The First Step

The wave of freedom swept over man all of a sudden; he slipped free of every bond, and a rapture of exultation took hold of him in which the plan of balance was lost. His thinking and his endeavors came to sway between the two pans of a scale, and it was no longer possible for them to settle upon a clear course. The past, to which he refuses to return, was lost to him, and the obscure present grew perplexing; so he stood casting his experiments about, without any regard to their results — although the situation demands thought and deliberation, wisdom, sobriety, and integrity.

We used to be led in our thinking and our doings, and overnight we became leaders of thought, of plans, and of deeds. And how much danger there is in this sudden mastery, for one long accustomed to servitude — danger to his own soul, and to the soul of him to whom the direction and execution of his will in his affairs has been entrusted.

Add to this what generally follows from the results of the great wars: a general moral chaos that overwhelms the people's spirit, will, and inclinations, so that it becomes like a man intoxicated, wanting something without knowing what it is, and striving toward a goal whose nature it does not know. It feels within itself a war of the soul in which matter triumphs over spirit, and feels in the air a pressing force that stifles its breath; so it strives to slip free of everything around it, but finds itself overpowered. Then a black melancholy takes hold of it, and a pessimism toward everything about it; the order of its thinking and its deeds is thrown into disarray, its inclinations swerve from the road of wisdom and deliberation, and it turns to deciding matters that bear no relation to reason: injustice in rule, tyranny over the weak, making lawful what is forbidden, trifling with the neighbor's right, violating the sanctity of the friend, and shutting its eyes to the safeguarding of the most sacred things it possesses — because inner collapse has robbed it of intellectual balance, so that it has become a slave to its inclinations and passions, and all its conduct has become subject to this new feeling that has seized its soul.

And this, as I have said, is the result of two factors: the first, the sudden transformation; the second, the world war.

These, then, are unnatural factors, and they have touched the soul of woman as well as of man; like him, she has come not to know what she wants, and to do deeds that belong neither to her nor to her nature in anything.

She demanded freedom and obtained it; she wished to hold the reins of learning and acquired it; but in return for this double blessing of learning and freedom she took a step far wider than her learning, her thinking, and her natural readiness could warrant, in her absolute freedom of the widest range.

For while she charms you with her sober conversation, the force of her expression, and the breadth of her thought, working in all manner of associations, behold, the next moment she appears like another creature, tied to the first by no tie and joined to it by no link: one of them leaves her house, her children, and her duties in the keeping of those who have no acquaintance with learning or breeding, to sit with a company of women friends around a green table at which she forgets her personality, her learning, her ability, and her position — a table that robs her of her own self-respect.

Consider the case of a friend who visits me in my house: I receive her with every welcome, and she in turn returns me this friendliness. But how quickly this courtesy is transformed when she sits down behind the table! Then guest and hostess find themselves in a state that agrees in nothing with dignity or hospitality, for each of them bends her efforts to gain the victory over her companion and to strip her of the money in her pocket — which is to say that all the player's better feelings turn into a greed that cannot be explained except as thievery.

This is a large dose of frankness — and of truth as well. For however we prettify the word thievery, setting it in a gilt frame and calling it honorable thievery, the frame is counterfeit, and it is thievery in the fullest sense of the word. For the thief who steals out of need is overtaken by the law with stern punishment; but the guest who enters my house to rob me of what is in my pocket deserves, by the code of the green table, every kind of honor and reverence.

Consider this crooked law, then, and come, let us place the lady who works in the social field, sacrificing her comfort in the service of suffering humanity, in one pan of the scale, and our card-playing lady, heedless of everything that is humane work, in the other pan: which of them, do you suppose, will weigh heavier and take the lead in the arena of admiration and respect?

My literary friend Salma Sayegh said in one of her lectures: "The mothers who have gone will not return." It is a truth not free of wounding frankness, but a truth that none of us can deny.

The mother of yesterday held no high diplomas, but she was a mother by her exemplary child-rearing and by consecrating her hours to her house, her husband, and her children. As for the mother of today, holder of the highest diplomas, she has risen above keeping to

the house, caring for the children, and attending to the husband, so long as it is within her power to employ someone to perform all these tasks and duties in her stead — which means that the situation has not changed between the good illiterate mothers who reared us and the ignorant maidservants who rear our children. The range of thought in our milieu has thus become narrow in scope, because the learning the schools instilled in us was not joined by a breeding of its kind in our homes; hence this confusion which we meet in everything that man and woman undertake in their private and public doings.

Woman must take up the fight against illiteracy in every corner of Lebanon and of the Arab countries without exception, so that our venturing to storm the field of politics may not be a kind of imitation of man. For if there is to be no renewal in ideas, opinions, and deeds, then it is better for us not to advance, lest we widen the field of complaint and ruin instead of mending it, and demolish private family life without being able to build public social life.

Mrs. Evelyne Bustros hit the mark in her statement in the pages of The Woman's Voice, in answer to a question as to whether she intended to demand woman's political rights. She said that she saw no benefit whatever in woman's obtaining her political rights so long as she remains backward, because the illiterate man who used to cast a single vote would then have two votes or more, in proportion to the number of his illiterate womenfolk; the loss would thus be doubled, and we would have strengthened feudalism and lent it our aid at the very moment we meant to fight it.

Free compulsory education is by itself the first right with which the woman who demands her rights must arm herself. And if we form political and social missions and allot them enormous budgets, it would better become us to allot the largest sum to the fight against ignorance, so that our dignity in keeping pace with the nations in outward appearance may agree with the inward truth.

Woman's responsibility is doubled; indeed, it is a perilous venture, for which she must arm herself with wisdom and learning, so that she may face the difficulties and overcome everything that would obstruct her good endeavors.

And if I said at first that this moral chaos is the result of the two factors of war and upheaval, this does not mean justifying the attitude of man and woman, who take it as a pretext for their inability to resist the laws of upheaval. For if we place in one pan the learning they have received, and compare the level of woman's thinking today and yesterday, and then place the tyranny of customs in the other pan, the first would outweigh it without a doubt — provided the possessor of learning and thought is willing to use his knowledge to raise himself, subjecting his unruly inclinations to his mighty will.

Thus do the lofty gifts show themselves in the souls of the individuals who make up the whole, and the circle of improvement goes on widening until it embraces all around it. The humane principle prevails over everything else, the virtue of learning triumphs over the sweeping current of vice, and trifling with the virtues is no longer accounted a kind of perfection required by a counterfeit civilization.

Then the conscious woman stands against the current, using her culture and her wisdom to direct affairs as befits them and befits her dignity.

The present and the future are yours, young men and young women of today; and your nation awaits from you the raising of its level, by the resolve in your breasts and the strength in your youth.