charge of the magazine — this before he composed his two books, "The Keeper of the Peace: Tsar Alexander III" and "The Hero of Lebanon," Yusuf Bey Karam.
At the time "al-Fatat" appeared, the Beirut society "Bakurat Suriyya," the first of the women's associations in the Arab East, elected each of the two sisters, the magazine's license holders, Sara and Hind, as a member.
And when Labiba Hashim published in her magazine "Fatat al-Sharq," in 1906, the biography of Maryam Nahhas Nawfal — taken from the book "al-Durr al-Manthur" by Zaynab Fawwaz, on the basis of the magazine "al-Muqtataf" — she promised to publish the biographies of her two daughters, Sara and Hind. But out of modesty they begged her to publish nothing about them. Viscount de Tarrazi made up for it in his History of the Press, 1914, as did Julia Tu'mah
Dimashqiyah in her magazine "The New Woman," 1924, with what he had written about the proprietor of "al-Fatat" and the manager of its affairs. From this I have taken a number of facts which — together with the set of the magazine preserved in my keeping, and what I know of it from other sources — have helped me to set down this page on the first women's magazine in the language of the Arabs.
I thank "The Woman's Voice" for its good opinion of me and its reliance upon me. May God increase its melodies.
It is perhaps worth noting that our first woman journalist is still a resident of Egypt, and that today she is summering, as is her yearly custom, in Lebanon, at her house in Sofar, a stopping-place of men of merit. May God prolong her life and the life of her husband, Yusuf Bey.
a flock crowds upon its watering place. If fortune favors the deficient cell and it is the first
to reach the cell, it fuses into it... then the mother's mood sours, and the father's temper brightens, for he has found one to help him in his old age and support him! But... if fortune fails this cell, the X cell seizes the favorable opportunity, enters the female cell and merges with it, thereby bringing about the meeting of two X chromosomes and the creation of a newborn of female character. And there is no need for us here to speak of the feelings of the mother and the father!..
And now, have you learned how the boy comes and how the girl comes, and who it is that can fulfill your hope and gladden you, or frustrate it and wrong you?
She said: "Chance, or luck."
Yes. Chance, or luck, or the hand of God, or nature — call it what you will; the truth is no more than a hidden, mysterious power that rules over man in all the stages of his development, and that bears the first responsibility for his happiness and his misery, his success or his failure.
There remains the blond hair: whence does it come, and how?
We see from what has passed that the creature cannot show more traits than lie latent in the two reproductive cells responsible for its formation (since it is formed from them alone).
We said that every cell carries in its heart its own set of fine threads — the chromosomes. I shall now tell you something about these little pieces. These chromosomes are precisely built and minutely shaped; in them gather a great number of small bodies which man is unable to see, not even with the microscope.
Each of these bodies consists of a latent power ready to produce in the new human being a particular trait, different from what the other bodies produce. These bodies differ within a single chromosome, and among the chromosomes of the same cell; and they may differ, or be alike, among the chromosomes of the (reproductive) cells of one and the same person. They are as numerous as the traits a human being possesses, since every trait has a special body of its own that deputizes for it and represents it in one of the chromosomes of the reproductive cells. Blond hair, for instance, has its own representative; and blue eyes, fair skin, stature, the shape of the nose, the lips, the ear, and the rest, all have representatives assigned to them. A single cell may contain all the representatives of all the traits; or a given cell may lack one of these representatives (or bodies), while another cell lacks a different one.
We must not lose sight of the fact that what we mean by the traits a human being possesses are the traits he inherits, not those he acquires — for the world of nature is wiser than human society. If a man who acquires his citizenship is entitled to cast his vote and elect a representative for himself, the acquired trait is never entitled to do so. If a man's arm is cut off — God forbid — he thereby acquires a trait peculiar to himself, namely a severed arm; but his children are born sound, without infirmity. This trait is one that no deputy or representative represents in the parliaments (the chromosomes) of the reproductive cells, and so it passes away without branding the newborn's frame with disfigurement, or weakening it, or at the least affecting its development and advancement.
But the trait a person inherits from his mother or his father, and which is thereby one of the effective factors in his development — that "citizen" trait which a man feels to be a part of his being and a member of his family, having accompanied it down the generations — that trait alone has the right to influence the coming generation and its direction, and to link ancestry with progeny. And because it is charged with that duty, it may appoint one to deputize for it and represent it. In a word: what we inherit from our fathers we bequeath to our children, with some modification at times — no more and no less. Such is nature's logic and its wisdom!..
So if the families of your father, your mother, and your husband have been free, since the dawn of their formation, of blond-haired members, then in all likelihood — if not in all certainty — you will not bear a blond-haired baby girl. But if you insist on your desire for this girl, you have no choice but to take yourself a husband from among the blond-haired. And even then, that bewitching color may never gleam upon the heads of your children at all, but rather among your grandchildren or their children — or it may never appear in your line at all.
And this law holds for every other hereditary trait.
She said, a questioning eagerness rising over her face:
"But why?!"
I answered her:
"Chance, or nature, or the hand of God, has its own regulations; it rules, and plays its weighty part in electing the representatives of the hereditary traits and classifying them — however it pleases, here too."
And I left her thinking...