It was many centuries ago, long before industries and cities found their way to our shores, that a farmer named Yisan took the woman Yekara as his wife. She was young and lovely, but also ill and suffering, and found her way into Yisan’s both from her frail charms and her pleas of compassion and sympathy.

Yekara was by no means a hard-hearted woman, and Yisan grew to adore her for her clam and gentle nature. She would go on to respond with smiles and pleasant words, even as her health continued to decline and cause her great pain. It was suspected that Yekara was perhaps robbed of the energy one needed to gather if one wished to feel bitter.

The sickly woman finally fell pregnant after several years of marriage, and it was cause for celebration. All the members of Yisan’s and Yekara’s families gathered to mark the occasion, and there were many smiles and pleasant words. But it became known soon afterward that young Yekara, who could only just bear her illness alone, could not do so for the sake of a child. Her health declined at an ever faster pace, and passed on to the great dismay of her families and friends.

Undoubtedly, widowed Yisan grieved more than anyone else, and from the time of Yekara’s tragic death onward exchanged no smiles or pleasant words with any of his neighbors. His pain grew and flourished in his stomach, and he himself grew to be a very bitter man.

Yisan would remain a bitter man for many, many years, isolated from his families and friends by choice. If I am not to have Yekara at his side, he would say to himself, I wish for no one to fill her space. And so he spent many, many years alone.

The day would come when a knock sounded at his door, and Yisan answered to find a young beggar of a woman shivering at his doorstep. She humbly requested something warm to drink and a square of floor space to sleep for the night, and was met with a bitter, bitter scowl.

Yisan demanded to know what right she had to request such things, if she knew what he had to bear, and commanded her to leave his sight. She did so, but with a heavy heart.

The poor farmer would fall asleep that night only to be robbed of rest by a nightmare. Young, sweet Yekara, untouched despite her death, visited him with the heavy heart of a beggar. She cried out and spoke of needing food, drink, and rest, and also of being turned away by her own surviving husband. And Yisan understood with overwhelming regret.

When he awoke that morning, Yisan opened his eyes to his home in ruins and his farmland washed in a flood. A great storm flew over his lands while he slept and heard Yekara’s dreadful sobs, and Yisan understood at once with overwhelming regret the curse his love and bitterness had grown to be.