Just as a flower cannot develop without sunlight, so a human being cannot survive without love. Even if a person’s emotions are subject to frequent alterations, it can be difficult to forget someone you were once fascinated with. It is this same event of love where Kahlil Gibran falls in love with “Selma,” a beautiful and pretty girl and the daughter of Farris Effandi Karamy. The Broken Wings, a story by Kahlil Gibran, narrates this love story.
Lebanese-American author, poet, and visual artist Khalil Gibran is also regarded as a philosopher. He is well-known for his ethereal English and Arabic writings. He wrote numerous works, among which are “The Prophet,” “The Madman,” “Sand and Foam,” “The Secrets of Hearts,” and a few others. ‘The Broken Wings’ is a touching and heartbreaking love story set in an orthodox community that is rife with bad apples, particularly the religious clergy who use Islam as a weapon for personal gain.
Kahlil Gibran begins his story with a beautiful and poetic note about his love, saying, “When I was eighteen years old, the love opened my eyes with its magic rays and touched my spirit with its fiery fingers.”
An old man named Farris Effandi Karamy, an old friend of Kahlil’s father, unexpectedly arrives when Gibran goes to visit a friend’s home for a meeting on a day in the month of Nisan. His friend introduces him to Gibran as Farris Effandi Karamy and then, with endearing words, gives him Kahlil’s name. After much discussion, the old man insists that Khalil visit his home in Beirut. Farris is an elderly, kind, affluent, and kind man who lost his wife when Selma, his daughter, was a teenager. He invites Kahlil to his home to reminisce about his earlier days and the priceless times they shared with Kahlil’s father. After a few days, Khalil rents a carriage to go to the elderly man’s house where he meets the daughter Selma and falls in love with her.
Curiously, Selma also returns his love, affection, and interest. They start seeing one other frequently after falling in love. One of these evenings, Khalil is asked to dinner by Farris. When he arrives there for supper, he sits at the same table with Farris and his daughter Selma. After the meal is over, the Bishop’s courier abruptly arrives with his rattling carriage to pick up Farris Effandi and inform him that the Bishop wants to address an important matter with him. Farris tells Gibran to watch after his beautiful daughter until he comes back. Kahlil enjoys her company “in this isolated spot,” after being greatly surprised to hear this.
To take in the splendour of nature and the delicious scent of flowers, they go out to the garden. They hear the rattling of carriage wheels and horses gallop after an hour. Farris gets off his carriage and shows signs of being depressed, miserable, and pallid. He cries out, “My beautiful Selma, you will soon be whisked away from the arms of your father and into the arms of another man,” in a choked and dejected tone. The Bishop wants her to wed his nephew Mansour Bay Galib, who is known to be bad, broke, corrupt, and greedy. In fact, he is more egotistical, ill-mannered, and self-centered than his uncle. He likes girls, liquor, and all the sleazy things that go on in society.
Bishop Bulos Galib is also a strong man and the head of the local religious community who rules over the area, and Farris was unable to reject the proposal for his daughter because he understood that they lived in an orthodox society where it would be difficult for them to live peacefully if they showed even the slightest resistance to the demands of the religious clergymen. She regrettably becomes the victim of injustice when Mansoor Bay Galib, the Bishop’s nephew, marries her simply because of his father’s position.
After her marriage, Selma’s father passes away, and Mansoor Bay Galib, who was highly attracted to her father’s possessions but uninterested in her beauty and grace, usurps all of her father’s money. The story thus shows the pernicious religiously male-dominated conventions and practices in society, where they use religion as a ruse to exploit the weak women for their own fleeting interests. Additionally, the writer regretfully states in the book: “The heads of religion in the east are not satisfied with their own munificence, but they must strive to make all members of their families superiors and oppressors. The glory of a Prince goes to his eldest son by inheritance, but the exaltation of a religious head is contagious among his brothers and nephews. Thus the Christian bishop and the Moslem Imam and the Brahman priest become like sea reptiles who clutch their prey with many tentacles and suck their blood with numerous mouths”.
The author exposes patriarchal culture and society, in which it is challenging for a woman to control her destiny by entering into a marriage of her own free will and to get whatever she has a desire for. The story comes to a disturbing and moving end.
‘The Broken Wings’ is written in a very simple language with an alluringly lyrical style that captures the attention of readers and piques their curiosity. If you’re looking for some great reading, I advise you to go for it.

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Eyram Hamid Khan