From Mikhail Naimy

Mr. Mikhail Naimy sent his friend Mr. Albert Rihani the following letter on the occasion of the publication of "The Heart of Lebanon" by Ameen Rihani:

Dear Albert,

You were faithful to your brother, to Arabic literature, and to your homeland when you brought out "The Heart of Lebanon," and many readers of this precious tome will say to you what I say: "Well done, well done — bless your hands."

Hours of delight for soul and body were those I spent in the company of Ameen on his Lebanese journeys. In them he is the graceful talker, the inspired poet, the exacting historian, the sage who draws the lesson even from the most trivial matters and events, the wakeful traveler whom nothing escapes, going or coming, the witty narrator, the gentle critic, and the surgeon with the sharp scalpel and the shears, who does not chew things over and over nor wind about them.

And Lebanon — with its heights and its depths, its springs and its rivers, its boulders and its forests, with the dress of its inhabitants and their customs, their morals and their beliefs, and with its history from the dawn of history down to this our day — Lebanon, which Ameen loved with a love bordering on worship, unveils its true face in the pages of his book. There it is, in its fat and its flesh, its vital points and its workaday garb, its humanity and its divinity, its weakness and its might, its traditions and its superstitions.

I accompanied Ameen on his journeys, and I did not feel that I was in this world and he in the next, with a curtain between us that we call the curtain of death. Rather, his image was in my eye and his voice in my ear, as though he were present in every line of his book, in his flesh and blood. And that, upon my life, is the magic of the pen in which the blood of life runs, so that death cannot conquer it. Peace, then, be upon it and upon its master. And thanks to you, Albert.

Your friend,