Transformations

She is the groom's mother, and all the young women eye her imploringly hoping that she will select one of them as a bride for her next son or the one after.

She is the groom’s mother, strutting among women, dispensing candy and trilling cries of joy towards the sky, and eyes watch her steadily as she is the star of this place.
She is the bride, sitting (having been carried from her father’s house) in shyness next to her groom. She’s the one in the white wedding dress with all the young women watching her with envy. She is now the pearl of her time.
It is the house after days of the wedding are over, where the mother is irked by the bride's laughs through the windows of her bed chamber, and the mother is visited with penitence, because she chose for her son a bride whose laugh was like a horse neigh, a laugh she has never heard before since she said farewell to her youth.

Maria

Maria whom I got to know by chance took me to the heart of the city where the statue which blesses all lovers with boon stands. We think deeply about the statue and walk away, Maria and I, towards a restaurant with dim lights where a band of gypsies sing. I drink mature wine brewed by the peasant women, and feel sudden grief.
Maria tries to relieve me. She talks to me about her distant village house where she spends Sundays. Maria talks at the right time and remains silent at the right time, but grief does not leave me especially that Maria creeps into my heart with the nimble movements of a cat. We leave the restaurant, walk at leisure in the night streets and through the wide windows, peep out from time to time, men and women who have their own stories about which Maria and I know nothing.
The tram comes near. Maria decides to go back home until we meet the next morning. In the morning I waited for a while without seeing Maria’s golden diaphanous hair glimmering. I looked for her in the city pathways for a whole day, but could not find her to tell her of my desire to stay together –Maria and I for ever.

Details

She tells him about the members of her family while he attentively listens. Her mother, who is a widow, suffers from chronic colds and sneezes in all seasons. Her younger sister -who’s now fourteen- spends most of the time reading her school books, and occasionally goes to prayer. Her brother –who works at the cloth market- had fallen in love with a woman customer, but their love withered in few months. Her other sister studies philosophy at a remote college, she dreams constantly of a boy who would not deceive her. This is what she writes for her in her letters, and she counts on becoming an important writer.
She tells him about all details. She expressed her grief because the family rarely meets at dinner, and then she cries, reminiscing her father who died so early.
They separate. He feels sad because the woman who tells him all about her family would gave a broken heart if her mother dies suddenly, or if her younger sister fails in the exams, or if her other sister was a prey for a naughty young man.

The Stewardess

Things happen by an incident as in tales. He wakes up at the voice of the stewardess carrying a cup of coffee in her hands. He comments on her beauty which penetrates his heart. She blushes in happiness, for just a moment ago, she was bored and wished that somebody would converse with her sincerely. She was fed up with casual talks.
As the plane lands, he feels that the emotions formed up in the air do not necessarily survive the narrow corridors, the eyes of waiting people and the customs processes.
Waiting for his luggage, the stewardess comes to fetch her bag. She searches his face at length. She’ll go to the hotel awaiting a long night before the morning cruise.
Bewildered at the routine processes at the airport, he finds nothing but a few casual words to tell her. She leaves off. At home, amongst family members and friends- he wakes up at a painful sorrow because the eyes of the stewardess were brimmed with boundless bitterness.
Translated by: Izzat Ghazzawi and Claire Peak