The Athletic Festival at the Maqasid Girls' Colleges

The Islamic Girls' College held its athletic festival on Thursday, the eleventh of April 1946, on its own grounds. As soon as the appointed hour drew near, the field was thronged with the invited guests — distinguished ladies and some of the heads of educational institutions and academies, among others. The band struck up in welcome at their coming, and then began the general display by the school's pupils, who drew up in close, orderly ranks; their number exceeded four hundred girls from the elementary and secondary classes alone. No sooner had they sung the national anthem and saluted the Lebanese flag than the audience applauded with pride and exultation.

Then followed the games and the gymnastic exercises. The Swedish drill was the object of everyone's admiration, and the exercises of harmonized dance were no less moving to the soul.

As for the dance of the "slaves," that is, of the Negroes, it was the most astonishing of all: watching the performers at close range, we could fancy ourselves before a troop of African Negroes dancing and leaping, feathers stuck in their heads, girded with a kind of long fringe hanging down about their waists. Their movements, for all their fine harmony and precision, provoked laughter and stirred admiration for the skill of the little performers, and we would have gone on applauding them at length had the rain not cut us short.

Then we stood to watch a football match, and despite the falling rain one of the two teams carried off the prize.

And so the invited guests went out delighted with what they had witnessed that day of the charms of modern art, full of praise for the administration and for the ladies who had arranged that splendid festival.