From Childhood Memories

And what is childhood but the first stage of life, the one with the most powerful effect in the forming of personality; and this momentous, brief stage is nothing but happy, cherished days that we pass in safety and gentleness in the bosom of our mothers and fathers and kin, so that they leave immortalized in our imaginations pure, wondrous pictures we never forget, whose sweetness we find nothing to equal however the days succeed one another and the years roll on. Rather, each of us goes on remembering it and recalling its delightful happenings with a pang and with longing, because it is the first page in the history of his life and the cornerstone in the raising of the edifice of his morals and character, and because the age of childhood is the age of merriment, in which the growth of thought had not yet been completed, nor the sense of responsibility and of the duty to shoulder life's burdens and obligations.

In the years 1927–28, in a companionable little village among the villages of the Koura in North Lebanon — in "Amioun," where my father was in exile with a band of his brethren, among them Fares Bey al-Khoury, dean of the National Bloc at that time, and Saadallah Bey al-Jabiri and Fawzi Bey al-Ghazzi, God rest their souls — the fourth and fifth years of my childhood slipped away, and they left immortalized in my memory pictures eloquent of happiness, delight, pride, and innocent, artless play. For the wicked Mandatory power permitted my father and his colleagues to bring their families along, and they made me their consolation and the object of their attention, since I was the only child among them in those days — as if it were decreed for me, too, to be banished from the soil where I was planted and the place where I was born... Yet I understood no meaning in this banishment and felt none of its bitter pain, God be praised!

O memories of childhood, how beautiful they are! I still feel contentment whenever I picture them, the trivial and the delightful alike, and taste their artless, wondrous sweetness! I remember the hour of morning breakfast, and I see my mother carrying the egg to feed it to me, and my father cheering and clapping and pointing out the sparrow to me, saying:

— Hurry and eat it, Salma, for he is coming to snatch it away from you!

And I would gulp it down eagerly, certain of the truth of his words and fearing the evil consequence...

I remember the running races I always won, mocking my father and his brethren, who were unable — or feigned themselves unable — to reach the appointed goal... So I would win the apples and pears and sweets and devour them with an appetite awakened by the joy of victory, while the ring of my innocent laughter and their teasing guffaws rose into the air, and the valley sent back their echo, far... and deep...

I remember the day I stood among the throngs of scouts and nationalist youth who had come from Beirut and Tripoli to Amioun to visit the exiled leaders, so that I might thank them for this gracious visit of theirs; I made a speech to them, repeating the fervent phrases I had been taught, and recited from Shawqi's immortal verse passages of his great poem:

A greeting from the breeze of Barada, most gentle,
and tears that cannot be stanched, O Damascus!
The homelands hold, in the blood of every free man,
a hand advanced and a debt that must be paid...

And hardly had I finished my oration and recital when palms took me up and hands tossed me from one to another...

I remember a night when I complained of a feigned pain in my stomach, to escape the early bedtime to which my mother had accustomed me, for I had heard the friends of the house making merry and trading talk; my dear mother grew alarmed and brought me a cup of the chamomile I detested, but I drank it grudgingly to be rid of sleep... The next day I resorted to the same trick, but the secret came out, and I received an ample share of scolding for this cunning and deceit...

These are pictures from the memories of childhood, brought back to my imagination by the deep effect they left in my soul — and by the firm hope of winning the first prize in the contest of the flourishing magazine "The Woman's Voice"... Would that the cradle of childhood lasted forever, or that its delights kept pace with man and walked beside him through the succession of days and the passing of the years! For if the age of old age is full of wisdom and experience yet empty of hopes and sweet wishes, the age of childhood is empty of all gravity and balance and full of golden dreams and mighty hopes — how vast the difference between man as an old man and man as a child! The child enters the house of this earthly life running through its halls, head high, joyous and eager, as though he would devour all that is in it, green and dry alike; while the old man walks slowly toward its exit door, leaning on his stick, his back bent, casting tearful glances behind him to see the wellspring of hope run dry, the fountain of vigor dried up, and the bough of youth withered... Yet there is a great resemblance between the child and the old man, which goes back to their love of life and their feeling for its pleasure and delight: man ends where he begins! And that is the story of life...