Fariha’s Reviews > The Story of Layla & Majnun > Status Update

Just as Joseph came out of his pit, so the sun, a golden orange, ascends every morning from the hem of the horizon like a precious toy in the sky; yet every evening, exhausted and worn out by the day's labour, it sinks back towards the west into the deep well.

How happy this first flowering of love for Qays and Layla! But can such happiness last? Was not a shadow already falling over their radiance—even if the children did not notice it? What did they know about the ways and the laws of this world? They did not count hours or days, until suddenly disaster struck.

While all their friends were toiling at their books
These two were trying other ways of learning.
Reading love's grammar in each other's looks,
Glances to them were marks which they were earning.

Their minds were freed from spelling by love's spell,

They practised, writing notes full of caress;
The others learned to count—while they could tell,
That nothing ever counts but tenderness.

Together they had inhaled the scent of a flower, its name unknown, its magic great....

What could they have done against it? A bearer had come and filled their cups to the brim.
He who is drunk for the first time, becomes deeply drunk indeed. And heavily falls he who has never had a fall before.

But young Qays felt even more. He was drowned in the ocean of love before he knew that there was such a thing. He had already given his heart to Layla before he understood what he was giving away. And Layla? She fared no better. A fire had been lit in both—and each reflected the other.

To look at, she was like an Arabian moon, yet when it came to stealing hearts, she was a Persian page.

One day a beautiful little girl joined the group—a jewel such as one sees but seldom. She was as slender as a cypress tree. Her eyes, like those of a gazelle, could have pierced a thousand hearts with a single unexpected glance, yes, with one flicker of her eyelashes she could have slain a whole world.

When he was seven years old, the violet-coloured down of his first beard began to shimmer on his tulip cheeks and when he had reached his first decennium people told the story of his beauty like a fairy tale. Whoever saw him—if only from afar—called upon heaven to bless him.

A year went by and the boy's beauty grew to perfection. As a ray of light penetrates the water, so the jewel of love shone through the veil of his body.
Playful and joyful, he grew year by year—a carefully protected flower in the happy garden of childhood.