I called to you over the ether from Baghdad, in the recent past? The day I spoke and you listened, and breasts and hearts trembled with

grief for you? 'Gently, O house of al-Rashid and of Ghazi and Faisal: here are your brethren in Palestine; long has their night-march lasted, and their processions have set forth, wrapped in red mantles, with resolves stronger than the earth and a faith the mountains cannot shake, to await the spreading of the dawn, the victory of right, and the justice of history...'

Or have you learned? That the awaited dawn has turned to darkness, that right is on the verge of perishing, and that the ink of injustice has blackened the pages of history?...

*

I cast my gaze and drew from this memorable scene an irrefutable truth: that that light — the light of the Arab nation, which had all but gone out in the era of the Arabs' inheritors, above all the Turks — has now returned to shine anew, as woman has risen with man for the march, for work, and for the struggle...

And I asked myself: if the enlightened Arab woman were to work within her own provinces — as builder of the family, mistress of the household kingdom, weaver of nations — to raise her country's standing and buttress its being, and were to direct her efforts alongside man to fight its social diseases and to wipe out the native and intellectual illiteracy that stands in the way of its progress, would not this do away with colonialism altogether?! Can conscious peoples, guided by knowledge, be enslaved?!

It may be said: freedom is the begetter of renaissances and the secret of progress — and that is

true. But has freedom not its mir-acle-working means: struggle and striving, resolve and organization?!

The West has labored to wreck the national edifice of Arabism with all the oppression and might at its command; but its immortal spiri-tual foundations still stand — in its faith, its language, and its highest ideals; these are what established it upon the earth, and these are what will preserve it from extinction!

And the East has awakened — but when?! When the warnings beat upon its hearing and the shackles tightened about its neck; then it rose to fight and to free itself. It is now drawing near to its past, and it will return to deliver its message: the message of peace and brotherhood, of truth and honor...

And there flowed into the ears once more strains that stayed my thoughts from running on — deep, tender strains from girls singing the anthem of the flag. The girls' voices rose, piercing and stirring, mounted into the air and penetrated to the very limbs; feelings surged, hearts throbbed, tears streamed... For Palestine has no flag, no anthem — and flag and anthem are the emblem of glory, the symbol of sovereignty, the badge of freedom. And where is glory for one colonized, and sovereignty for one subjugated, and freedom for one enslaved?!

And the flags yearned over Palestine, fluttering above her with a mother's tenderness, while within her the voice of right rings out from the lands of the Nile and the Tigris and Barada and the Cedars and the slopes of the Himalayas: Palestine, may everything cheap and precious be your ransom; you shall have a dawn bright as truth, everlasting as justice, radiant as light...

Nablus — Palestine