My Home, My Little Kingdom

"The Lebanese home needs the woman.. The Lebanese home without the woman is a graveyard... So do not make your homes graveyards, O women."

"Of all the things I have known — and how many they are — I have not known nor found anything sweeter or more beautiful than the hearth of my home."

This tender saying comes to my mind now; it expresses warmly the deep bonds that tie a human being to his home... and in it the story of the family is summed up wonderfully...

"The hearth of the home" — I am reminded of it now by this angry weather, this frost that whips the bones, and I feel as if between me and it there were a bond from all eternity, a bond that draws me to that friendly corner of my house every evening, where I fasten my eyes on the fire blazing up in red flame and turn my palms over its warm glow, and in great rapture I feel an air of happiness flooding my whole life — a divine happiness that a person cannot feel except in the corners of his home, this little great kingdom, where selfishness collapses and the paints that society imposes upon us fall away, and the human being — above all the woman — remains face to face with her clear self and with the truth of that self, and all the goodness, beauty, and tenderness in it.

And what happiness is purer than the happiness one of us finds, in the fullness of security, calm, and rest, in contemplating the beauty of this little kingdom... in the order and design of this kingdom, and finally in managing the affairs of this kingdom and the affairs of its subjects...

And what happiness can the sensible, wise woman — this kingdom which God crowned with His right hand. What happiness, I say, can a woman find deeper than her inward feeling that now, in her home, she is the keeper of the dearest and most precious of the gifts God has given the earth... that she alone is trusted with the human race, watching over it with her heart and the light of her eyes.. and that she is at the same time trusted with the happiness of all humanity, through her family, her husband, and her children...

My little kingdom, my home — your home, O woman: it is the corner where you sit for hours of your night and hours of your day, upon a little throne of hearts, reading a book, if you wish, from which you order the affairs of the little kingdom. It is the corner where you sit with your child, without any boredom or weariness, teaching him his lessons with woman's wondrous patience, and rearing him for life as the best hand rears a tender seedling...

My home — your home, O woman: it is the corner where you sit in these cold days, spinning out of your tenderness and love wool for the chests of your children and their husbands...

And it is, O woman, this good smell rising from the delicious food your hands have cooked... and it is this beautiful bouquet of roses — and if roses are scarce, then this bunch of lovely wildflowers — spreading through the house that pleasant something in which the eye and the soul find rest.

*

Never once have I thought of the home and the family in Lebanon without feeling that many things, outside the compass of the soul, have begun to threaten the Lebanese home and the Lebanese family.

I cannot now define those factors that threaten family life in Lebanon, but I feel them deeply. I feel that something sacred has begun to fade from our life... and that is "love of the home" — and our ignorance of the ruin this neglect brings upon the constructive causes of the spirit in the nation.

It may be the Western wave that beats against our life, so that a strong spray of it strikes us...

In the West, a disintegration has struck the family at its very core. It is no longer today one body bound firmly together, but scattered parts here and there, some in the factory and some in the office, and rarely do these scattered members meet, even at the evening hour, when the nights grow sweet and the evening talk grows sweet.

The bond between fathers and their children has become feeble, no longer held together by the cords of understanding and love; and the result is that boys and girls, in their

passion for absolute freedom, now wander blindly in their maze, and it has become difficult to bring them back again to the fold — to the arms of their fathers, to delight in their tenderness and the overflow of their love.

And the women of the world were the first to feel the gravity of this crisis closing in upon the family, exposing its essential elements to demolition and ruin; so woman rose up in all parts of the world, working together to treat the disease before it grew acute and its cure became impossible.

We in this country, though we enjoy freedom to a certain degree, still long for a gathering around the fire-brazier, warming ourselves over its red embers, listening to grandmother's tales and her sweet far-off memories... And we thank God that we find much happiness when we take refuge in our homes and find tenderness there, in the touch of a mother or a father, or the touch of an innocent child.

How beautiful those days were, when the family lived in contentment and satisfaction — sleeping on mattresses they spread upon the floor, one beside the other, and piled up in the morning one on top of another until they nearly reached the ceiling! And when mealtimes came round, they sat cross-legged on the cushions, around the straw tray, knee touching knee, dipping the morsel into one big common dish holding whatever it held of qawarma or mujaddara, and crushing the onion with their strong fists until its pieces flew!

And they were happy with this primitive living: they slept their fill, and rose at dawn to beat the sun to the field, where they plied their hoes to the tunes of the ataba... And their cares seemed few in those days — or so it seems to us!

I greatly fear that the killing materialism will sweep away what is left to us of the beauty of the Lebanese spirit and its purity — that beauty which showed itself in the bonds of the family and its cohesion, and in the woman's tenderness, her affection, and her devotion to her home.

What we see today in our Lebanese life gives no promise of strengthening the family's being, or of settling the home upon its sound foundations. The Lebanese home has not yet fallen to ruin, but it is on the road to ruin, if the Lebanese woman goes on pursuing reckless freedom, behind the mirage that builds no houses but leaves them ruins...

The Lebanese home needs the woman; it needs its mistress, its queen; it needs her affection and her love; it needs her hand, her heart, and her mind...

The Lebanese home without the woman is a graveyard — so shall we make our homes graveyards, O women?