The editorial desk takes great interest in the letters and articles that reach it from the various countries and the various organizations of the Arab world.
These pages which the magazine publishes have met with much interest from readers, who have found in them lively, engaging material.
And the editorial desk is glad to declare that these letters are among the pages dearest to its own heart, and to the hearts of the readers; for that reason it gives them a great share of its care.
We are pleased to invite the correspondents of 'The Woman's Voice' to keep their letters coming to us, for we find in these letters living, genuine material that much of our general subject-matter lacks.
'He and I'... a prose poem, sent by Miss Radiyya Sayf al-Din, from Latakia, to 'the imaginary writer she loves'... And in this intimate confession the reader senses a soft literary spirit, which the young lady sends forth through the folds of the words.
He and I...
To the imaginary writer I love...
The night gathered us between its tender eyelids, while the light of the moon flooded the walls of the room from the corners of those open windows; and those lights seeped into our two hearts, carrying the memory of far-off phantoms hovering about the edges of the room. And our sighs began to pass back and forth in this silence that had spread its wings over everything there.
The first half of the night went by, and the second half began to wrap us in its late hours, while we both lay sunk between a lowered glance and weary looks; neither of us, through this time that passed so quickly, could understand what those drowsy lashes were gathering in of images and fanciful dreams — dreams that have remained, even unto eternity, before our visions: a beautiful dream that goes on, a wandering phantom that will not
come to rest.
Throughout this while, which I did not wish ever to end, I saw myself happy, while upon our two figures standing in the mirror beside us I saw a shade of redness over features which withering had almost effaced in that interval. And the moonbeams began to bid farewell to our phantoms hovering in those black shadows, while the converse of glances and whispers went on — meeting one another and returning, broken by awe and shyness, without a motion. And so, in one brief moment, as I turned my gaze toward the floor
of the room, from which I was accustomed never to lift my eyes, I heard a deep sigh, a burning breath from his chest, followed by his words: 'It is three o'clock past midnight, my dear...' And I felt his hand about to touch my face, and by an involuntary movement I found myself starting up in astonishment and confusion, though I had wished to ask him to do as he pleased. And there he made no further movement, but bowed toward the ground, brooding in his thoughts, and did not try to raise his eyes to see the features of my face, which were saying to him: come forward. And after no short while he went out of the room, leaving my phantoms and my dreams to search for him in that darkness, to embrace him with the eternal, everlasting embrace...
Latakia: Qurfays
Readers will remember the story that The Woman's Voice published by Mrs. Salma al-Haffar under the title 'Who Is the Criminal?' The writer Salma al-Haffar had asked readers to declare their opinions as to who the real criminal in the story was, and two letters have reached us: the first from Miss Zaynab Mahmud Yasin, of Safita, and the second from the writer Taha al-Gharib, of the newspaper Le Commerce du Levant.
Here is Miss Zaynab's letter. She said:
The Criminal...
After reading the story 'Waiting'
in the last issue of the esteemed magazine The Woman's Voice, my attention was caught by this tragedy performed by three protagonists — a mother, a lover, and a son — which The Woman's Voice placed in the hands of its readers, men and women, that they might judge which of the three is the criminal. Faced with this welcome referendum, I paused to review the position of each
of them; it moved me deeply as a whole, and I came away wondering who the criminal could be.