Solace in Our Homes

The New Arab Home

Let us place in our household program this necessary item for our new Arab home, for the preservation of our existence, and for keeping up the family bond between us and our men and our children.

Let us review the games current in homes and in the places of amusement, and select the most suitable and least harmful among them, so that we may train ourselves in them gradually and practice them in our leisure hours, our evening gatherings, and our family assemblies — both the intimate ones and those filled with a number of acquaintances and friends whose company cheers us and who are loyal to us...

The Pastime of Reading

The first pastime I recommend to my sisters, the housewives, is the acquisition of a library. By means of this noble pastime we pass from the tedious state that so often takes hold of us into a world other than the one we live in; our spirits revive at this sudden change, at the sight of the intellectual treasures set before us, and the curious information about people's homes, their customs, their manners, their inventions, and all those other matters that broaden our understanding and raise the level of our thinking. We then return to our work better fitted to face whatever adversities may arise — social, sanitary, or domestic.

Nothing is more conducive to happiness than a husband and wife joining in the reading of a single book once the day's duties are done and the little ones are asleep: they sit over its contents, and over the delightful meanings it has suggested to her from between its pages... And so they take up book after book, exchanging thoughts and opinions on what they read, until in the end they arrive at a single point of view and a mutual understanding in nearly all matters... And without such understanding, can a family be happy?

The Pastime of the Radio

In recent years another pastime, the like of which the ages never dreamed of, has come to us: the radio — that marvelous instrument of art which, had it been available to our forefathers, would have widened their understanding and amended many of their narrow, barren theories, and we ourselves would have turned out otherwise than in this state that has hold of us...

There is no other means that so entertains and profits us as sitting beside this magical machine, which links us in a few minutes, if we wish, to every corner of the inhabited world, and lets us hear the voices of the great — political leaders, heads of religions, scholars, orators, and musicians. The horizon of our thinking thus widens for gaining benefit, comparison, and deduction, so that we are never caught unawares by any passing affair of life or sudden event, and their inventions — benefits which in times past we could not have obtained except with the greatest hardship and years of study.

How good it would be if the families among us grew accustomed to the habit of listening around it with greater care and attention, for it is a school with no tuition to pay, a comprehensive encyclopedia with no index to read, a conservatory of every instrument and every melody whose doors never close. It thus proves a necessary and useful entertainment for the whole family, holding them with the magic of eloquence and logic and the art of song and music, so that they lack no branch of culture, nor any occasion for the diversion that men and young people seek outside their homes — save only what these spend, between the wine and the cup and at the green table, of money and health.

Amusement in the City

A man may weary of reading, if he is one of those whose posts oblige them to read during the daylight hours. He may also weary of listening too long to the radio in a closed room, and so he prefers to go out into the open country and enjoy the beauty of the sunset and the sweetness of the hour that follows it. And often this inclination leads him to the public cafés. Why, then, do we not draw our men's attention to the manifold pleasures that await them in the garden or the orchard of the house: a tree, a shrub, a flower — and at every step we take, a pleasure to be gathered... Here is a ripe tree, generous with its fruit, from which we pick some to distribute to our children and our intimates; here a wilting plant that needs our care, and we tend it; here a branch into which decay has crept, and we cut it away; and here the rose bushes and the jasmine, all laden with their bright, refreshing blossoms — we lighten their burden, adorning our homes with some and presenting the rest to our friends, and to the sick who are denied the blessing of their presence... And so the time passes swiftly by, and we return afterward into the house, having taken on a sufficient share of bodily exercise and spiritual delight.

The Harm of Card-Playing

Fortune may not favor us with a garden or an orchard around our house; and even if there is one, it may well be that our men have no inclination toward it, being enamored of card-playing and of the other games that are of the gambling sort. These games find their market mostly at night; so the men leave their homes to go to these night resorts, and do not return until after midnight or at daybreak.

Here lies the source of the danger that threatens the existence of the family and the happiness of the woman in particular; for the competition that goes on in the commercial pleasure-houses, with all that draws our men and sons to them so strongly, is hard for us to resist. And this difficulty will grow with the days if we do not rise to resist it, to blunt its edge, and to lessen the frequenting of such places.

It is this pressing danger that led me to choose this subject and to prefer it over the other women's subjects, which I find myself obliged to set aside — such as the care of child and husband, home medicine, and the rest.

So if you find, Madam, that your husband is addicted to gambling and the other dangerous amusements, there is no escape for you from striving to turn his thoughts away from them, and from humoring him by forming a circle of friends and acquaintances whose sincerity and good stock you do not doubt, so that you exchange evening parties in one another's homes, playing pinochle, bridge, dominoes, and the other well-known and popular family games. The sacrifice you may perhaps make against your will at the outset of this course, from your unfamiliarity with these games or your lack of taste for them, may not unlikely restore joy to your home by cutting your husband off, once and for all, from frequenting those outside places of amusement.

Home Invitations and Parties

And if your husband is one of those who incline toward company and mixing with people, then instead of allowing him to go off alone (outside the home) with people of whose morals you know nothing, take pains to become acquainted with his friends, and with those to whom business ties him, and invite them from time to time to your home. For nothing is more conducive to joy, and to increased cheer in the house, than a friendly gathering held in our reception room, or a tea party in the hall of our home, or a luncheon or dinner around our table... And so, between the duty of receptions and invitations to our own homes, and the paying and accepting of them in the homes of others, doors of solace of every kind open before us — doors that will surely divert us from those amusements in which we have no part and no concern, except what we do not want for ourselves: the empty pocket and the depression of spirit that so often follow upon a loss.