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

But only the wind blowing from the mountains of Najd brought a breath of faith from a lonely man, or drove a cloud across, whose rain was, for Layla, a greeting from afar.

Sometimes, when no one was awake, the fountains of the moon made her step outside. There she stood, her eyes fixed on the path, waiting for whom?

With whom else could she talk about the thoughts which filled her heart? At night she told the secret to her shadow. She lived between the water of her tears and the fire of her love, as if she were a Peri, a fairy, hovering between fire and water.

Like Majnun, ever since their separation, she also burned in the fire of longing; but her flames were hidden and no smoke rose from them. Layla, too, had her 'mirror of pain' like the one which the doctor holds in front of a dying man's mouth to see whether a breath of life still clouds the glass; but Layla's mirror was her own soul which in her loneliness she questioned about her beloved.

Her body was like a cypress tree on which the pheasant of her face was sitting in majesty. Hundreds of lost hearts had already fallen into the well of her dimples, but our beauty took pity on those who had lost their footing and threw them her tresses as a rope to the rescue. So powerful was the spell of Layla's beauty.

A flower was Layla's face; anyone who looked at her, fell hungry for the honey of her lips and turned beggar for her kisses; but her eyelashes refused to give alms, and said, 'May God grant you what you desire, I shall give nothing.

In the meantime Layla had grown daily more beautiful. The promise of the bud had been kept by the blossom. Half an enticing glance from her eyes would have been enough to conquer a hundred kings; she could have plundered Arab or Turk, had she wanted.

Even if people heaped abuse and shame on him, they could find no fault in his verses.
Many came from near and far to hear the minstrel in his mountain retreat. Listening eagerly and loving what they heard, they wrote down his poems and took them away to the farthest horizons. Some became lovers themselves.

Even the old donkey does not throw down its burden before death takes it away. Why then should it fear death? You warned me, father; but what lover goes in fear of the sword? A man in love does not tremble for his life. He who searches for his beloved is not afraid of the world. Where is this sword? Let it smite me, as the cloud has swallowed my moon.

'Man, if he laughs at the wrong time, will fare no better; he will regret with tears that he laughed too soon.'