Where the Pines Are Evergreen

How broad and well-made it is, this road leading to Dhour el-Choueir, the bride of our summer resorts. It is smooth, gleaming, dusky... and the car that carries us steals glances at its own shadow running behind it at the very same speed! It is as if this car, in its distraction and skittishness, senses the loneliness and the desolation! How far it is from its state last year, when it used to meet hundreds of cars racing nimbly up toward the mountain and down toward Beirut... So no blame falls on this car if it feels forlorn...

This is what was running through my mind at the moment my companion cut across the stream of my thoughts and lifted her voice in beloved country airs, which the deep valleys echoed back, blending with the breaths of sunset, sending into the eyelids something like drowsiness and languor...

I closed my eyes, listening with all my senses... while the cold mountain breeze played with my hair... A few soft, delicious moments passed... How wonderful is this abiding bliss we live in, here in this calm, serene country! Do we, I wonder, appreciate the blessing we enjoy?

I felt the car stop suddenly and heard the driver rouse us from our reverie, which had nearly become a doze! In a single instant I was on the sidewalk in front of a shop: A. B. C. I cast my eyes in every direction to catch some engaging scene to pass on to the readers of “The Woman's Voice” — for theirs is this interval at the end of my day!

Let us rest a little in the café bordering the main road... The seats are almost touching one another, and the crowd keeps steadily growing... Here comes the waiter, asking politely what we would like. — Lemonade... — And five minutes later we sit drinking the cold lemonade. Now the orchestra has begun to play that classical piece, “La Paloma”!... The soft, harmonious strains soothe the nerves and rest the senses from the weariness of work... I sank back in my chair, relaxed and still, watching the movement and listening to the din rising from the street and from the customers inside... studying people's faces at close range... Most of them are alike, of a single pattern; the stranger among them is rare and few, and the colloquial accents are much the same...

Now and then a Palestinian accent rises, and necks crane toward its owner and eyes fasten on it, questioning, and we hear the word: “Refugees!”... Poor souls they are!! Their number grows from day to day... We can tell them by their mournful faces feigning smiles... and by the bewildered looks in their eyes that betray fear of a dark, unknown future.

Near us sat a party of elegant young men with an unmistakable Beiruti air about them... They were conferring and agreeing among themselves to spend the evening listening to “Carmen Badi,” that slender blonde singer around whom, these two years past, a band of admirers and devotees has gathered... Her fame has spread through the circles of Beirut and the mountain, and her name is heard passing on every tongue...

No desire will be born in me to look upon Carmen Badi's face, masked with artifice, or to listen to her false voice... So — to the Hotel Kassouf... Come, let us watch the dancing there; it is half past seven, and today is Sunday, so there is bound to be a crush and a bustle...

...My guess proved right. At Kassouf it was impossible for us to find a table and two chairs — no more! — for me and my companion! But thanks be to circumstance: here is the hand of a friend waving to us from afar, inviting us to join their party. And we did not need to be told twice!... I opened with the question:

— How can you complain that the summer season is meager, when this splendid hotel of yours dazzles the eye with its colors and its elegance! It seems to me to be at the very height of its prosperity — so what is the meaning of this complaint?

— Do not forget, madam, that today is Sunday, the day of rest, and this state of things is not the normal one. I came here yesterday and found the place empty except for a few guests staying in the house — indeed, I felt certain the servants outnumbered them! The condition of the hotels and of the men of business is a painful one, and the loss that will befall them all is bound to be enormous... Some of the small hotels stand empty and deserted! And this is how things are in Dhour el-Choueir — what, then, must they be in the other summer resorts? God have mercy on His servants, the people of the mountain, who still speak of the summer season as a source of their livelihood — what is to become of them this coming winter?

And the orchestra struck up a tango, and the blazing lights were put out, and nothing remained but the dim red glow... A beguiling atmosphere settled over the place: everyone heedless, seeking amusement, the squandering of hours, the forgetting of time! — that cruel time which drives us on in mockery, while we follow it against our will, not knowing why, or where.

But what business have I with thinking, in a light, merry atmosphere like this? Why should I not contemplate instead the plain difference between the ladies' fashions this year and last year's! How long these dresses are!! And how wide and flowing below the slim, elegant waists! Astonishing!! How woman's taste evolves! I remember well that when this fashion arose in the West a year ago, I found it distasteful and had no wish whatever to exchange it for the dresses cut short to the knee! How is it, then, that today I can hardly bear to look at a lady's figure unless her dress reaches at least to the middle of the calf?... The fashion designers in America were right when they predicted that woman, where fashion is concerned, follows the latest look without condition or reservation — while her revolt and outcry against the new style is a storm that soon subsides!

This is what I was thinking as I left the Hotel Kassouf, tossed about by obscure stirrings of the soul whose nature I could not tell!