defense of it in what she wrote in her essays on Bahithat al-Badiya.
And it seems to me that she was formed by nature to hold fast and to endure pains patiently, quite apart from the spells of psychic distress she sometimes met with, which fostered in her the feeling of isolation, doubt, and wariness. Perhaps she inherited something of this from her mother, who held most firmly to her religion.
5 — The Shock of the News of Her Death
— What was the effect of the loss of May upon you, and how did you receive the news of her death?
— May's loss had a profound effect upon my soul and left a deep sorrow in my heart. Her death was a cruel shock. There is no doubt that for one such as May, in her literary station and her social station and her place in authorship and writing, a death in this manner counts as a cruel bereavement.
I read the notice of her death in al-Ahram, in the early morning; it was a sudden notice, a startling piece of news. Such was my stupefaction and emotion that I spoke on the telephone with Khalil Bey Mutran in the hope that he had some word of her death, and I asked him how "May" had died this sudden death, after we had reckoned on rest and quiet for her in her small, tranquil house. But hopes were disappointed and expectation was lost when we were taken unawares by her death, and by death's snatching her away from among us.
Had you seen her funeral you would have seen simplicity embodied in it. There was Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid Pasha — and I was with him — and Antoun Bey al-Jumayyil and Khalil Mutran Bey and a few of her friends. I was riding with Lutfi al-Sayyid Pasha in a car behind her bier. And when we reached those far, crushing abodes which part us
every day from someone dear, and drew near her grave, Lutfi al-Sayyid Pasha stood over it and shed hot tears as they took her from our hands to deliver her to the stillness of death and the desolation of the grave, and to consign her body to the earth.
And there... in the abode of extinction, May the orator fell silent, and May the immortal lived on. We heard no voice of hers, nor did we hear anyone speak over her
grave, nor was any voice raised in the church to eulogize her...
Stillness hung over everything, and silence covered all, and no tongue could loosen its knot. And the sight of the sun hidden away on that day added to the sorrow and grief of the funeral. Everything was sad, and the whole atmosphere breathed sorrow and grief. Her death was a cruel one, and we had hoped for her an ending other than that.
“Caley” chocolates and “Mackintosh”
caramels...
need no lengthy advertising.
Fortune
A DELICIOUS FOILED CHOCOLATE ASSORTMENT
Fortune HALF POUND NET
CHOCOLATES BY Caley
Agents and depot: Baroudi Bros. & Co. — Beirut