‘Come on, Hoda. Don’t rain on my parade. I’m a
grown-up now and I need to live according to a formula. I want to get married
and I want to have kids. Besides, we’re already engaged.’
‘But marriage isn’t supposed to be built upon a
formula.’
‘Sure it is. You and your husband Tarek have an
agreement. If he cheats on you, you look the other way.’
‘Yes, we have an agreement, and I may turn a blind eye
to his mistakes. But I know that he loves me as much as I love him, even more.
He treats me very well, and I love that.’
‘I’m going to love Sulayman, too. He’s great. I
understand him even more. I have no problem with marriage.’
‘There’s a big difference between loving someone and
accepting them.’
‘There’s a passageway between love and acceptance that
one has to keep open. Sometimes you don’t even notice that it’s open. And with
love, the other awakens something inside of you, something you nurture as much
as necessary. Just like a flower, and you know that it only lives as long as
you water it.’
‘What are you talking about? I can’t just decide how
much to water my love. Love is as irrepressible and as undammable as a raging
river. Maybe you’re talking about one kind of relationship. There’s
companionship and affection, but there’s a difference. The love that I’m
talking about comes with passion and dizziness, with lots of words, true
romance and real adoration.’
‘Look, Hoda. I don’t want to leave the window fully
open anymore, to let the curtains flap in the breeze. It’s true that if you
open a window the air gets a bit more pleasant, but everything can get all
messed up, all your stuff can get blown around. You might get cold, too. No,
I’d rather just open the window a little bit or else shut it and run the air
conditioning by remote control, to just sit here and feel safe. It’s much
easier when things are clearly defined, when you know exactly where you stand.
If you open the window just a little, you can count the stars, but you go out
under a vast sky, you can’t count them all, you get lost, you get all confused.’
‘But there are more beautiful things. If love leaves
you exposed under a vast sky, can’t you see how many stars there are up there?’
Alawiya Sobh, This thing called love (translated by Max Weiss), p. 207-208
