A Talk in Damascus

... There is no doubt that the granting to the Syrian woman of the right to vote was, for the whole Arab world and for the East, a great event — one that has its meaning, its significance, and, beyond that, its consequences.

Woman in the Arab East in general has not, to this day, been rewarded for her struggle; indeed, woman in the Arab East has not yet been acknowledged any general social existence, nor has she been valued at her worth.

It is as though, within the Arab community, she were a thing paralyzed, sterile, that neither produces nor gives; and from this came the calamity of the Arab East, and all its spiritual and social regression.

And the Arab East has remained barren and sterile, breeding and multiplying by the hundreds and the thousands, yet begetting no great thought, no great literature, no great statesmanship, no great heroism.

By this act of hers, Syria has offered proof that she is determined to march in the caravan of human civilization.

She has likewise offered proof that she knows she will remain paralyzed and sterile so long as half the nation lives in locked boxes, behind curtains, as though it lived in coffins.

And it is a great shame upon a nation that accords the illiterate, ignorant man dignity and a right — so that, in his ignorance and the blindness of his heart and conscience, he builds houses of goodness and truth for it — while it strips this right and this dignity from the woman who builds for the generations, and who alone knows what she builds and how she builds.

Tomorrow the Syrian woman will come out, for the first time in the history of the Arab world, from the locked boxes to the ballot boxes, and will speak her word on the destiny of motherhood and childhood and on the destiny of the nation.

And her word will be magnificent.

And it is a glory for the woman of Damascus that she has gone ahead of the women of the entire Arab world.

So when will the turn come of Lebanon, land of radiance and geniuses?