Under the Family's Shade

"There — within the circle of the family — where hearts are strung with the bonds of deep, mutual love, and the noblest feelings flourish and flow; there, where each individual contributes to the work according to his strength and intelligence — one undertaking this task while another shoulders that — and the aim of all is one lofty end: everything the individual does is for the good of the group, and everything the group does is for the good of the individual. Justice reigns there, and brotherhood spreads its tender shade over every soul; there is no famine beside plenty; this cup, which God has filled with His bounties, passes from hand to hand without discrimination...

The aged, the young, and the weary from whose brow the sweat has run in drops drink from it equally. Their joys and their sorrows are shared. If disability or illness fells one of them, the hand of help is stretched out to him by all, raising him from his stumble and dressing his wounds, so that he never feels himself alone amid the blows of time! Father and mother, brothers and sisters — O tender, sympathizing souls, is there anything sweeter or holier than these names...?" A splendid picture, which tenderness and fidelity have tinted with a beauty like the beauty of the twilight; you will feel it to be reality, not fancy, and sense it as a life brimming with goodness and elevation — the picture which the French writer "Lamennais" drew of the family.

This edifice — or, more exactly, this national structure — is the handiwork of the father and the mother, beyond doubt. For just as the family is composed of individuals joined by close-knit kinship, so society is made up of many families bound together by the greater bond — the bond of nationhood. And when this spirit appears in it as in the family, there runs among its members the spirit of cooperation and of shared feeling for the good of all, and unity of word in grave events... And this limited environment — the family — and this general milieu —

society — are nothing but a living body, which suffers what the human body suffers of ailments, most of which may be traced back to our ignorance. Nor is it anything, either, but a lyre upon which we are the players: if we have insight into the tuning of the strings and the placing of the notes, we shall have life's harmonious, beautiful melody — health, happiness, hope, courage, and faith; and if we do not play well, chaos spreads across the horizon of our life as discord spreads through a tune, and we lose those spiritual foundations upon which we build our being; and there is what is graver still: there are the sins and the social calamities — backwardness, disease, hunger, and want — calamities that storm through family and society, and they are, most regrettably, nothing but the result of this ignorance.... We see, then, that the sound structure of a rising nation is nothing other than the work of the virtuous woman, as maker of manhood and builder of peoples; and this, her sacred mission, demands of her weighty obligations: it demands a high and comprehensive culture that gives her insight of heart, loftiness of spirit, fertility of mind, and humanity of character, that she may fulfill it in its most perfect form... that we may see her in her home, as "Ruskin" said: "the mirror of beauty, the pivot of order, and the balm of wounds"; her virtues glittering there as the sunlight glitters — warming and illuminating! For who but she can make of it a palace or a prison, a paradise or an inferno? And who is it that takes innocent childhood — which God has touched with the hand of fragrance — and makes of it angels or devils, if she wills, but she? This home rests upon that partnership formed of the two spouses, ordered by firm spiritual bonds of sincerity, sacrifice, and selflessness, of harmony in soul, taste, and thought, and of mutual respect. Attention, affection, and appreciation toward the wife are means that work their miracle in consolidating understanding and cooperation between the two; nothing kindles her enthusiasm like true appreciation of her devotion to her task, and nothing saps her strength like ingratitude, and destructive criticism of what we do before others.

This is some of what she is owed by him; and he is owed by her, likewise, as much, or more. Meddling in his private affairs will bring him nothing but vexation — how fitting that she avoid it; and obstinacy in her opinions brings her nothing but trouble — nay, how far it sets the two of them from the harmony sought in a peaceful home!

Then there are also other moral matters whose effect reaches far in fixing the pillars of this structure. Reverence for the members of his family — those bound to him by ties of blood and dear shared memories — and for his mother, who wove his life out of her blood, her feelings, and her hopes, and stood at his side, watchful and tender, from his infancy until he ripened and came to her a successful man! Lofty bonds — does she imagine she can strike at their sanctity without causing him deep resentment...? And likewise a truthful view of time: ease may turn to hardship — such is life, adversity and prosperity — and is it not for her, then, to adapt herself to circumstances, and not to be, in his adversities, an added weight upon him with complaining, and with mixing the bitterness of failure by pointing to certain successful men in the field of life, without feeling what wound and pain this causes him...? Or does she not know that instilling confidence into a flagging soul, out of an affectionate, feeling heart, delivers it from standing still and sets it walking anew!

And finally there is a vital matter to which the Arab woman, regrettably, still gives insufficient care: the raising of her intellectual level. It is as though she erected between herself and her husband a barrier that prevents understanding between them; for thought is like perfume: just as its fragrance travels through the horizons, so it passes from spirit to spirit, to live, to take flight, and to create! Times have changed, and the husband no longer wants his partner to be a doll without a soul, or a housekeeper who is good for nothing but running the house and rearing children; he wants the echoes of life to resound in her heart, and wants her in touch with its literary, social, and political currents; he wants at his side a luminous mind, a conscious heart, and a fine sensibility — not a closed mind, a deaf heart, and a dull sensibility; he wants, in the full sense of the word, a complete human being...

Truly, the woman who does not create the ideal family, who does not make manhood, and who does not pulse with society, must be counted an agent of demolition, not an instrument of building, in her nation's edifice...

And the milieu that her rays do not reach will never be lit by the lights of freedom...!

O Arab woman: history passes a stern judgment; so take heed — for yours is a bondage before which necks are bowed, and you have from the past a strength, and from the present lessons — so, forward....

Nablus — Palestine