Then she was quiet for a moment and smiled happily. Her face brightened as if she had discovered something, and quietly she said, “Give me my child; bring him close to me and let me see him dead.”

The doctor carried the dead child to Selma and placed him between her arms. She embraced him, then turned her face toward the wall and addressed the dead infant saying, “You have come to take me away my child; you have come to show me the way that leads to the coast. Here I am my child; lead me and let us leave this dark cave.

And in a minute the sun’s ray penetrated the window curtains and fell upon two calm bodies lying on a bed, guarded by the profound dignity of silence and shaded by the wings of death. The doctor left the room with tears in his eyes, and as he reached the big hall the celebrations was converted into a funeral, but Mansour Bey Galib never uttered a word or shed a tear. He remained standing motionless like a statue, holding a drinking cup with his right hand.

* * * * * * * * * *

The second day Selma was shrouded with her white wedding dress and laid in a coffin; the child’s shroud was his swaddle; his coffin was his mother’s arms; his grave was her calm breast. Two corpses were carried in one coffin, and I walked reverently with the crowd accompanying Selma and her infant to their resting place.

 

 

Arriving at the cemetery, Bishop Galib commenced chanting while the other priests prayed, and on their gloomy faces appeared a veil of ignorance and emptiness.

 

 

As the coffin went down, one of the bystanders whispered, “This is the first time in my life I have seen two corpses in one coffin.” Another one said, “It seems as if the child had come to rescue his mother from her pitiless husband.”

 

 

A third one said, “Look at Mansour Bey: he is gazing at the sky as if his eyes were made of glass. He does not look like he has lost his wife and child in one day.” A fourth one added, “His uncle, the Bishop, will marry him again tomorrow to a wealthier and stronger woman.

 

 

The Bishop and the priests kept on singing and chanting until the grave digger was through filing the ditch. Then, the people, individually, approached the Bishop and his nephew and offered their respects to them with sweet words of sympathy, but I stood lonely aside without a soul to console me, as if Selma and her child meant nothing to me.

 

 

The farewell-bidders left the cemetery; the grave digger stood by the new grave holding a shovel with his hand.

 

 

As I approached him, I inquired, “Do you remember where Farris Effandi Karamy was buried?”

 

 

He looked at me for a moment, then pointed at Selma’s grave and said, “Right here; I placed his daughter upon him and upon his daughter’s breast rests her child, and upon all I put the earth back with this shovel.”

 

 

Then I said, “In this ditch you have also buried my heart.”

 

 

As the grave digger disappeared behind the poplar trees, I could not resist anymore; I dropped down on Selma’s grave and wept.

 

 

 

 


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