The Fortieth-Day Memorial of Dr. Andraos Shakhashiri

The people of the town of Anfeh (Koura) bestirred themselves to hold a fortieth-day memorial ceremony for a great Arab departed, a free and striving citizen, who began the first fruits of his reform works in his own town and contributed, on the health, social, and literary sides, to raising its level and exalting its standing: the late Dr. Andraos Shakhashiri, who died in Cairo, Egypt, on the fourteenth of February 1946. To this end a committee was formed comprising the town's notables, which took upon itself the task of bringing the ceremony into being, and of laying the cornerstone of a house of preventive health to bear the dear departed's name and immortalize his memory. And when the appointed hour drew near — three o'clock in the afternoon of March 31 — the hall of the National Equality School, the institute that received a large share of the departed's efforts, was packed with invited guests from various Lebanese cities and villages. His Excellency the Minister of Health and Public Relief kindly placed the ceremony under his patronage, and delegated as his representative Dr. Wafiq Bey Baydoun, Director of Health and Public Relief.

At the appointed hour the ceremony opened with the Lebanese national anthem; then those present stood a minute in silence, in reverence to the departed's memory. Thereupon the speakers followed, each in his turn. First Mr. Jabr Jouhou spoke of the departed's upbringing, of his emigration as a youth to Brazil, and of the high qualities that adorned him and won him the love, the esteem, and the respect of all, friends and adversaries alike; and of how these merits accompanied him through every stage of his life — for alongside his loyalty to his friends he was a wise head of household, a faithful husband, and a good father, who strove with all the powers and gifts given him in the rearing of his family, the cultivation of his children, and the obtaining for them of an ample share of higher cultural education.

He was followed by the eminent Mr. Amin Bey al-Ghurayyib, who spoke of the departed Doctor "the man of letters," who knew his goal in life and knew the road he must cut to reach that goal. He was not content to travel toward it by way of medicine alone: the platforms knew him as an orator, the magazines and newspapers as a writer, and the literary world knew him in these excursions of his — and in every one of them is a line that immortalizes the efforts he made in the awakening of knowledge and its diffusion among the reading public.

Of the speakers, Mr. Salah al-Din Bey Beyhum was unable to attend, and he deputed Mr. Akram Bey al-Khalidi, one of the Palestinian strugglers, who delivered Mr. Beyhum's word on the departed "the social man," setting forth in it the effect of his numerous books, his articles, and his lectures on the various social diseases in the service of "the great Arab family."

He was followed by the eminent Dr. Fouad Bey Ghosn, who spoke of the departed "the physician," and carried memory back to the days of study at the University of Maryland, when the departed was a student receiving his medical learning on its benches, and to the gifts and traits by which he was distinguished and known. And how he remained faithfully attached, his whole life long, to the good oath he had sworn, and loyal to it. Nor did his devotion stop at the limit of treating diseases and curing them; it went beyond, to the call for wiping them out by acquainting people with the ways of preventing them. He was the first Arab physician to call for attention to the science of prevention, and he strove to spread it through the Arab world by way of authorship.

The close of the ceremony was the report of the responsible committee, delivered by Mr. Wahib Awda, after which the assembly proceeded to the ground prepared for the erection of the house of prevention, where Dr. Baydoun laid the cornerstone, in token of the government's adoption of the project. Then Dr. Zaki Shakhashiri, the departed's son, rose and thanked the Lebanese government, the physicians, and the friends who had taken upon themselves the toil of travel to take part in the ceremony.

A man who poured out his own self from an abundance of substance, and who believed that he held a trust of guidance toward the sons of his people which it was his duty to discharge — and discharged it in the fullest manner; and a father who encompassed his responsibility toward his family in its many aspects, planting in his children the seeds of love, of eagerness in the service of their surroundings, and of devotion to the raising of their nation's level, each according to his specialty — such a man is indeed worthy that his name be immortalized in the heart of every compatriot and friend.

Hayfa Nakhoul Darriq
Tripoli