The prince of Lebanese zajal, Mr. William Saab, is making a tour of the American regions, accompanied by a select company of Lebanese zajal poets. We have seen an article of his in the issue that lately reached us of the distinguished magazine Sada al-Sharq, edited by the rising woman of letters Mrs. Dalal Safadi. We have chosen to excerpt some of its passages on the pages of The Woman's Voice, that our readers in the homeland may see it:
Blessed is this honorable renaissance which the Lebanese woman is carrying out in the homeland and in the Mahjar. It is the renaissance of life for the new nation — knit together, liberated, pressing boldly forward, women and men alike, on the road of glory and freedom.
And I recall here the mighty renaissance of woman in the mother country, this renaissance which has spread through every Arab land and which was among the principal causes of our sovereignty and our independence.
Our woman made her living voice heard in the movements of independence. It is the voice of her own flesh and blood. It is the voice of those she raised and cherished. We heard our woman's voice uniting our sister Arab countries in great, organized congresses. And we saw our united women's associations in our country holding many charitable functions, buying clothing and food and distributing them to the needy of our people throughout the years of the recent war and after it. These associations worked under the patronage of their honorary president, the First Lady of Lebanon, who kept vigil through the long nights, going the rounds with her companions, the wives of ministers, deputies, and notables, to lighten the misery of the wretched and to bring happiness into needy homes — and all of this is owed to our woman's knowledge of her rights and her duties!
And I hope that the visit of the First Lady of Lebanon to the Mahjar may be a prelude to the convening of a general Arab
women's congress, gathering the emigrant and expatriate women to unify points of view and of action; and there is no doubt that this is within reach, thanks to the wakefulness of our woman in the homeland and the Mahjar.
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.
It is not I who lay down this truth, but the history of mankind since mankind began. Woman — she who in our country drags many chains, chief among them ignorance and remoteness from the understanding of social problems — is the teacher of the world, and it is she who knew how to open before man the road of truth and light. In this short word of mine I do not wish to argue and to analyze — there is no profit for readers, men or women, to reap from argument and analysis on this subject — but I would recall that woman has been able, in every scene of history, to share man's labors and to surpass him in many of them. Why, then, this monopoly, and these chains that man would set in the path of our working women?
Our Arab countries, one and all, stand in urgent need of woman's efforts, spent here and there in the