The girl embraced him and kissed his lips, drinking the hot tears. In a voice softer than the reed-flute’s song, she said, “I saw you, my beloved, in dreams. I saw your face in my solitude and isolation. You are the companion of my soul who was lost, the fairer half of me that was separated when it was decreed I should come into this world. I have come in secret to meet you, my love. Now you are in my arms, so do not grieve. I have forsaken my father’s wealth to follow you to the ends of the earth, to drink with you from the cup of life and death. Rise, my love! Let us go to a wilderness far from men.”

The two lovers walked among the trees, hidden by the veils of night, fearing neither the wrath of the Emir nor the phantoms of the dark.

There, on the edges of the city, the Emir’s scouts came upon two human skeletons. Around the neck of one was a golden necklace. Near them was a stone on which these words had been inscribed:

“Love has united us, so who can separate us? Death has taken us, so who can bring us back?”

THE BELOVED

FIRST SIGHT

It is the moment dividing the scent of life from its wakefulness. It is the first spark lighting the recesses of the soul. It is that first magical note plucked on the strings of the lyre of the human heart. It is a brief moment retelling to the soul’s ear tales of bygone days and revealing to its visions deeds done by night, making plain to its eye the acts of ecstasy in this world and the mystery of eternity in the world to come. It is a seed throw from on high by Astarte. The eyes sow it in the field of the heart, the emotions tend it, and the soul brings it to fruit. The first sight of the beloved is like the spirit that moved on the face of the waters, from which flowed forth the heavens and the earth. The first sight of life’s companion echoes God’s words, “Let there be. . . ”

FIRST KISS