Diary of a Seventy-Year-Old Girl

Here we were, here we played, there we stayed up late, and that jasmine under our western window, and the glass veranda is still as we left it carrying our memories between its walls, and its windows open to the city echoing our songs and our muwashshahat, and hearing the echo of our laughter, whispers and conversations, and my mother’s stories that she never tires of, and the poems and verses she memorized, and the anecdotes and jokes of Abu Nawas, Harun al-Rashid and his wife, Sitt Zubaydah, and the jokes and laughter of your uncle Omar, and the melodious voice of Samiya in the muwashshahat and old adwar, and our collective Fairuz songs with harmonious voices: The nights of the past have returned.. Our families have returned.. The beloved ones of the past have returned to control us.. Oh, what a time, oh what a time.