Miss Suad al-Mudallal's Speech

This is a modest party — in it we have aimed at no novelty in parties, nor any innovation in gatherings. Indeed it is as far as can be from novelty and innovation. It is a modest party in which we intended to welcome our new professors and our new fellow students, and in which we intended to create an atmosphere of acquaintance and closeness between those who have lately honored us and those who have dwelt among us for years. So welcome and greetings to the worthy professors! Welcome to them — they awaken in our souls an impetus along the road of the promised Arab leap. In them we have among us the living image of our immortal national idea... Are we not seekers of a comprehensive Arab unity? Are we not pioneers of a single Arab homeland? And is there anything fresher than this Arab spectacle, which gathers to itself the lands of the Arabs, united in a band of worthy professors who have come together from Egypt, Syria, and Iraq upon one Arab ground, bearing one spirit and a common feeling? If the official Arab League has been achieved, and if there are those who seek the popular Arab league, then you, our professors, have achieved the scholarly Arab league — and that, upon my life, is the foundation of every Arab league.

So welcome to you, representatives of our national idea, performers of our patriotic mission, workers for our lofty aims — and peace be upon you in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq.

And welcome and greetings to you, our dear fellow students, who have passed from one life to another and taken this blessed step in the pursuit of learning and the quest for higher study. If our brothers the young men have cut their road and taken their places in the ranks of the Arab renaissance, working among the workers, then it was our bounden duty, we girls, to be of no smaller share and no shorter stride than our brothers the young men in this field of learning. And here we are now, at these school desks, preparing ourselves to be workers in the creation of a model Arab society that will restore to this noble nation the glories of its past.

So, my fellow students: welcome — and remember always that you are half of this nation, and that the mission of a rising life awaits none but you. And we, in this period of study, look with confident hearts to our shining past and our radiant future. And peace.