Professor Anis Khoury Makdisi

In the month of April of the year 1927 I met May in Egypt, and that was the last of my meetings with her before her final illness. I had been sent at the time to take part in the celebration honoring Shawqi, and May was so gracious as to invite me to one of her well-known evening gatherings, where I met an elect company of the luminaries of literature. In truth it must be said that May was the centerpiece of that literary evening, and I shall never forget the admiration I felt for the sweetness of her conversation, the clearness of her thought, and the graciousness of her hospitality.

The days pass — and behold, she is ill in Lebanon. And how great was my astonishment when I heard that she was in the hospital for mental diseases, wrapped round by a thick cloud of tales and rumors. It was impressed upon us that seeing her was granted only to her kin and to those who had charge of her, so we made no attempt to visit her, but waited month after month for her recovery and her return to her former self.

She came out of the hospital and it was made possible for her to live in a private house, and I was among those she permitted to visit her. When I entered her room and came forward to greet her, she did not utter a word, but her eyes were brimming with tears. Then she motioned me to sit; I sat down beside her and we fell into conversation, and her talk was not free of the bitterness of her feeling at the exhaustion and ill-treatment she had suffered.

Afterward I heard her speak at the American University of Beirut, enchanting her hearers with the eloquence of her words; then I visited her at Ameen Rihani's house in Freikeh, and she was in the best of health and spirits. And little did I know that she was bidding Lebanon her last farewell, and that that flame which had blazed here in the Arab East would soon be extinguished on the banks of the Nile.