The Broken Wings

"I was eighteen years of age when love opened my eyes with its magic rays and touched my spirit for the first time with its fiery fingers, and Selma Karamy was the first woman who awakened my spirit with her beauty and led me into the garden of high affection, where days passed like dreams and nights like weddings."

In the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, this is a classic story of young lovers torn apart by family and class conflicts. Interlaced with subtle imagery and deep philosophy, Gibran creates a masterpiece of first love that beats desperately against the taboos of oriental tradition. With great sensitivity and lyricism, Gibran describes his passion as a youth for Selma Karamy, the beautiful girl of Beirut who first unfolded to him the secrets of love. But it is a love that is doomed by a social convention which forces Selma into marriage with another man.