The Distinguished Address Delivered by His Excellency Emile Bey Lahoud at the Arab Orphan Celebration at the American University

I thank the Arab Orphan Committee for having allowed me to slip away, if only for a brief spell, from the atmosphere of government — with its rancor when it is firm, its debasement when it slackens, and the resentment of half the people when it is just — and for having granted me release from the world of dry figures into the world of feeling and sentiment: the noblest feeling and the loveliest sentiment, the feeling of compassion for one who has lost all compassion, and of tenderness toward one who has been denied all tenderness — 'the orphan.'

Then I thank the American University for having opened a generous heart and stretched out an openhanded hand to the committee's pious work: a lovely requital toward a nation that opened its heart to a noble mission and its mind to a strong culture.

I return to the orphan, and I picture the holiday bells ringing while the people hasten to their places of worship, then come back to their homes to watch over their little ones — warming themselves at the fire, playing with dolls, eating sweets, decked out in trinkets; hearts doting upon them, bosoms bending over them, eyes and gazes fixed upon them; theirs the soft bed, the fresh and blooming life, the abundant happiness. All creation delights in its holidays save one, whose mattress is the dust, whose blanket is the sky, who wraps himself in rags; his falling asleep is to the moaning of pain, not to a mother's song; his lodging is on a breast of stone, not on a breast of tenderness. He warms himself at the ember of his own disease and feeds on the dust, groping with his hands, his lip pressed against the feet of the passersby; he feels about for an udder, and his mouth snatches at the leavings of the beasts. He falls ill and no one treats him; he suffers and no one consoles him; he hungers and is not fed; he thirsts, without even a mouthful of water. No mother to be tender to him, no father to show him affection.

The world — and nothing in the world is his. His eyes hang upon the heaven that intended the earth to be a watering place for every living thing; yet from the earth he has met nothing but misery and wretchedness, hunger and nakedness, pain and disease.

That is the orphan.

The orphan who has lost everything: the wellspring of compassion, the source of tenderness, the object of hope — as though he had never been cut from any heart nor drawn from any inward being! People scatter gold in heaps upon their appetites, while he finds nothing but dust to feed his hunger.

People fashion diamonds into ornaments for their throats, while he cannot ward off the cold with worn-out tatters.

People strew ambergris and musk as perfumes upon their bodies, while he has not even dried grass as a remedy for his ailments and afflictions.

Have you seen that wasted frame, its bones to be counted one by one, the light passing through it from one side of the skin to the other? That is the specter of the orphan.

Have you heard those gasps that fever sends up, sighs of complaint from the darkness of the earth to the Lord of heaven? Those are the moans of the orphan.

Or have you glimpsed a phantom that, when it walks, creeps upon the ground, and when it draws itself upright, drags its feet along the earth from weariness? That is the living dead — that is the orphan.

Creation has a Creator, and the earth and heaven have a Lord, who breathed of His spirit into all His creatures. If the hungry man is not fed, the distressed not sustained, the naked not clothed, the sick not consoled and the despairing not comforted — if no hand is stretched out to the orphan, who is the hungry, the distressed, the despairing, the sick, and the naked one — that is a denial of God's creation like the denial of God Himself.

And this committee, which devotes its care to the orphan, whose members strip from their own hearts' core a mother's tenderness and draw from their hearts a father's compassion, and stretch out a generous, openhanded hand to the orphan — it is doing a work of charity and of faith that brings man nearer to perfection: a work of morals, of religion, and of society.

Did not Christ the Lord liken the love of Himself to love of the orphan, when He said that the commandment is to feed the poor hungry man and to console the sick? For He said in His holy Gospel: If you would win the Kingdom, go, sell all that you possess, and give it to the poor.

And is it not related in the saying of the noble Prophet, God's blessing and peace be upon him: All mankind are the dependents of God, and the most righteous of them in His sight is the most just of them toward His dependents?

The committee that holds this celebration — its work does not stop at men's thanks: it has its reward with God. And those who deal kindly with God's creatures are dealing kindly with God Himself.

And the Lebanese government, from whose appointed portion this committee takes its share, can do no less than clasp this openhanded hand and bless this noble sentiment.

Do not believe a man when he speaks of himself: for if he is wretched, he lies to you that you may pity him; and if he is happy, he lies to you that you may glorify him.

(Shenstone)