The Palestinian Woman: Her Renaissance and Her Struggle

Amid the depths of sorrow and the succession of calamities, the call of "the Voice" reached me, asking me to record the renaissance of woman and her activity in Palestine, and her keeping pace with the caravan of world women's progress, for its special conference issue... Palestine!? What has she to do with the caravan now, when she has fallen, her brow bowed low, her ribs bruised blue, despoiled of her being, her wounds grievous...? Can Palestine march on, when hope has been dashed and darkness has followed upon darkness... and where is the way!? Where, O guide of the road — you have strayed!

Where is the way — O leaders of the caravan — when the beacon has gone out, the banner has been furled, the assembly has fallen silent, and the dwellings stand empty?! Hush! There go their caravans pressing on with the departure, and there is their caravan-singer, his call ringing out across the horizons, shaking hearts and striking the ears. Palestine after Andalusia..!? God be with you... You fall slain, and after today shall no one remember you? Shall no flags flutter across your expanses, no processions march!? Nay — the angels there circle about the fallen heroes, bending tenderly, crying: Softly! Passerby, stand humble and bareheaded; do not tread the ground with your feet, for that is the resting place of the martyrs; every spot of it is a garden for them, and upon every hill stands a banner of their struggle!

... And what is there, O strong and eloquent "Voice," but sorrow and tears and the flood of blood?! Alas for Palestine — is there any dressing for her wounds?! Then let these lines on the renaissance of woman there be drawn from the flow of that ink and the inspiration of this struggle, for in it she has a message and a record... And what a renaissance the Palestinian woman has made, and what a fight!? Despite the successive revolts, which numbered eight from 1920 to the beginning of 1948, and despite the meager allocations for education in the era of colonialism, which did not exceed four percent, she was able to cut her way steadily forward. We see her passing through the stages of primary education, then secondary, then making her way to the universities of East and West in pursuit of learning, afterward taking up in them the reins of teaching and social work, practicing medicine, and reaching the government offices; and we see illiteracy dwindling in the great cities until it is on the verge of vanishing. Thence that renaissance sprang from a comprehensive national consciousness, whose effects have shown themselves in the various fields of social and cultural activity, radiant and far-reaching...

So much for the cities. As for the Palestinian countryside, where hundreds of villages are scattered, the village women had no more than ten small schools, in which they spent a period not exceeding two years; and this brief span of study, together with the absence of social and cultural activity in their surroundings, could not have living results. Yet their sacrifice on the field of battle takes its place in the book of the struggle as one of its shining, immortal lines! This activity flourished in the cities, and perhaps the most brilliant proof of the sense of national responsibility is the rising up of women workers in the cultural field and their shouldering the burden of founding private primary and secondary schools, to keep the general standard of learning from collapse and retreat during the ordeal! In the social field, her activity multiplied, until the number of women's associations in the Arab city of Jaffa reached seventeen when they formed themselves into a single rank — for the fight — after the partition resolution. Jerusalem — the capital — likewise marched in the vanguard and took part in every field, and this activity extended to the rest of the cities.

I turn now to that activity and those efforts in the District of Samaria — the cultural center of the district — where they are concentrated in three institutions: the Women's Union, Child Welfare, and the Department of Social Affairs...

The Women's Union, before its affiliation with the Egyptian Union in Cairo in 1938, was an association founded through the efforts of its late president, Miss Mariam Hashim, in 1931, under the name of the Arab Ladies' Association; owing to compelling political considerations it was not registered until 1945. Since that time it has striven a blessed striving in charitable works, in teaching illiterate women, in caring for the orphans of the martyrs and sending the older among them to asylums and trade schools until they grew into working men; it likewise fitted the little girls, through their instruction, for an honorable working life — and to the Union's second president, the gracious Miss Andalib al-Samad, belong on this

path the noblest and truest of efforts, for she teaches them the art of cutting and sewing in her own workshop, free of charge.

The Union pursued its efforts on the field of battle on a wide scale, for it founded a hospital in its house for the wounded, and trained three squads of its members and young women for first aid and nursing in the city and in the field — three of whom are still serving as volunteers in the Rescue Army — and it set up other first-aid posts in some of the villages. It likewise made and delivered clothing and gifts to the fighters on the various firing lines and in the hospitals, provided clothing continuously to one thousand four hundred refugee families and their newborn at the Iraqi Red Crescent dispensary, and it is now cooperating — with its whole body — in the closest cooperation with the Red Cross organization for their relief.

In the national field, the statements, speeches, and appeals issued from its office — whose full burden is borne by the writer of these lines — headed the daily press, speaking of the consciousness of the Palestinian woman in the fullest terms...

I come now to speak of the Child Welfare center for the District of Samaria, with its principal seat in the city of Nablus — that great workshop of a strong and healthy generation, whose services and benefactions reach out to the circles struck down by poverty and shrouded in backwardness. It is now headed, and its administration supervised with competence and sincerity, by the excellent lady Mrs. Zakiya Tuqan — wife of the mayor of Nablus — assisted by a chosen elite of the city's ladies and its rising young misses. Although it is one of the government institutions, two-thirds of its board of directors — ever since its founding in 1929 — has been made up of Arab ladies, and theirs have been the truest efforts in it since that time. Its services are organized around the care of the child from birth until the age of five, and the provision of food, and likewise clothing and medicine, to poor children; among its noblest works is the guiding of mothers to the finest methods of modern upbringing. Perhaps this latest record of its services, for the month of February 1949, is the most brilliant proof of its vitality to society:

1,273 — the number of children who visited the center with their mothers for weighing, feeding, and guidance.

427 — the number of inspection visits to homes made by the center's president and her fellow nurses.

109 — the number of expectant mothers who came to it for examination.

This vital center has now entered the sphere of the national establishments supervised by the municipality of Nablus, which supports it, together with the city's ladies and the national bodies, materially and morally...

And finally, here I am in the Department of Social Affairs — founded in 1946, likewise as one of the government institutions, then passed into Arab hands, like Child Welfare — to complete the inquiry for "The Woman's Voice." I said to the able social reformer Miss Victoria Nasir — director of the Department — as I followed a magnificent scene of two hundred girls — who until only yesterday had been wallowing in the depths of misery and ignorance — marching to the strains of music in splendid order and uniform dress, to take their places around neat tables for the midday meal: This work is not merely the creation of a new generation, but the building of a nation! How did you achieve it?! She said: I have worked toward the reform of this society by way of the classes below the middle class, where the masses are densest, ignorance is widespread, and poverty abounds! This direction — as you see — has fallen on fertile soil which has yielded its fruit, and on souls thirsty for knowledge and correction. Here they learn — besides reading and writing — everything the complete housewife requires: household management, sewing, ironing, cooking, and the raising of children; then they apply it in practice, here and at home. The clean house, the sound raising of childhood, active hands, and enlightened minds are among the effective factors in the cohesion of the family, the spread of harmony, and the progress of society. My guiding aim, in spreading this domestic culture — besides the intellectual — is the forming of complete wives and mothers who appreciate their responsibility in the education of the people, and so work to bring about a better environment. This good effect has already shown itself in those of them who have married, for they have been a source of happiness to their homes and their kin. Such is my mission in laying this foundation for the nation!

I said: By the life of truth, it is a towering edifice in the national structure, whose rays stream forth and flutter like flags on the field of victory — and it is truly a mission of lofty aims!

And further: woman's efforts in this district are not confined to the city of Nablus alone; there, in its two great subdistricts, Tulkarm and Jenin, the efforts of its women reach out alongside hers, in every field.

Yes — such is her renaissance in Palestine, such is her struggle, and such is her certainty. She will remain the bearer of the standard, unflagging in the fight, until deliverance; and from the fire of the ordeal, from the blaze of torment, she will kindle for the homeland, in its blackest nights, a light to illumine the path of a new generation — a generation whose brows will never bend in humiliation, whose necks will never bow!

O fallen homeland: ours to you is the true pledge, the very essence of fidelity. Though calamities have shattered your being, though the universe echoes your lament, to you go our hearts, wiping your wounds, embracing your soil, O beloved one...

Fayza Abdul Majeed
Secretary of the Women's Union in Nablus and of the Child Welfare Society for the District of Samaria