Huda Hanem Shaarawi

...What a mountain was hidden away the day Huda Shaarawi was hidden from sight!!

It is as though the earth that concealed her forever did not conceal, among women, a nobler brow or a more radiant face; for she alone among women, in a generation of superstitions and traditions, stood up—as though she were the voice of every woman in history, from the beginning of history to the hour history is folded shut—to proclaim to mankind that nothing on earth can bar woman from her right to life; and her right to life is to strive and to struggle, to enlighten and be enlightened, to teach and to learn.

And Huda Shaarawi strove and struggled; and in her voice there were tones than which no voices have known stronger or deeper; and in those tones she carried the echoes of the storm that was rending woman's soul in every Arab land, roaring in the depths of her spirit while rumors of illusion and vanities of falsehood choked it...

And Huda Shaarawi enlightened and was enlightened; and behold, in the heart of every Arab woman a light shining, and on the brow of every Arab woman a lamp-niche; and behold, here, in the darkness of the centuries—in woman's crushing and her bitterness, in her deprivation and her despair, in this long chain of black servitudes—a great resurrection, through which appears the face of a woman who said to history: Halt!... for from this day forward your pages shall not be written by the man of the East alone; and wherever the man sets down a word of light, the woman shall set down a word of light.

And the high summits shall no longer be a playground for the eagles among men alone. For upon every summit is the brow of a woman on which revolutions dawn and geniuses are fused together...

...And so it came to pass... that history bowed down to write on the first of its pages this great name among women: "Huda Shaarawi."

And after her came this mighty caravan of Arab women, in every land where the name of the One God came down in its graceful Arabic letters—caravan upon caravan... of Arab women, sowing light and guidance and tenderness... and sowing the red banners, pinning them upon the brow of the new history... and after all that, sowing men in this Arab East—men like eagles, with talons and with fangs... and with thundering cries in the cause of right...

How tender the thought of you, O great woman who has passed from sight!!

You are, in the caravan, its guidance and its faith.

You are, in the conscience, the uprising of right and of good!

You are the tablet of heroisms in the history of woman...

You are, at the crossways of brows, a revolution upon the brow of every woman among the Arabs!

And you—you are, in history, by yourself alone, a history...

. . .

The Woman's Voice in Lebanon, its very letters choking on the day the death of this noble lady was announced; The Woman's Voice in Lebanon, joined to this great lady by common bonds of affection, of struggle, of love, and of fidelity—finds itself unable to discharge its duty toward the great departed...

And this humble word The Woman's Voice bears, carrying deep love and true esteem, for one who was, throughout her whole life, a strong and splendid voice in the history of woman...

Huda Shaarawi gave much, and it is woman's right to take of Huda Shaarawi's gifts... and thus shall her memory be immortal forever.

January 1948