The story of Qismet is an antidote to fairy tales such as "Sleeping Beauty" in which only the marriageable suitor can give a young woman life.  In older versions of "Sleeping Beauty," Beauty lies limp and voluptuous in a death-like sleep as her prospective suitors rape her in turn.  Only the rape of the properly marriageable suitor can fill her with life.  The image of the passive feminine being given life by the active masculine is common enough across cultures.  I'd like to make some bitterly humorous, yet somehow appropriate, wild thematic associations.  Beauty's story reminds me of needlessly sexist interpretations of the Qur'anic tablet and pen in which the woman is a pure, feminine, receptive tablet waiting for the man's masculine pen of life to write on her.  How much that is like Rolf's words to Liesel in their romantic duet from "The Sound of Music":  "You wait little girl on an empty stage for fate to turn a light on.  Your life little girl is an empty page that men will want to write on."  "To write on....." Liesl repeats dreamily.  If we have learned anything from "The Sound of Music," shouldn't we understand danger of this sort of romanticism since Rolf turns out to be a Nazi?  --Laury Silvers

Qismet's childhood was spent on the beach. Every afternoon a herd of the village's children descended upon the soft white beach with their buckets, buried each other in the sand, ran in and out of the water like lemmings, and built sandcastles with high walls and fat towers. They carved pillars mimicking the marble pillars of the Greeks; made defensive moats around their fortresses; and the more architectural ones fortified the structures with large stones and plastic. Once the castles would be complete each group of children would remain within the territorial limits of the castle, protectively encircling their structure, jealously guarding from the vandalism of the other groups. Sometimes competing factions launched harmless objects at each other's castle but usually the fortifications were enough to withstand the attack. At any given afternoon more than eight or ten groups of children dotted the beach with various children rummaging over, inside and around each castle. Each afternoon a community of castles arose only to be washed out by the high-tide that struck after sunset.