In the Southern Countryside

The season was summer and the weather fine when we resolved on an excursion through the villages of Jabal Amel. We headed first for 'Aramta, that remote village belonging to the district of Jezzine, a place of running waters and verdant vineyards, rising about a thousand meters above sea level.

There we came as guests to the sheikh of the village, and his young daughter received us with a smiling face and gave us the warmest of welcomes. Then she began to talk with us in an artless village accent, her face tinged now and again with the blush of shyness. I seized the opportunity and put my question to her: "Are you content with this life of yours?"

"Content or not content, there is nothing for me but to accept what God has allotted me. But if I were given the choice between the life of Nabatiyeh and that of 'Aramta, I would without doubt choose the first, so that I might enjoy at least a little rest and give myself to housework alone. The woman among us goes out to the field at daybreak; she waters the crops and picks the fruit, then fills the water jar and returns to the house to milk the cow, feed the chickens, and set fodder before the animals. And after all that she must take up the household chores — so that, things being as they are, she does the work of man and woman alike, while her husband works only in the field. He may even go off to Beirut in search of a livelihood, leaving all the troubles behind him to his poor wife. And would that, after all this, we ate delicious food! We taste meat only once a week, and most of our cooking is boiled vegetables and mujaddara. I swear to you that were it not for the goodness of our air and the strength of our appetites, we could not live a single minute. Yet all this does not mean that our life is hell upon hell. We have means of amusement that lighten many of our troubles. In Beirut there are the clubs, the cinema, and the cafés; and we have the evening gathering at the spring, where we pass a long stretch of the night singing Abu al-Zuluf and Dal'ouna and dancing the dabke — 'farkhet dik' — to the tune of the mijwiz. In Beirut there is din and clamor; with us there is rest and tranquility. Our village is like a paradise on earth, but it is neglected and cast aside. Would that the government embraced it with its care and raised the standing of woman in it a little, after the example of the other villages of the North, for it is among the loveliest of Lebanon's summer resorts."

Suddenly the sheikh of the village came in with words of welcome, so we broke off the conversation and contented ourselves with what we had learned of woman's life in some of the villages of Jabal Amel.