Why are we given, then deprived?! Why are we granted happiness, then forced to leave it?! Why do we glimpse the light, only for it to fade at evening?!

This is my story.. It might be an ordinary story, were there not in my life a thin line along which I walk between life and death, between day and night... between light and darkness.

My life was divided into three Sundays, and I had no hand in the dividing!

I was eleven years old when my tragedy began. It was a Sunday, and I had gone with my parents on our weekly outing.

My father hired a taxi to take us out of the city. When our trip brought us to the narrow roads that separate our village from the city, my mother began singing old songs which I hated for their monotony — though I cannot deny that I learned those songs by heart from hearing them so often; but I never once sang along with her...

Suddenly the singing broke off, and the horn of a great motorcar blared as it drew near us; and in a few short seconds the terrible collision took place, after which all things visible vanished — I could no longer see or feel anything..

I learned afterward that the collision had been so violent that it wiped out the very outlines of the car. And little by little I learned what was worse than this: that I had become an orphan... alone.

To this day I do not know why I shed no tears over the loss of my parents, though I had loved them both. Was it because of my young age, and how little I grasped the truth of things?!

I felt oppressed by myself and by that dark room, and I supposed the blackness around me came from the drawn curtains and from my grief; and I began calling out, at the top of my voice, all the names I

knew, hoping thereby to strike upon a name that had some echo in that desolate place.

At last I heard light, quick footsteps drawing near, and knew from them that it was the nurse. I asked her to let the light into my room, but she answered, in a manner full of astonishment, that it was nine in the morning and the curtains of the room were open. I did not want to admit to myself that I could not see.

So I fell to rubbing my eyes, hoping the darkness would depart...

Then I pulled the cover up over my head, as though by that I could hide the painful truth from myself. I felt a violent fear eating away my nerves piece by piece, as though all the devils had gathered in my room and in my body; and I left the bed out of fear of my loneliness and of myself, and began feeling my way along the wall with my hand. In the corner of the room I sat down, and felt my fear ebb away little by little, once I had found something strong to shield my nerves.. And I took the corner for a fortress from which I hurled my wrath at every visitor and at everything my hands could reach.

I would fling the plates of food at the nurse and at the doctor. My wrath against the nurse grew when one day she brought me a cane, meaning to help me walk with it; I flung the cane in her face and fell to cursing her and cursing her calling; and when she had gone out I wept over my loneliness and my insulted dignity. God! How a person changes?! And far be it from my soul to fling anything but wrath.

Six years went by, which I spent in the convent growing used to blindness... The nuns treated me kindly, and I was the youngest blind person in the convent. Then one day little Layla came to our convent, and I hated her the day she came, because after her I was no longer the youngest blind one in the convent. Days passed in which I grew used to her being with me, and my admiration