May, the Woman of Letters (Continued)

...would take leave of May's salon so that their pens might set forth with licit magic and lofty eloquence; and every one of them yearned for May's salon, eager to hasten the coming of that day, that in its atmosphere he might wipe away his dry toils and forget his thorny labor, renewing the hidden powers within his soul.

You will find this word pressing in two verses by Ismail Sabri, spoken of May in defiance of the days:

My soul wanders among certain houses of the quarter,
like a thirsting bird, longing for water;
if tomorrow I do not delight my eyes with May,
I shall disown your morning, O Tuesday.

And you will find it as a lament filled with grief and longing, cried out by the poet Khalil Mutran at May's fortieth-day memorial gathering, in eulogy:

Desolate is the house — where is your salon, O May,
to which the delegations came and went?
The elect of the two Easts in nobility and merit
thronged in your spacious shelter.

Just as May encouraged the intellectual movement, so too she worked to awaken the women's movement, breathing into it a great deal of her own spirit. She held views and theories concerning it which her voice long proclaimed, now as orator, now as lecturer, as writer or as conversationalist.

May's views on woman are the views of the female who has remained cheated of her right since the beginning of creation — the female springing forward with all her pride and self-confidence, demanding emancipation for her sisters, women with foreheads held high beneath the crown of resolve and struggle, the shadows of submission and abjection vanished from their eyes and replaced by the gaze of one who is no longer the slave of society, nor the slave of need, nor the slave of man.

Yet her views are moderate, not reckless: while she calls upon woman to emancipate herself, she calls upon her to found her emancipation upon knowledge and restraint; and then she grows afraid for her, lest she see her mistake the true meaning of emancipation, and she reproves her, saying: "Go back and kneel before the little one, and beg his pardon."

As for May's loyalty to the daughters of her sex, it shows plainly in her three studies — Bahithat al-Badiya, Warda al-Yaziji, and Aisha al-Taymuriyya — and I firmly believe she added to their merit, for she loved them all, however their inclinations differed and their paths diverged.

May took an active part in Egypt's women's renaissance, joining as a member in the meetings held at the old Egyptian University under the presidency of Mrs. Huda Shaarawi, the first to carry the torch of the women's renaissance in the East. That lady — God rest her soul — held a lofty opinion of May, and spoke of her more loftily still, in a talk she confided to Mr. Muhammad Abd al-Ghani Hasan, published at the time in al-Muqtataf; at its close she said: "I knew May in the bloom of

her youth and at the height of her activity; I knew her while tremendous forces contended over her body, her heart, and her spirit, and I was always anxious for her, afraid those violent forces would storm through her and wither her before her time, or destroy her before her hour."

Mrs. Shaarawi succeeded in this precise description, brief and eloquent as it is, as though by it she were interpreting the saying of al-Mutanabbi:

When souls are great,
bodies grow weary in pursuit of what they desire.

And it is a sound judgment which the modern psychologists confirm with present-day proofs, and of which life shows us every day one of its many colors as a witness.

This human being, May — this poetic spirit, delicate in her tremors, great in her self-respect, possessed of a loftiness with all its refined sensitivity — life afflicted her as it had afflicted no one before; it afflicted her with what is worse than ruin and more evil than savagery, and her faith in mankind was stabbed with a grievous stab — this mankind whose capacity for reform she believed in, hopeful and aspiring in that belief.

May had high ideals of which she often spoke to us, ideals that rose above acquaintance with individuals and with the malice and deceit at work in their core, for her view of people was a general, expert view, like her view of life.

May had a heart — and what a heart! — a generous heart with room for mercy, tenderness, goodness, love, and beauty; and none but she had room for what is in the hearts of men.

May's intention was a good one, untainted by any flaw; no grudges or hatreds worked within it, and it remained sound and shining. That is why the shock was so violent and telling when she learned the true metal of human beings — she who had kept company only with the noblest of people, had tested no wood but that of musky fragrance, and had seen nothing but the gleaming jewel.

As for May's beating heart, May's heart full of vitality and life, May's heart wrapped in mystery for all its chaste love and Platonic passion — this noble beating heart which the pens of the men of letters have treated only rarely — it is not that I do not know it — I shall devote to it, God willing, a book of its own, after study and scrutiny, taking the facts from their proper sources, that I may pay some part of May's due to literature. Did she not say: "I hope that after my death someone will come who will do me justice, and will draw out of my little writings the spirit of sincerity, truth, and love that is in them, and the ardor for everything good and wholesome and beautiful — because it is so."