The days went by. I worked nonstop, like a machine, making hurried love, cutting myself off from the life of the spirit. No reading. No writing. Living—reduced to daily encounters with universal blight, the filth and slime of overflowing sewers, and a beastly transportation system—lost all its joy. Examined during brief intervals of relaxation, with Tahiya close to me, my life seemed a calendar of days dwindling away in sterile mockery. It was in such an oppressive atmosphere that we exchanged endearments, buoyed by cautious daydreams, the life that pulsated in her womb playing on the strings of my hoped-for, dreamed-of success—though sometimes the dreams burned with wild anger, against shame and sin, with visions of fire destroying the old house and the fornicators in it. I could never have such visions, however, without feeling ashamed and self-recriminatory afterward. It’s quite true that my heart held not one speck of love for my father, but I had a sort of wavering compassion for my mother.

When I expressed this inner conflict, Tahiya said to me, “A secret gambling den is a crime in the eyes of the law, but the rise in prices is just as bad.”

“Would you be willing to have that go on in your house?” I asked.

“God forbid! But what I want to say is that there are people who, when they are in trouble, act like a drowning man and grab at anything to save themselves.”

I told myself that I was acting like that drowning person, even though I had committed no crime according to the law: to earn our bread, I had filled all my time with worthless work, and life in consequence had become a dry reed. Wasn’t that somehow criminal, too?

The days passed by, my agony increased, and some satanic power enabled me to give form to my innermost desire: sitting at the typewriter, I was suddenly overcome with a longing for freedom, for my lost humanity, and for my dissipated creativity. How could the prisoner break his chains? I pictured a world, a righteous world, with no sin, no bonds, no social obligations; a world throbbing with creativity, innovation, and thought, nothing else; a world of dedicated solitude, without father, mother, wife, or child; a world where a man could travel lightly, immersed in art alone.

Ah! What a dream. What kind of devil lurks in the heart that has consecrated itself to goodness? The image of my angel brought me remorse. I should feel mortally ashamed before that woman, who exudes love and patience. May God protect my wife and forgive my parents.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked. “You’re not listening to what I’m saying.”

I touched her hand tenderly. “I’m thinking about the new arrival and what we should have ready for him.”

One day, about to sit down at Amm Ahmad’s bar, I noticed a morose look on his face that portended bad news. “Are you all right, Amm Ahmad?” I asked.