To the Daughter of My Country

It is a matter of true regret for women's letters that illness should keep one of its great writers from her pen. When The Woman's Voice asked her to write even a brief word on the occasion of the opening of this year, she excused herself, a lump in her breast, and handed our representative an article she had published in her magazine al-Mar'a al-Jadida in 1936, saying: "This is a letter I wrote long ago; and were I to write to the daughter of my country now, I should write nothing that departs from its meaning and its spirit." Here we publish passages from this old-new article, praying for our great writer that God may keep her among us, a guide and a champion:

It is not a sweetmeat, to be eaten; nor an article of adornment, to be displayed; nor a jewel, to be worn: it is a gathering of memories and feelings formed by the exchange of pure friendship, which I raise up today, joined with the best of greetings, to my intimate friend, the daughter of my country.

My dear: my heart will not consent to buy my greeting to you, at the opening of this new year, with money I possess — money of which not one drop, it may be, was ever distilled from the blood of my heart, or the sweat of my brow, or the corners of my eyes.

No! I dare not follow the fashion, and record my affection for you — as settled custom or personal aim records it, in endearment, in fawning, in flattery — upon a piece of bronze, or wood, or silver, or gold.

There is nothing in this wide universe, rich as it is in precious contents and delightful things, that I can summon to my aid to express the overflowing feeling that fills my soul now, as I take up the pen to send the greeting of the feast, as my custom is, to the friend who has entwined her spirit with mine and shared with me the sweet of life and its bitter, in absence and in nearness alike.

And what could I offer you, my friend, of the presents of the feast — you who are rich in your wealth and in your spirit — save my pure good wishes, and this warm drop which my breaths trace upon this paper, and which will add to the chain of immortal virtues another link, testifying to the end of time, on behalf of the daughters of my country, to the lofty influence true friendship exerts upon the character of mankind and their advancement...

I thank God, who has stretched out my life to this day, on which I lift the curtain from the precious treasures that have come to me from the pure spring of friendship, and bear them to you as a gift for the feast.

***

O daughter of my country, be assured that nothing in this life equals the delight born of pure friendship — for us women above all. Woman's heart is weak, and the web of her soul is sensitive and in constant labor, carrying to her tender members the blows of harsh nature and the coldness of unjust man; and if she is not granted the gift of friendship, a murky darkness of despair and winter closes in upon her.

I charge you, my dear — and perhaps I stand in greater need of this charge than you — to keep the friend with whose spirit your spirit has mingled, and not to allow tale-bearing to trouble for you that happiness which you have felt at her side, though it were but once in a lifetime.

Friendship is a heavenly, sacred thing, and I hold you above tying its bond with any man or woman except in answer to that inward call — that higher attraction — that spiritual secret which lies behind words and the expressions of language.

If heaven has bestowed upon you this friendship, this bond of spirit, then it is forbidden you to trample the spirit of friendship for some passing triviality or an unintended slip. For the cord of friendship is stout so long as its twisting is kept up, and slender when its undoing is intended; it is stirred by the least cold wave sent out by the breaths of the beloved friend.

It seems to me that in these days we strive to learn everything, and to grow more polished in walking, in standing, in speech, in reading, and in the arts; but we do not wish to learn that lofty, clean, chaste love... that love which is the essence of the spirit, and which all the powers of the spirit call to with their several voices. In the spring of friendship are treasures beyond number and bounties beyond reckoning, and everyone who has tasted friendship knows that it cannot be measured, nor meted, nor weighed. And he who loves truly loves with the whole of his heart and spirit, and with the sum of his powers and his thoughts.

Would that the space of this narrow page allowed me to give friendship its full due, that I might recall some of the shining witnesses in history to the lofty influence friendship has wrought in the lives of men. Perhaps I shall return to this subject at another opportunity, and tell you of Tennyson's friendship for Arthur Hallam, and of that immortal poem he composed for him after his death; and of Dante's chaste love for Beatrice — that love which is the ideal from which poets draw their descriptions and their imaginings; and of Browning's friendship for his ailing wife, and the moving writings he composed at her grave and signed to keep her name alive.