May in Her Ordeal...

That was an ordeal that shook the Arab world..

May is ill.

No one knew — except a few individuals who knew that "May" was ill in her nerves, that she was in Lebanon, and that she was in the dreadful hospital of Hazmiyeh. How did "May" enter the hospital, and why was she put there?

No one knew...

And none of her friends asked after her...

Lebanon, which had set her in the place of the apple of its eye.

Lebanon, which had held celebrations in her name.

Lebanon, her beloved homeland — "May" comes down to it, or comes down into the ugliest of its hospitals, and no one in Lebanon knows of her, and no one from Lebanon asks after her.

And "May," in her great ordeal, was circled about by the violent, silent tragedy, as though she were wandering in a dark tomb... no — "May" was herself a dark tomb in which phantoms crept.

A cruel ordeal passed over the greatest of women of letters; in it her soul turned fierce and her conscience darkened, until in her conscience all people were scorpions...

And at last her friends knew — they knew everything...

"May" shall not waste away between the walls of her prison, gripped by the cruel fingers of pain..

And they fought for her sake a war without softness and without truce, and she came out of her tomb into life.

In these pages we tell the story of that tragedy as we came to know it, and as it is told to us by a well-informed friend who accompanied the chapters of that bloodied tragedy and did much for the great Lebanese genius.

He said:

It never crossed my mind that I would accompany that crowded stretch of the life of the great writer of the Arabs, May Ziadeh. Nor did I expect to be a witness to the chapters of that violent tragedy — I who did not know this woman and had never seen her face in my life.

True, I had heard her name, and I knew that my kinsman Dr. Yacoub Sarrouf took a serious interest in her...

But life decrees for us other than what we decree for ourselves, and works in the hidden its silent, deep work; and the destinies of thousands of people are bound together, by the will of life, without knowledge and without intent.

And so it was: life bound me to May in an hour I had not expected, and in circumstances that had never entered my mind.

One day a friend of mine came to me with the news of her transfer from the Asfouriyeh to the hospital of Dr. Nicolas Rebeiz in Ras Beirut.

This friend told me that "May" received no one and was not permitted to receive anyone, and that at the hospital they say she refuses to eat. Ameen Rihani and Jirji Baz had come to see her, and she refused... Ah, if you could hear her talk — if you could hear her complaint.

— And how did you learn all this?

— From the nurse, Miss Esther Wakim; it was she who told me her story.

It occurred to me to work toward meeting the great writer, so I asked him:

— Can I see her?

— Impossible!

But I did not despair. I tried to see her — I do not know what drove me to it. I went to Dr. Rebeiz's hospital.. I asked for the nurse there; she said: impossible.

Impossible! What am I to do, O Lord.

Suddenly an idea flashed into my head... I knew that her tie with Dr. Yacoub Sarrouf had been strong, and Dr. Sarrouf was my relative.

I said to the nurse: a kinsman of Dr. Sarrouf wishes to see her. Ask her.

The nurse came back saying: Come in. Come in — you are the first person she will have received.

... Here is a woman of whom they say she is mad; and Esther Wakim says no —

she is only a woman worn out, in pain, despairing of everything...

My head was spinning with thoughts as I crossed the threshold of her room. What shall I say? What shall I do?

I entered.. and found myself before a woman whose hair had gone white, and who had tied it with a black ribbon. I greeted her; she did not answer... and went on staring at the ceiling..

I felt all my bones coming loose and the sweat pouring from my body..

Is this a madwoman?

Is this a woman of sound mind? Questions turning in my head and ringing in my heart.. and I stood there, lost.

I will not go out.

After a long while, she looked up at me and said:

"In the year 1929, in the month of January, I gave a tea party at my house in Cairo, and among the guests was Yacoub Sarrouf, and the talk turned on communing with spirits.. Dr. Sarrouf believed none of it, yet did not dare deny it. He said to me: I promise you, May — if the communing of spirits is real, and I go before you to the other world, and you are in an ordeal, my spirit will come to your aid in your ordeal."

May fell silent, stared at me, and said:

"Are you, I wonder, the spirit of Yacoub Sarrouf?"

In that hour I felt that fate had bound me to the destiny of this unhappy woman. I sat down, and May began to talk to me, unburdening her breast for the first time.

She told me of her relatives — some of them wanting her alive so as to exploit her, and some wanting her dead so as to inherit from her.

And they came to me in Egypt, while I was still in my grief for my mother, saying..

Travel, May, to Lebanon. In Lebanon are your own people; it is a shame that you should stay here alone. And I carried myself to Lebanon, thinking to find in Lebanon a support for my weary head and my torn heart, and consolation for my sorrows...

And in Lebanon I met with bitter grief; and in Lebanon I was carried to the Asfouriyeh as a madwoman, and they bound me in the jacket... and in the Asfouriyeh I tasted death many times over.

And I remained eleven months. Until I was moved — I do not know how — to this place.

I asked her: Why do you not receive your friends, May?

She said: In the eleven months I spent in torment I saw not one of my friends' faces. Why did they not ask after me? Why did Ameen Rihani, for one, not ask after me?

My visits to "May" were repeated — and it was as though her friends had learned that she was at Rebeiz's... And Rihani, after visit upon visit, had managed to see her.

We resolved to bring her out. And we brought her out of the hospital — for Dr. Rebeiz refused to release her without a sign from her relatives, and the police helped her to gain her freedom — and May moved to Ras Beirut.

And we took to frequenting the house, spending our evenings with her and delighting in her charming talk.

Then came the great celebration at the American University of Beirut, when she delivered her lecture — and after that May went out into the free life.