Qabihah Talks About The Power Of Nerium
Dear Readers,
Dora, Lady Ware, has gotten enough of a chance to talk to you. She's been doing it for months now. Even that other creature, Helga von Wessel, has gotten her turn to address you. But until yesterday I never broke my silence.
I, Qabihah, am an Arabian witch. I have powers that other mortals do not possess. I have lived longer than almost anybody else. The powers of nature augment my own. If I could change myself into another living form, I would become nerium, known to the ancient Romans as the most powerful and oldest plant that grows along the shores of the Mediterranean all the way from Morocco and Portugal to Turkey and then eastward into Asia to the state of Sri Lanka and even Yunan southern China.
Mortals bow and quake before the bush where flowers grow in clusters at the end of each branch and bloom in white, pink, red, or yellow. They gasp when they see the 5-lobed corolla with the fringe round the central corolla tube. The distinctive sweet scent sends wise mothers indoors, carting their children and pets with them. And woe be to the horses and cattle that have to remain outside in its presence! They must fend for themselves or die. Even a wildfire that gets started near the all-powerful plant can poison them with its noxious fumes. And if a honey bee has landed on one of its beautiful but deadly pink blooms and carried the taint to another flower or plant and the cattle graze on that plant, their day has come.
When I walk through the bazaar in the city of Cairo where I live, I wear a nerium bloom pinned to my black abaya. Everyone knows it is I and they make way. They cringe back against the walls of buildings to let me pass. They flee down dark alleyways, fearing contact with the demon god Oleander, to give nerium its more popular name. Sometimes I am alone in the square in a city teeming with people.
When I die someday --- if a sorceress like me can even die, and at my age I wonder --- a nerium will bloom on my grave. I will need no other marker. People for ages to come will know who I am.
Always yours,
Qabihah
P.S. Read more about me in Dora, Lady Ware's, memoir called Hitler's Daughter.
Dora, Lady Ware, has gotten enough of a chance to talk to you. She's been doing it for months now. Even that other creature, Helga von Wessel, has gotten her turn to address you. But until yesterday I never broke my silence.
I, Qabihah, am an Arabian witch. I have powers that other mortals do not possess. I have lived longer than almost anybody else. The powers of nature augment my own. If I could change myself into another living form, I would become nerium, known to the ancient Romans as the most powerful and oldest plant that grows along the shores of the Mediterranean all the way from Morocco and Portugal to Turkey and then eastward into Asia to the state of Sri Lanka and even Yunan southern China.
Mortals bow and quake before the bush where flowers grow in clusters at the end of each branch and bloom in white, pink, red, or yellow. They gasp when they see the 5-lobed corolla with the fringe round the central corolla tube. The distinctive sweet scent sends wise mothers indoors, carting their children and pets with them. And woe be to the horses and cattle that have to remain outside in its presence! They must fend for themselves or die. Even a wildfire that gets started near the all-powerful plant can poison them with its noxious fumes. And if a honey bee has landed on one of its beautiful but deadly pink blooms and carried the taint to another flower or plant and the cattle graze on that plant, their day has come.
When I walk through the bazaar in the city of Cairo where I live, I wear a nerium bloom pinned to my black abaya. Everyone knows it is I and they make way. They cringe back against the walls of buildings to let me pass. They flee down dark alleyways, fearing contact with the demon god Oleander, to give nerium its more popular name. Sometimes I am alone in the square in a city teeming with people.
When I die someday --- if a sorceress like me can even die, and at my age I wonder --- a nerium will bloom on my grave. I will need no other marker. People for ages to come will know who I am.
Always yours,
Qabihah
P.S. Read more about me in Dora, Lady Ware's, memoir called Hitler's Daughter.
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