In Rihani's Freikeh

I have visited Freikeh several times. And were it not for the Rihanis I would not have visited it once — indeed, I would never have heard its name at all. For it is the Rihanis, with Ameen at their head, who fixed it on the map of Lebanon, or say rather the map of the globe. Marvel, then, at a small village of Lebanon whose houses can be counted on the fingers of one hand becoming, for years past, more famous in the two hemispheres than Lebanon itself.

And I testify that I have never yet stood in awe of anything as I stood in awe of the face of Freikeh looking down on me from the overlook of a deep, enchanted valley which you imagine, beyond all doubt, to be inhabited by the gods of legend. No sooner do you enter the Rihani house than you are received by members of the family summering there, and two children toddle before you — little Ameen and little May — two children who bear, deliberately, two great names, or say rather two great responsibilities whose challenge they will face throughout a life that, God willing, will be long. Nor will you miss, despite the passing of the body, the pleasure of meeting the elder Ameen. For he is there... These are his things as he left them before his departure: pictures on the walls, of him and about him; bookcases filled to overflowing; treasured cards and letters that used to come to him from the great of the four corners of the inhabited world; his pens and his inkwells; the flagstone on which he stood every evening facing his Lord, opposite Sannin; the bed he slept on and the chair he leaned back in... everything, even those things that cannot be touched by hand or seen by eye.

And if you sit down with Saada — his sister — she begins to talk to you of her great brother. She is a living history of him; would that the historians who hunt for trustworthy sources took notice of her and found their way to her, before it is too late. You listen with longing and eagerness; and you live with Ameen through the stories she tells you. And when she brings you to Ameen's early years, she rises with you to the balcony of the house to show you the little church where he made acquaintance with the letters of the alphabet, the olive tree in whose shade he took his first steps in the rudiments of reading, the bench where he sat when he read, the table that bore the burdens of his pen for long years, and the road he used to walk in the early mornings and the evenings. And she goes on to tell you of what he loved and did not love, of the people who used to visit him, of his journeys and travels here and across the seas, of his ties with May Ziadeh, his tenderness toward her, and his sacrifice for her sake in the day of her ordeal; and of many other matters that description cannot reach. And no wonder — for they are as abundant and rich as Ameen's life itself, measure for measure.

And enough for you, out of all this, that you live with Ameen moments at which time stands still: your thoughts turn back to the opening of this century, and then your memory climbs upward in the company of this man. And what a man he is! Did you not see him defy space, joining, with his mind and body together, the shore of the nearer East to the shore of the farther West, before 'black gold' joined them? And did you not see him defy time as well, delivering to listening ears and publishing in the papers his views on reform, which no ear in Arabic had heard and no eye had lit upon, before you heard them and saw them in the constitution of the Ottomans, the principles of Wilson, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Atlantic Charter, and the other things the United Nations Organization is bringing forth? Take up al-Rihaniyyat, The Kings of the Arabs, The Lily of the Ghor, Khalid, and Inside the Harem, and witness how Ameen defied the procession of time, measured against what the Arab mind had opened itself to in those days.

And while you are thus, behold Albert — Ameen's brother — interrupts you to recount the projects newly under way at his hands. He is working on the printing of the manuscript works Ameen left behind, chief among them The Heart of Lebanon, The Case of May, and Letters that no money could price. He is working, likewise, to direct the attention of the responsible men of power and standing in Lebanon toward concern for Freikeh — this famous village — that they may join it to civilization by a road on which the modern donkeys shod in rubber can travel, establish a school in it, and extend to it the lines of light, water, and telephone. And it astonishes you to learn that most of these projects have been achieved, though after arduous effort. Then you listen eagerly as he tells you how he will make of Freikeh a summer resort for writers and artists, and so carry on the literary mission that Ameen began.

I stayed in Freikeh that night. And when morning broke, the car carried us down to Beirut. No sooner had we reached it, at eight o'clock, than my companion Mr. Albert said to me: What do you say to a visit to Salma Sayegh? I was delighted with the idea. A few moments later we were knocking at the home of her kinsman by marriage, the poet Salah Labaki — and we had become three. The third was Miss Ibtihaj Kaddoura, president of the Lebanese Arab Women's Federation. We had met her on her way, likewise, to see her great colleague. And when the door was opened to us — never in all my life have I witnessed a meeting to surpass the meeting of those two great ladies. While tears of joy and longing streamed from their eyes, my own tears choked in the corners of my eyes. As for my companion Albert, he was exultant: Shall deliverance come at woman's hand, after man has begrudged it to us?

And what should I convey to the readers of The Woman's Voice of the talk that followed? Perhaps the finest part of it is the very part our great woman of letters forbade me to convey to anyone. Let my readers be content to know that the talk touched on Palestine, and the literary movement in Brazil, and the women's movement in Lebanon, and the feeling of the Lebanese communities abroad toward this 'era' of independence, and the false rumors being woven around Mr. al-Sawda, Lebanon's Minister Plenipotentiary, and other such matters as ought and ought not to be, for the sake of the renaissance of Lebanon and its dear neighbors.

At last we rose to take our leave. Our great writer shook my hand with warmth; and as though she had understood what was passing through my mind, she said: I shall give myself over to rest in the mountains a little, and then turn to writing and composition. And I shall favor The Woman's Voice with a series of talks on subjects that concern our women and please them.

And on the way back, I walked beside my companion, in a strange world — I do not recall that I had ever felt my own existence so before.