In My Library

On a terrible, stormy evening — one of the February evenings of the year forty-seven, after the thousand, of the Nazarene's birth — the delegations of literature walked, grieving and great, in the funeral of a poet who was among the finest of Lebanon's poets... The name of the author of "The Serpents of Paradise" filled every mouth in the Arab world.

A poet of Lebanon who wore out his heart in his pen, surrendering his soul in an unguarded hour, in the pangs of fathomless pain, in the hands of the Sisters of Charity.

And the friends of Elias Abu Shabaki refuse to let this poet vanish, and his song fade thus from the ears, in a country where talents and geniuses go to waste.

So they undertook to produce a great book, a study of this poet and of his life, written by more than twenty men of letters of Lebanon and Syria.

And it is a genuine good that the women of my country should come to know a great poet like Elias Abu Shabaki, whose sound once carried so far...

And Dar al-Makshuf is performing a noble work when it presents this great poet to the Arab world through the pens of our distinguished writers; nor is anyone worthier than Dar al-Makshuf to present Elias Abu Shabaki to readers, for in that house the poet passed the best of his days and his nights...

God bless Albert Rihani, brother of that great man Ameen Rihani — may God sweeten his grave in the shade of the peaceful pines of Freike —

for Albert still enriches Arabic literature with the masterpieces of the great Ameen, supervising their correction and their printing.

Yesterday it was "The Heart of Lebanon," a delight to heart and mind: Albert brought it out and gave Arabic literature one of Ameen's masterpieces, of which people have spoken, and speak still, and will go on speaking...

"The Heart of Lebanon" is the tale of this little country, Lebanon, from the day the stone said to the stone: I am here... the tale of its peasants and its comely youth, the tale of its muleteers and their sweet toil...

The tale of the boulder and the stone, the tale of the bellan bush and the bramble, the tale of Lebanon... in its poverty and its riches, in its ambition and its despair...

"The Heart of Lebanon" has immortalized those fingers that traced its letters — and blessings on the hand that brought it forth to the people, an immortal bequest from Ameen's great estate.

And here is "Outside the Harem," the story that Albert brings out anew today in its fourth printing — the story of woman yearning for freedom, after she has erased from her soul, her mind, and her heart all the traditions.

The story of woman declaring war upon servitude, upon man's faithlessness and his tyranny, to win her complete freedom...

The story of the woman who abandons her husband and her palace because her husband took to himself another woman to share his heart.

The story of the "daughter of the revolution" who wedded liberty.

And finally, it is the story of the Eastern woman — proud, unbending, immortal...

And if we have one request to make of our generous brother "Abu Amin," it is that in the coming printings he leave none of the small slips — the typographical and linguistic errors — so that the face of the great Ameen may remain forever radiant...