In a Land Without a Woman!

Mr. Jawad Khalil, cultural attaché at the Iraqi Legation in Beirut, has kindly favored The Woman's Voice with this delightful article on his visit to the great Lebanese sculptor Youssef Howayek.

Circumstances brought us together in Beirut, as they had brought us together before in the two diwans; there was a greeting, there was talk, there was an appointment, and then a meeting. And the late Shawqi did not have us in mind when I met that gallant man whom I respect for the praiseworthy qualities that set him apart from all his peers, just as all who know his merit and his worth respect and revere him. I stayed as his guest at Kfar Helda, after we had traveled two beautiful roads: the first, the coastal road between Beirut and Tripoli; the other, between Tripoli and the fertile plains of the Koura, then the heights of the mountains of North Lebanon and their winding bends — those bends whose like one of my worthy brethren, visiting Lebanon for the first time, named the bends of paradise... And in truth they are just that: a piece cut out of paradise, and it became Lebanon.

The real motive for this journey was something other than the visit owed among friends whom time had kept apart for three years and more. The real motive, I say, was to explore certain spots suitable for the establishment of a sanatorium to shelter tens, nay hundreds, of the patients for whom the sanatoria of the mountains of Beirut had grown too crowded. This friend of mine was the soul of kindness when he woke us — myself and a third friend — at five o'clock on the morning after our arrival, to reconnoiter the jurd before the August sun overtook us with its heat. He was kind, too, when he would wait for us to catch up with him — and how was I to keep pace with a mountaineer in climbing, I, a son of the plain, unaccustomed to climbing mountains, my health, besides, being out of sorts in those days? Even so we managed to reach al-Ghars, and we found it a beautiful spot, distinguished by its enchanting views, its dry air, the nearness of water, and the other qualities that must be present for the project we had in hand.

My friend would not let me go home, once our task was done, without introducing me to a singular personality, one that in its quiet way of living may be obscure in these days, but will never remain so in the future. That future may stretch on for us beyond his eternal rest, but his immortal works will speak of his splendid artistic merits. Such is our affliction in the East: we give a genius no weight until fate has folded his page... Then the newspapers follow after him, his friends weep for him, and the learned and literary bodies and the rest commemorate his memory... after having disowned him in his lifetime, while officialdom neglected him. Our artist renounced the life of luxury lived by his peers, the sons of the notables in the cities; he forsook Beirut, bride of our Arab East, after his soul had wearied of its clamor and of the meddling of its sons — he, the scion of a house famed in politics and in religion. He forsook it for the countryside, where there is quiet, rest, and peace of mind — or say, if you will, where there is silent work to satisfy his passion for his art, his learning, and his letters, where no one disturbs him with prying and intrusion — for a remote village where he owns a small piece of land...

And so our aim was to trouble the artist's serenity and to invade him in his hermitage — a hermitage which I predict will become a shrine to rival the Gibran museum in Bsharri, if it does not surpass it, for reasons that will become clear to you, reader, when you have finished this piece.

I believe our artist did not choose the site of his hermitage merely for its quiet, for the villages of Lebanon are quiet one and all... I think rather that his choice fell upon it — and he is the expert in such matters — because it lies far from the motor road, and because it commands enchanting views that kindle in his soul the fire of art and inspire him with art's revelation; and so this hermitage is itself a piece of art — nay, everything in it is a speaking witness to his genius.

The first thing, as you enter the hermitage, you are met by a girl who has laid her forefinger on her lips, signing to you to be silent... And this girl is nothing but a mute stone built into the wall on the northern side, directly above the door, which he was able to make speak in an exquisite symbolic form.

He received us with a cheerful face wrinkled by the years... and by cares, if I may speak out about the impression his ambitious soul left upon mine. He welcomed us most warmly, and I do not exaggerate when I say that his pleasure grew and his delight swelled when my friend presented me to him: “May I present Mr. So-and-So... from Iraq.” He was most generous in answering every question I put to him. Though I cannot claim to be an artist, I say frankly that I savor art and value it, and that I encourage those with gifts and talents to press on with their work toward the lofty aims they pursue. When he sensed this in me, he began showing me his works, which I have the right to call prodigious — works he completed within a year and part of a year. He left no piece of his sculpture without telling me its story... And whatever I may forget, I shall not forget the statue of the naked girl, which he carved in yellow stone — the front face of the figure only — leaving around it a beautiful frame of rough, unpolished stone... How I wished to acquire it! But my tongue would not help me declare my desire, so I whispered in my friend's ear, begging him to ask him how much a statue like that would cost to make. When he drew him aside and put my question to him... he was silent a moment... then said to me: “I hope you will honor us with a visit of a whole day — I shall prepare you a simple lunch... Then I shall be able to make a statue of you... and present it as a gift to the son of Iraq.” By God, how generous the man is! To make a statue of my person! — when I wanted nothing but the one I had picked out. His generosity tied my tongue, so that I could not declare my true wish, but contented myself with thanking him and giving him my promise.

The article continues on page 15

And while we were lingering over this and that, behold, he went to a small vessel to take from it one piece, then a second, then a third, of the colored glasswork that goes back to the age of the Phoenicians. He had identified them from a thick book, written in French, on the Phoenician antiquities in Lebanon, set among his few books on a shelf he had built above a water basin on the southern side of the hall. And behold, he showed us in it a colored plate of Phoenician glass exactly resembling the pieces in his hands. Then he showed us a fossilized shell he had come upon when a stone he was chiseling split open. He also showed us one of the fossilized plants, in the shape of a flower.

And this — the last, I mean — is in his eyes the most precious of the antiquities in his possession. For our artist has not confined himself to painting and sculpture: he has taken to studying geology, picking out from among the stones those that testify to remote antiquity — and how could any relic close at hand escape him, with that piercing eye of his? After we had spent about an hour of time, he set about honoring us now as people honor people, offering us a large plate filled with delicious grapes... I hesitated at first, thinking he was offering us his day's food, but that hesitation soon vanished when I made out that he was offering us grapes from his own garden — and behold, our friend is a farmer of the first order, tending vines, apples, and other fruits, and growing vegetables of every kind.

A farmer, and what a farmer!... His garden is not, as I imagined at first glance, an ordinary garden kept for the exploitation of its produce. It is rather a meticulous experimental field, in which he works at planting things out of their season and tends them by all manner of means — grafting, budding, manuring... — adapting here and there so as to obtain fruit out of its season, or new varieties of plants possessing desirable qualities. He has succeeded in grafting apples in July, and has managed to obtain apples of large size untouched by any blight. I cannot, in truth, count up for the man all his agricultural feats, but I record here some of what stuck in my mind, such as his success in growing sour lemons in that cold climate, and his experiment to obtain artichokes in autumn instead of spring.

Nor was our artist only a farmer: he has outdone all the gardeners in the arrangement of his beautiful gardens. I say this while the exquisite statues scattered through every corner of them still cling to my memory — and I find I must dwell here on the word “scattered,” for the statues have indeed been scattered... Yet it became clear to me that he had taken the utmost care in setting each of them in its place, in keeping with the shape of the ground, the amount of sunlight, and the shadows that form upon each statue at the different hours of the day. And does a man like our artist concern himself with the hours of the day? The answer is yes: he works by a special program which he has organized minutely, so as to reconcile his many weighty labors, guided not by a metal watch but by a sundial he set up on the roof of his hermitage. When I objected that he would need a clock at night, he answered me: “I consult the stars... My quiet nights help me to study them...” So he is an astronomer too, learned in the stars, in their courses and their movements.

So blessed be you, Youssef Howayek, for the grace the Creator has bestowed upon you, and blessed be you for your silent struggle in the cause of your art, your learning, and your letters.

And thank you, Dr. Rashid Maatouk, for the precious opportunity you gave me to visit this genius.