Zeyneb.
CHAPTER III
BEWILDERING EUROPE
What a curious thing it was I found so much difficulty in answering Zeyneb’s letters. To send anything banal to my new friend I felt certain was to run the risk of ending the correspondence.
She knew I was in sympathy with her; she knew I could understand, as well as any one, how awful her life must have been, but to have told her so would have offended her. Most of the reasons for her escape, every argument that could justify her action, she had given me, except one; and it was probably that “one” reason that had most influenced her.
In due time probably she would tell me all, but if she did not, nothing I could do or say would make her, for Turkish women will not be cross-examined. One of them, when asked one day in a Western drawing-room “how many wives has your father?” answered, without hesitation, “as many as your husband, Madame.”
Zeyneb had once told me that I succeeded in guessing so much the truth of what could not be put into words. She had on one occasion said “we never see our husbands until we are married,” and a little later “sometimes the being whose existence we have to share inspires us with a horror that can never be overcome.” Putting these two statements together, I was able to draw my own conclusions as to the “one” reason.... Poor little Zeyneb!
It seemed to me from the end of her letter, that Zeyneb would have been grateful had I said that I approved of her action in leaving her own country. To have told her the contrary would not have helped matters in the least, and sooner or later she was sure to find out her mistake for herself.