A Friend's Letter; Exile and Home

A Friend's Letter

You are my dear friend's dear letter! What electric thing is it that fills you and sets my heart pounding? Why do my hands begin to tremble when I open you? After all, what is your superiority over other papers? You are a piece of paper, and they are pieces of paper too; why, they are bigger than you. Yes, the ground of your pride and pre-eminence is, isn't it, that my friend wrote you, and with lips reddened by betel, ah, with lips reddened by betel, sealed the envelope? Certainly, certainly, that is a very great pre-eminence. Very well, I shall examine you and give you marks, out of a hundred. Let me see how many marks you get.

For being touched by those hands: forty.

For being chosen out of a whole quire of paper: fifty.

Those lips sealed the envelope: seventy.

What! You have got more than a hundred marks. No, this examination has not gone properly; the count must be made another way.

For being chosen for me, and not chosen for anyone else: sixty.

For bearing the writing of that pen: forty.

For having that face reflected on you, since my friend says this letter was written at night: five hundred.

What? More than a hundred again? This won't do. Very well, a third examination.

For bringing the good news of my friend's health and happy spirits: eighty.

For being under orders to be torn up: ten thousand.

What's this? The marks have gone over a hundred yet again.

No, no! I will not go on with a useless effort. You are above examination, beyond comparison, free of the bonds of contest and measurement: my dear friend's dear, dear, oh, how can I show how dear a letter you are! You will be pressed to my breast. You will be kept from the eyes of strangers; but (God forbid!) you will not be torn up. You will stay safe with me, and I shall read you thousands of times in lonely corners.

Exile and Home

Rashid is sitting at his writing table, his head resting on his right hand, lost in thought. The light of the lamp falls on his face and shows that although in the city (the city where Rashid is passing his days of exile with a strange mixture of affection and restlessness), although in that city silence reigns at this hour, in his heart a storm of thoughts is raging.

All around is silence and darkness. Only in the room the clock goes tick... tick... tick. The dog in the lane barks. In the next room the servant, his day's work done, is sound asleep (the reward of a life of toil!), and the sound of his snoring comes all the way here. Rashid, worn out by his thoughts, gets up and begins to pace the room in great agitation, talking to his own heart.

"Exile is better, where a new world, a new sky, new scenes are before one's eyes.

"No, home is better, where old friends, old companions, familiar voices and familiar faces are heard and seen.

"No, exile is better, where every experience is new, everything is new; two men who meet are like two rivers that flowed apart till now and here have their confluence.

"No, home is better, where old friends are like two plants that sprang up and grew entwined together.

"No, exile is better, where at least there are no enemies dressed as friends and strangers wearing familiar faces whom one has to entertain. Where a stranger meets you saying plainly, 'I am a stranger,' and a friend, ah! if not a friend, parts from you at least as an acquaintance.

"No, home is better, where you do not meet people who stir neither love in the heart nor memories of days gone by.

"No, no! Without a friend neither exile is good nor home; and with a friend... ask that of the fortunate ones who are remembered."

Rashid drops into an easy chair and is lost again in silent thought. Then every little while he writes something with a pencil on a scrap of paper.

It was a *ghazal* born of restlessness, which, to calm his mind, he goes and plays on the harmonium standing in the corner. [TN: ghazal, a lyric poem of rhymed couplets.]

*Ghazal*

My lips were made for sighs and lamentation;
My breast is given over to a hidden burning.

One complains of the age, another of the heavens;
All our complaints are for our own kind friend.

My friend's neglect will be the death of me;
For one half-dead, a single look withheld is enough.

You have searched out and practised them all on me, my friends,
So that no way of cruelty is left for the sky.

Whenever the taunts of my enemies paused a little,
My own dear ones used their tongues as spears.

Do not thunder and flash, O lightning; what good is it?
A single spark was enough for this nest.

Give me, O misfortune, the share that is mine,
Even if the whole world has its pleasures.

The garden has no memory of the nightingale torn from it,
Yet in her cage she pines for the garden.

O exile, I'll own your power when you make me forget my home:
The love of home is a sickness of my soul.

The window of the house opposite opens, and Rashid's neighbour speaks in the language of that city:

"Mr Rashid! Perhaps today some great good news has come from your home. Although I don't know what it is, I congratulate you." (And with a slightly reproachful smile:) "But one shouldn't celebrate in the middle of the night."