Every Month a Picture — Letters of Crystal

Every Month a Picture

The signature of "Emily" this time, as we notice, is longer than the one we knew before. Quite simply — she being a bride of the month — she has added her husband's name to her family name.. Yet she is still perplexed about the matter, and she would like to poll the readers on it: must a woman writer, the moment she marries, submit to tradition and change her name, or double its length?.. What do our readers think??

Ancient histories, reproaches to our grandmother Eve, and blame for our late grandfather Adam.. do not drive me to all that; listen instead to an old tale: the tale of the woman-wife:

In one of the moments of this existence, the hands of the clock moved slowly as they recorded the binding of a man and a woman, and the crowd held its breath as the priest raised his palm with its ten fingers, on two of which hung two rings of gold; and with a motion much like a magician's, the man of religion moved the two rings from the right-hand fingers to the left, and whispered, closing his eyes: We have become man and wife... Then everything grew still..

That is how the transition was for him. As for her, she saw beneath the ring a message on which her new name was written in invisible letters.

It would have been reasonable for her to feel the pang that "Farid Noun" felt; but she, my friend, felt the very opposite. She did not start, nor did dizziness overcome her; rather the strings of her heart trembled in song, and hope clapped its hands in her breast, and her eyes lit up when she saw the invisible letters grow larger and crystallize, and then settle down... in her heart..

It would be hard on you, my friend, to wake up one morning and find before you a mighty giant presenting you with a card on which is written in bold letters: "From now on your name becomes 'Farid al-Ma'na'" — when you are originally called "Farid Noun"... And you open your mouth to ask the meaning of all this, and see around you nothing but the magic card; whereupon you step up to the mirror to review your face in it, and find it just the same.. neither the mustache has changed, nor the nose and eyebrows; and the body you bundled up last evening in your nightshirt is still as it was... So what has happened, then?

That is how the matter looks to you, my friend. But for us, we of the weaker sex, the matter is decidedly different — and do not ask me now for the reason, for you might oblige me to consult