instruction in Tripoli: The people of the Islamic Orphanage in Tripoli, and the head of the municipal police department there, had never ceased inquiring about him and asking for him. So when Miss Arman had satisfied herself of Ahmad's game-playing and his failure to keep discipline — and she had wearied of
pursuing him and watching over him to no avail — when this situation appeared to her in all its aspects, she put him in the Red Cross car and took him to Tripoli to study at the Islamic College of Education and Instruction, sleeping at the orphanage... At the college the administration accepted him on trial, on condition that it bear no responsibility if any waywardness appeared in him, or if he fled as before...
Ahmad flees again: Those concerned with Ahmad's case thought he had at last found safety, stability, and care; but his stay at the College of Education in Tripoli did not exceed one single day! On the second day the telephone rang in Miss Arman's house, and there was her brother telling her: Ahmad is here with him, weeping and wanting to beg
her