When the night is spent and the relentless dawn overtakes us, you’ll return inevitably to the dreary room where there is no music, no ecstasy, where sad eyes and a wall of stone will close upon you. Then the chords of somber wisdom will ring out with reproaches as harsh as the dust of a sandstorm. Make your reply as resolute and final as your aversion.

“Don’t disturb me.” Deafen your ears to all words. “I said, don’t disturb me. This is the way I am, today, tomorrow, and every day….Accept matters as they are, and leave our daughter out of the quarrel.” “There is no point in arguing, I’ll do as I please.” And don’t back down if Buthayna asks why you’ve changed. “Think what you want, I’m too bored by it all to make excuses.”

The door opened and Warda emerged in all her splendor. “What do you think of me, sweetheart?”

He looked at her dazzled, and murmured, “Let me be a sentence never uttered by a tongue before.”

TEN

She sat facing him on the balcony that Friday, their holiday, and he reflected uneasily that he’d hardly seen her the past week. The rays of the sun crossed her lap and her legs and sparkled on the Nile beneath them. It was strange that he couldn’t remember her as a child, whether she was a devil like Jamila. Now she’s a beautiful girl, intelligent, studious, refined, poetic. Her resemblance to her mother as a girl he preferred to forget.

“You’re too serious for a poet!”

Jamila, who’d been standing at the entrance to the balcony, shouted defiantly, “A poet!”

He shook his finger at her, then turned to Buthayna, whose serious expression showed signs of displeasure. “You’re too thin, and your sister’s too fat. What do the two of you eat?”

Jamila shouted, “She eats.”

Umm Mohammed, the maid, carried off the protesting Jamila.

“Mama’s unwell,” Buthayna said.

“Mama’s all right. Tell me about you.”

“There’s nothing much to say, but Mama’s not all right.”

The chase never stops in this house. And you, Buthayna, does nothing concern you but poetry, math, and chemistry? Is God alone your lover?

“You don’t like to talk about Mama?”

“She no longer understands my illness.”

Their eyes met for a moment; then, defeated, he turned to look at the Nile.

“But the doctor, Papa.”

He interrupted her gently, trying to hide his exasperation. “I’m the doctor, no one else.”

“I’m sorry, but you’ve taught me to be open with you.”

“Of course.”

Suddenly a shrill little voice shouted, “Course!” He held the little girl’s arm until Umm Mohammed took her away again.

“Have we caused you irritation?”

“God forbid. But we tend to escape when we’re disturbed within ourselves.”

“She cries a lot and that’s very painful.”