the part of the good mother...
Her husband died, leaving four children, in a condition little short of poverty and want. Then began the chapter of
struggle — the chapter of a woman working the impossible to keep the scourge of hunger from her children and to pave the way before them to a high education and a comfortable life.
And how was she to accomplish that when she was nearing forty? She seemed on the brink of breaking, but for a resolve in her breast and a strong faith in her heart — and her guiding rule in life was: "The secret of happiness is to find happiness in your present condition, whatever it may be, and to load your cares onto no one among men..."
She had the highest hopes in one of her sons, who was sensitive, quick of heart, and inclined toward acting; he would listen to her with sharpened ears as she recited theatrical parts to her children as they sat around the fire in the evenings. She would say to this son:
"We shall go acting together someday, you and I!"
And suddenly this son, so dear to her heart, dies, leaving a great emptiness in the life of the struggling mother...
... It was a cruel trial that all but shattered this woman and crushed her utterly, but for her strong faith, which awoke in her at last — the faith her mother had planted in her heart when she was an innocent child...
In 1926 Adeline Reynolds entered the university, being then 64 years of age. Her children helped her pay the university fees, and she herself gave private lessons in French.
One day the professor of dramatics held a competition among the students, believing that women students over the age of eighteen were of limited imagination and rarely destined to win...
But behold, Mrs. Reynolds entered the competition and won with great distinction... Cheers and applause rose for her from every side, and eyes brimmed over with tears... Why did their eyes fill with tears so?
When she graduated from the university and announced her readiness to take up the art of acting, she was seventy years old. She began to prepare herself in body and in spirit: she learned swimming and horseback riding, and dancing of every kind; and when her director asked her where she got those supple wrists, she answered: "From scaring off wolves with broomsticks!"
And after a struggle of seven years in bit parts of no account, she was given the chance to appear in a film with Hedy Lamarr; she drew all eyes to herself, and everyone praised her acting.
The director asked her, after a full, exhausting day of rehearsal: "Has this work tired you?" She answered:
"One who has waited seventy years feels not the least fatigue."
That film was followed by 19 others, and no one remembers ever hearing Mrs. Reynolds grumble a single time... And to this very day she is still learning and studying. Last year she took a course in handicrafts at a night school, and now she is learning the art of "mysticism"! She is forever seeking out new things that will preserve her energy and the liveliness of her spirit!
The Palestine Question
To the dear reader
Najib Sadaka
The Palestine Question
With prefaces by
Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha and Mr. Jamal al-Husseini
Publishers
Dar al-Kitab
Beirut — Lebanon