Only the Newspaper Is Read in This Country

"From a Talk into the Microphone"

...I wonder — why does it please me tonight to speak to this broadcasting instrument about people... when the broadcasting service invited me to speak to people through this instrument?

Where did this splendid idea come to me from? Truly it is a splendid idea: to speak to this rigid, dry thing mouth to mouth, eye to eye... just the two of us... And what do I care whether anyone among the people of this country is listening tonight to this talk... No — it would please me rather if all those magic knobs on the radios were shut against my voice, so that its tones reached not a single house... Then my voice would rise as I please... in the melody that comes into my head, and the tune that none composes but I...

So, O microphone, from tonight there springs up between me and you an affection. And you are now mine alone; I do not care to talk to anyone but you, and my talk to you is about the people whom we are invited here to address... Have you understood, you dry heart? And will you keep the secret, you long tongue?

And let the words of this night stay engraved within your ribs, like a whisper, or something fainter than a whisper, in the ear!!

As for those upon whose ears my voice is knocking from you now — leave them, some at gambling and at trade, at cup and bowl, in quarrel and squabble... in din and clamor...

Spare yourself them, O microphone, and spare me; for in the heads of these people are minds drier than your iron, and in their hearts an emptiness turning within emptiness, and their lives are the worst of all the kinds of life that have crept upon the earth... What use is speech to them?!

And the stupidest of people are the writers of this country, who have spoken from here and still speak — in that they supposed, if only once, that anyone among the people was listening to them, and that their voices rose beyond the sides of this

small hall closed in upon itself... And this generous station, innocent as we are, invites us to speak to these people of art, and taste, and beauty, and of everything useful and lovely and good... and burdens its shoulders with payment, be it little or much; and in its innocence, if it but knew, it could spare itself all this, and spare the writers and thinkers of this country — or those whom in its innocence it takes for writers and thinkers — this humiliation of the spirit which they suffer at the hands of the people of this country.

Let me speak plainly, O microphone, for you may take my meaning ill — and a wrong done to the sincere writer is a wrong done to the truth — so do not be hasty...

In my country and yours, O microphone, here in Lebanon, there are writers: some of them dwell in the world of letters, at the highest and purest that letters know, and some drag their wings trailing in the dust; and these men, as things actually stand, are called, whether they will or no, to write in the newspapers and to speak over the broadcasting stations. And in their wretchedness, when they bend over the paper, they melt, and melt again; they tint the letter with their own blood, so that it may go out to people elegant, graceful, fragrant! In his wretchedness the writer among us kills his night over letters and syllables and wears out his heart on the word and the idea and the rhyme... and gives as the good give — and no one among the people reads it but the newspaper. The newspaper alone is read in this country, and the announcer alone is heard in this country... and the writer alone dies of deprivation in this country... Who among the writers of the world dies of deprivation but the writer of this country?...

And no writer in this country complains of the deprivation of scarcity and want of money; for money, to the writer, is dust, dust — its gold is dust; and no one on earth has so humbled the dominion of money as the writers have humbled it... dust which they have all shaken from their feet... turning away from it as the chaste turn away.

It is rather a deprivation of the spirit that the writers of this country complain of — that too little is taken from them. They give, and giving with them is life; if they do not give, their souls die, like the tree that does not give and dies, and the spring that does not give and runs dry... But the people of this country alone will not take. And this is the worst folly there is in miserliness: the generous man gives you from his last vein,

Broadcast from the Lebanese station...

from his heart, from his whole self — and you will not take. What miser on earth are you, O miser in taking...?!

Freely we have given — so take freely, you misers... You have heard, among the things you have heard, O microphone, of Lebanon, the land of knowledge —

cradler of thought, in the days when thought was an orphan crawling by the roadside... Lebanon... layer of the first stone in the edifice of civilization... Lebanon.

But you have not heard, O microphone, of what knowledge suffers in Lebanon. We live in legends — in the tales of the letters of the alphabet, carried by a man of Lebanon to the world... and in the tales of the first timber that put out to sea, at the hands of a Lebanese sailor...

And we forget, O microphone, the Lebanese book that no Lebanese reads...

And we forget the Lebanese house, in which there is not the shadow of a book — a book for a child, or a paper for a woman... And we forget these voices that rise out of you, and whose echoes die within your dry iron ribs!!

As though the letter in this country were a burden upon the people: the newspaper perishes of hunger, and bears favor upon favor, and is handed back once with thanks, and many times without thanks.

Or as though the letter were a fetter which the writers bind onto people's necks — when the writer meant it as nothing but a light to wipe the film from the eyes... and a hammer with which to strike the chains from the necks of slaves. And the book has become a hand stretched out toward the people, gleaning the beggar's piasters of the passersby...

...Be quiet... I fancy you are opening your mouth to fling a dreadful saying in my face... Be quiet — I have guessed it, I have guessed...

In your conscience you hold that we are ranters, losing the people in a tinsel of words which we hunt from here and from there...

And in your conscience you hold that we are liars, calling the people to the temple while we revile the truth...!

And in your conscience you hold that we are "thieves," raiding the rich and stripping them of their goods...

And in your conscience... that we are "parasites," coming to banquets without invitation, or coming at the tail of an invited guest... And you know many of our stories, for you are a prying neighbor; you know which of us comes and goes, to this house, and goes and comes...

And in your conscience: that we have written neither fire nor light... Have your letters blotted out a world, and created a world? — you say... You write water and hypocrisy... firewood and stubble, and neither your firewood nor your stubble will catch fire...

And in your conscience, O microphone, that people's souls have sickened of us — we who chew our words, drawing them out, on history, and literature, and art, and taste... and on everything...

Be quiet... do not say all this — for I have guessed you, and you have guessed me...