Sheikh Fouad Hbeish

“May”—“May” in my recollections... What shall I say of these recollections... a stretch of time that I lived with all my nerves...

It was on one of those evenings, and I was behind my desk here at al-Makshuf, when in came Ameen Rihani, scowling, trembling with anger.

What is the matter, Ameen? I asked him.
And the great Ameen sat down and said... May... May...

- What about May, Ameen?
- Poor “May”... we all leave her alone in her ordeal; not one has written a word about her...

And that evening Ameen Rihani told me the heartbreaking story of “May”...

And from that day al-Makshuf carried on its well-known campaign, and we raised heaven and earth, until the great woman of letters of the Arabs came out of her prison into life. And I visited her with Rihani at her house in Ras Beirut, and she appeared before us in welcome; she was, as I recall, in black clothes, with white hair... and she walked toward us with elegance and grace, and on her lips the shadow of a smile.

And when Ameen Rihani presented me to her, she pressed my hand in welcome and gazed into my face without uttering a word. I shall never forget that face, expressive of a thousand things and one thing more, nor those two eyes folded upon so many meanings... nor those enchanting tones in her voice when she began to talk to us of letters... I looked at her long, and saw that she was passing through a violent crisis—a crisis born, no doubt, of the bitter disappointment that came of the treatment she had been dealt.

And she was a sound woman in every sense of the word...

...

And in the year 1939 I saw her in Egypt. She was living in a modest ground-floor flat, but an elegant one, of two rooms, cooking for herself and waiting on herself... and she was entirely natural...

She invited me to lunch at her place, and I ate of the food she had cooked with her own hands, and I stayed with her for hours, and she kept saying to me...

Tell me about Lebanon... about Rihani... And we talked long...

And that was my last meeting with her...