“I wish I were Najma,” says one, as he passes by, the jar of water on his shoulder. “Would you cement his brain, if you were?” puts in another.
And thus would they gibe and joke every time Khalid came to the spring with Najma’s jar. …
One day he comes to his uncle’s house and finds his betrothed ribboning and beading some new lingerie for her rich neighbour’s daughter. He sits down and helps her in the work, writing meanwhile, between the acts, an alphabetic ideology on Art and Life.
But as they are beading the vests and skirts and other articles of richly laced linen underwear, Najma holds up one of these and naively asks, “Am I not to have some such, ya habibi (O my Love)?” And Khalid, affecting like bucolic innocence, replies, “What do we need them for, my heart?” With which counter-question Najma is silenced, convinced.
Finally, to show to what degree of ecstasy they had soared without searing their wings or losing a single feather thereof, the following deserves mention. In the dusk one day, Khalid visits Najma and finds her oiling and lighting the lamp. As she beholds him under the door-lintel, the lamp falls from her hands, the kerosene blazes on the floor, and the straw mat takes fire. They do not heed this—they do not see it—they are on the wings of an ecstatic embrace. And the father, chancing to arrive in the nick of time, with a curse and a cuff, saves them and his house from the conflagration.
Aside from these curious and not insignificant instances, these radiations of a giddy hidden flame of heart-fire, this melting gum of spooning on the bark of the tree of love, we turn to a scene in the Temple of Venus which unfolds our future plans—our hopes and dreams. But we feel that the Reader is beginning to hanker for a few pieces of description of Najma’s charms. Gentle Reader, this Work is neither a Novel, nor a