Letters: Iqbal Izzeddine Zouq

In our mail is a letter from Mrs. Iqbal Izzeddine Zouq, president of the Women's Charitable Society of Tripoli, to which she has attached some passages from the speech of Dr. Raif Abi al-Lama', delivered at the society's party last January:

Dear worthy and respected sir,

Greetings. Your kind letter reached me while I was away from Tripoli. In it you apologize for having been unable to publish the article which Mrs. Fili sent about the party of the Women's Charitable Society of Tripoli on January 25, 1948. I have accepted your apology, with thanks for the expressions of courtesy and delicacy of speech contained in your letter.

Thank you, then, for your constant interest in the women's renaissance in al-Fayha', and especially in our society, which appreciates your efforts to raise the affairs of the Eastern woman and the progress of the magazine that comes out in her name.

Here are some passages from the speech of Dr. Abi al-Lama':

Ladies and gentlemen,

When Miss Ibtihaj Kaddoura, president of the Women's Union in Lebanon, invited me and asked me, in the name of the Women's Charitable Society, to say a word at this flourishing party, I hesitated a great deal — not out of any distance from this blessed society, nor out of coyness or affectation, but because I live in a deep and gloomy silence, which some count in me as pride and some as despair — God knows, and you know not. But she — clever and skillful as she is, sociable and gentle — discovered my weak point and struck the sensitive chord in my heart. She spoke to me of the noble purpose for which this distinguished elite of the ladies of al-Fayha' is working, and of the lofty goal to which it aspires: the founding of a home for the orphan girl on whom fate has borne down hard, whom it has wronged by depriving her — while she is yet a child — of a mother's tenderness and a father's affection.

And I, ladies and gentlemen, by my nature love the poor and feel with the orphan, for I myself was raised an orphan. I lost my father when I was ten years old, so that he — God's mercies upon him — could not guide me along the path of growth and knowledge, nor light before me the rugged roads of life with their many dark obstacles.

And I lost my mother when I was but three years old, so I do not know her, nor can I picture her fair, radiant face; and whenever I hear one of my friends call to his mother, pain cuts into my heart and a tear trembles in my eye, because I do not remember ever once in my life having said the sweet words: O Mother.

And I love the orphan and the poor man, because the sons of orphanhood and the children of poverty, if God grants them someone to take them by the arm and open the road before them, so that they walk through their lives with diligence, sincerity, and energy, leaning on themselves, generally become the best of men and the finest of women. How often, in my solitude, have I repeated these two verses:

Do not say: this is a poor orphan,
who has no fortune in life to make him happy.
Perhaps in the poor man there is a Christ;
perhaps in the orphan a Muhammad.