“It is a story of pain. Dark nights act it out within the breast of the woman who finds her body chained to the bed of a man she knew as a husband before ever she knew the meaning of marriage. She sees her spirit fluttering around another man whom she loves with all the love that is within her spirit and with all the purity and beauty that is within love. It is a fearful struggle that began when weakness began in woman and strength in man. It will not end until the days of the servitude of weakness to strength have ended. It is a terrifying war between the corrupt laws of men and the sacred affections of the heart. Yesterday I was driven into this battlefield and nearly died of fear, nearly melted away in tears, but I stood up and cast off the timidity of the daughters of my kind. I freed my wings from the bonds of weakness and submission and rose in flight through the air of love and freedom. Now I am happy, near this man. He and I came out from the hand of God as a single spark before the ages began. There is no power in the world able to deny my happiness, for it arose from the embrace of two spirits linked by mutual understanding and overshadowed by love.”

Mistress Rose looked at me thoughtfully as though her eyes could tear open my breast to see the affect of her words on my emotions and hear the echo of her voice within me. I remained silent lest I stop her from talking. Once again she spoke, now in a voice balanced between the bitterness of memory and the sweetness of emancipation and freedom.

“People will tell you that Rose al-Hani is an unfaithful and treacherous woman who followed the lust in her heart, that she abandoned the man who raised her up to be the mistress of his house. They will tell you that she is an adulterous whore whose polluted hands destroyed the holy diadem of marriage woven for her by religion, that she has taken in its place a filthy crown woven of thorns of hellfire. She has stripped the robe of virtue from her body and put on the clothes of sin and dishonor. They will tell you even more than that, for the ghosts of their ancestors still live in their bodies. They are like empty caves in the valleys, returning the echoes of voices, not understanding their meaning. They do not know the law of God in his creatures. They do not understand the true significance of religion. They do not know when man is astray or righteous. With their small eyes they look upon the exterior of acts but do not see their mysteries. In ignorance they judge and in blindness they condemn. The guilty and the innocent, the righteous and the wicked, are the same to them.