Life Is a Desert, and Woman Its Oasis

It would be an injustice and a wrong for anyone to speak of the surging women's renaissance in Lebanon without paying tribute to the grave political role played by the Lebanese woman in wresting independence from the tyrannous foreigner — above all the foremost fighter in the struggle, Her Ladyship the wife of His Excellency the President, around whom, and in whose house, our ladies from every walk of life rallied. They held conferences, drew up memoranda, made the rounds of the representatives of the Arab and Allied states, and sped off telegrams and protests, until the voice of the Lebanese woman rose ringing through the countries of the world, demanding the right that had been plundered and the glory that had been lost...

I could forget everything I saw or heard of on the day of the ordeal — even Bchamoun! But never, so long as I live, shall I forget the sight of our sheltered ladies and our fresh young girls, who forgot sectarian differences and buried them forever, who left their secluded chambers and came down to the field of struggle, marching in the vanguard, in the lines of fire, in a single serried rank, with firm steps, heads held high, their hearts full of faith, defying the colonizer's tanks, his barricades, his bayonets, and his rifles leveled at their breasts, greeting the bullets with smiles, finding death and martyrdom sweet for the sake of Lebanon!

And it was one of God's blessings upon Lebanon that from the ordeal of the ten days there sprang the Lebanese Women's League, that distinguished elite of our married ladies and our young unmarried women who, having shared in wresting independence until it became an accomplished fact, resolved to devote themselves to buttressing it with fruitful, constructive, guiding work. Their efforts in this brief span have yielded two noble projects of guidance: the first, a modern kindergarten of the finest type; the second, a refined women's magazine which is in truth, and without exaggeration, the most splendid publication of its kind in the Arab world, uniting elegance and taste, pleasure, novelty, and profit.

The League's choice of these two projects and no others testifies to the far-sightedness and sound judgment of our excellent ladies. They saw that comprehensive reform must reach young and old alike, and at one and the same time. Reform among the young comes by guiding them, from the foundation and from their tenderest years, in the right direction — hence the kindergarten. Reform among adults comes only by organized general guidance, and there is no doubt that a magazine is the best and most successful means of reaching grown Lebanese women — hence the magazine The Woman's Voice.

Yet it has seemed to me, as I watched with joy and delight the birth of these two noble projects, that the League's commendable efforts were directed toward the 'few' rather than the many, toward the cultivated and well-to-do elite rather than the deprived and untaught classes. The kindergarten can hold only a limited number of children of means, and the magazine reaches only the hands of educated women — and these, alas, do not in their sum make up the great mass of the fair sex in Lebanon.

I have therefore thought fit to turn, in this evening's talk, toward the forgotten multitudes, those thousands upon thousands of citizens, men and women, of whom Lebanon is composed and upon whose arms every renaissance in Lebanon must rest — confining myself to the stage of childhood, that suffering, tormented childhood which will find no true champion to raise it from its fall but the awakened woman, and will find none better than the Lebanese Women's League, headed by Her Ladyship the First Lady of Lebanon, to be the merciful consoler who bends tenderly over these opening buds and rescues them from the claws of ignorance, disease, and poverty.

Perhaps the most striking spectacle of misery and wretchedness that one sees in the quarters of the capital is these children — our very hearts walking upon the earth — who crawl through the filthy streets playing with refuse, barefoot and half naked, not one of them past his third or fourth year. A pallor plain on the face that bespeaks malnutrition; a visible filth that bespeaks neglect and straitened means; and a staggering multitude that shows how effectively the poor contribute to the quickening of the birth rate — without its betterment. All of it together composes a crying picture of the social injustice that reigns in Lebanon as it reigns in the rest of the Arab lands.

These are sights people see every day without their arresting their attention or their care, for they have grown used to them from seeing them so often; perhaps I too have grown used to them. But what pains me in these scenes of tormented childhood is the sight of the little one crying bitterly in the street, in a way that would draw forth pity, with no one to attend to him. His mother, busy with the housework, or serving the neighbors, or ill, has sent him out to weep in the road; and there, amid the refuse, in an atmosphere of weeping and wailing, the poor thing passes the golden, happy age of childhood of which writers and poets sing, and whose return they long for.

I swear, I have never seen these scenes of vagrant, weeping childhood without there rising in my imagination the scenes of laughing childhood I once saw in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris: children like roses, the blood all but leaping from their radiant faces, racing one another with gladness brimming on their lips, playing the innocent games of childhood, so that one heard nothing but the sounds of merriment and peals of joyful laughter answering the twittering of the sparrows in the echoes of that delightful garden!...

We in the East do not value childhood at its true worth — that much is agreed — and if we attend to it at all, we regard it merely as a stage in which the child prepares for his coming life, and so we fill this stage with exhaustion, harshness, and every color of torment in the name of discipline. A party of educators in our country still regards the rod as heaven's gift to the earth.

I ask in Lebanon, and of Lebanon, swift care for the child! Were it permitted me to ask for the creation of a Ministry of Childhood, I would demand it, for it is not right that the poisons of poverty, disease, ignorance, and neglect should blight our growing seedlings! And if I am told that these matters fall within the province of the Ministry of Social Affairs, then I would demand the creation of that ministry, and demand that it be entrusted to a woman minister, for she knows these affairs better than man; here is her natural field of activity and her vital range. What matters to me is that we care for the child, that we build for him public gardens and grounds for innocent play, and that we guarantee him food, clothing, and medicine! This is what I ask, and I do not think that, like Victor Hugo's little girl, I am asking for the moon!...

The Ministry of Justice, considering the crimes committed by these juveniles, has seen fit to reform them rather than inflict punishment upon them — a sound view — isolating them, for the protection of their morals, from the criminals of the prisons in a special place which it has named the 'Juvenile Reformatory'; it has fitted out for it the seraglio building at Bhannes, drawn up for it a modern program, and set aside the necessary appropriations in the budget.

All this is fine, and it is a step on which the government is to be congratulated. But is it not better that the reform of these minors should begin before they commit their crimes? We live in the age of preventive medicine, whose watchword is to fight the disease before it strikes, thanks to the modern means of prevention — vaccination, the destruction of germs, and the immunity the body acquires...

Must we then wait for these waifs to turn criminal before we set about reforming them — when their reform, as those versed in matters of education well know, will by then have become an arduous and difficult thing? Or shall we gather them from the streets before they sink into the mire of vice and the bent toward crime and evil takes root in them, and establish for them a special wing in the Juvenile Reformatory at Bhannes, to be supervised and directed by the Lebanese Women's League, which would draw up for it a full program!

Here is a field fit for purely humanitarian service; here is the pressing need for swift action! I am not asking for impossibilities; I ask only that we send to these children, wherever they may be and in whatever school they are found — making no distinction of race, color, or creed — a glass of sterilized milk every forenoon, or a wholesome midday meal; and I ask that we furnish them with warm clothing to ward off the winter's cold.

These are two humanitarian projects which I hope the flourishing Lebanese Women's League will adopt, and for whose realization I hope it will make ready at the opening of this new year, so that its bounty may extend to the few and to the many alike, doing good at one and the same time to the well-to-do elite, guiding and organizing it, and to the forgotten, deprived class, reviving it and giving it life...

And finally, ladies, I have burdened your breasts with talk of misery and poverty; so let us listen to our greatest poet, Shawqi, speaking through the tongue of Antonio in his immortal play Cleopatra:

Life is love, and love is life;
it is, from life's great tree, the secret of the seed;
and over its desert his two hands passed,
and it flowed with water, and shade, and fruit.

Shawqi spoke truly: life is a desert over which the hands of love have passed, and it has flowed with sweet water, spreading shade, and ripe fruit...

Life is a barren desert whose oasis is woman... To it man repairs, quenching his thirst at its sweet spring, finding in its shelter and its tenderness shade, warmth, and peace of mind, and gathering from the sincerity of its affection the choicest fruits! May this oasis — with its shade, its water, and its fruit — be good and luminous, spreading guidance, art, and beauty, and pouring out upon the world goodness, blessing, and peace...