Building Up the Lebanese Village

Here is a new event that inspires hope and awakens confidence — an event the dreamers once dreamed of, which today has become an embodied reality. It is a first, cautious step, but it is — at all events — a firm one.

As for the godfathers of this event, they are the emigrants, for — beyond what they send to their families and kin — they have begun to feel a new impulse, whose substance is the lasting, fruitful revival of the whole clan.

## In the Shade of the Cedars

This truly constructive event was inaugurated by Lebanon's dutiful son Mr. Aziz Nader, of the village of Qoubaiyat. His wife, Mrs. Evelyn Tarabay, took to the air the moment the war ended — she was the first Lebanese woman to fly from America to Lebanon — and her descent from the sky was like the falling of dew! She quenched the thirst of every thirsting soul, and then she brought the pebble that props up the jar... for she and her husband founded the first free dispensary in the Lebanese village.

## What Fadlo Hourani Did for His Birthplace

Whoever passes through that good town, Marjayoun, sees a cemetery distinguished in its arrangement and its form from all the cemeteries of Lebanon's villages: there is a wall of handsome construction, trees whose shade breathes quiet and stillness, and a new atmosphere at whose sight your imagination carries you off to God's countries, where death has sanctity and majesty... This cemetery is among the good deeds of that worthy man, Fadlo Hourani.

And there is a bold feat besides: his joining of several schools into a single school... And there are others, whose telling I leave to Mr. Saeb Salam, member of the committee of the Asfuriyeh Hospital.

He said at the hospital's fiftieth jubilee, in the presence of His Excellency the First President: "After the last war the hospital passed through grim and bitter days that all but swept away its very existence.

"And I remember, with contentment filling my soul, how in the month of October of the year 1946 I went to His Excellency the First President to present to him that venerable elder, Mr. Fadlo Hourani, who explained to His Excellency the state of affairs and asked him to extend his generous hand to ward off the catastrophe.

"Hourani stood before you — and he is a standard-bearer of devoted, silent work, and a pillar of this humane edifice — he stood before you with tears in his eyes, and he addressed a sound mind, appealed to a great heart, and begged of a generous hand; and you heeded the words, answered the call, and gave abundantly — and Mr. Hourani returned to his companions carrying in his hand a check in the amount of a thousand lira, bestowed on him by the President of Lebanon."

Is not he who goes seeking good the equal of him who does it?

## And the People of Zahle?

As for the sons of "the Abode of Peace and the Nursery of Lions," there stands the Tel Chiha Hospital, with its modern building, its furnishings, and its equipment, testifying to the generosity of Zahle's sons across the seas. Nor does it harm the young men and women of the Berdawni that they quarreled over the hospital. That quarrel — over the hospital — is past and gone. What matters is that the sick are being treated today in the Tel Chiha Hospital. And after all, are the people of Zahle the only ones who quarrel?

## Mr. Najib Zallakat

And to Zahle comes a dutiful son, Mr. Najib Zallakat — and he finds a generous circle of ladies who have turned commendable efforts toward the child. They began a small work which at the start held thirty children; after six months the number was doubled, and at the year's end it was doubled again — so that the children now number 120, who are taught, clothed, and given one meal a day, and sometimes two.

As for the contribution of the benefactor Mr. Najib Zallakat, it is the hand of a generous man, son of generous folk: he registered a house of two stories and ten rooms as the lawful property of the Child Nursery Association, on condition that it remain at work in the children's cause.

Does the reader not find this piece of news strange in this age of publicity?
He is Nayef Pasha Imad, of the village of Ain al-Sindianeh — and he begrudged The Woman's Voice his photograph. He saw the young men of his town donating the work of their hands to build a school, so he gave what God had granted him: all the building materials.

Then he wished to bring light into our hearts — we women — and resolved to lighten the hardship of village life. So he tempted the municipality of Choueir, saying: bring the main lines, and the rest is on me — and the rest means the wires, the meter, the poles, and the switches — to the houses of the village and to the church and the school.

Add to this his unceasing charity to families of quiet need, and his paying the fees of fourteen boys — permanently — at the Choueir high school.

The great square at Dhour el-Choueir bears witness, and the high school in Choueir bears witness, to their love for the mother soil. And very soon the Lebanese will see how Mrs. Afifa Jafet and her children have valued the American University of Beirut's kindness toward the founder of the Lebanese community in Brazil: Mrs. Afifa has donated fifty thousand pounds toward the cost of a library at the said university, in which every student may see how the Lebanese acknowledges a favor, and how he takes his part in the spreading of culture.

The tale is a true one, my readers, men and women alike; and this note, sent by Mr. Youssef Khalil — a son of the Bekaa, born in Khirbet Anafar, and naturalized a Brazilian citizen — this note cut short, for the players in the orchestra of the medal seasons, some delicious dreams... and cheap ones...
Said Youssef Khalil: I want no medal, for I have done nothing that deserves reward.

And The Woman's Voice heard him, at the house of the Marquise de Freige in Housh Snaid, confiding to the mother of Lebanon the following "brief" talk:
"I am Brazilian by citizenship, but Lebanon is the homeland of my father and my forefathers. It appalls me that my village has no dispensary, no school, and no factory. I wish to take a part in improving health, spreading learning, and finding work for the girls, so that they need not go down to the city; rather let us provide them with handicrafts to help them earn what will better their lives and endear to them the staying in the villages. And here I am beginning a small project which I hope will be like a snowball... I am paying fifty thousand lira for the building of the school and the dispensary and their furnishing; it remains for the government to send the teachers to the school. As for the dispensary, I should like to entrust it to the care of the Lebanese Red Cross. I should like to draw the attention of the Marquise to the fact that I shall add nothing to the sum I have mentioned beyond some of the necessary medicines from time to time — and I should like to carry out the factory project, but here in Lebanon you must follow practical, commercial methods — yes, your handiwork is finely made, but its prices are high and it is hard to find markets for it."

Some days after this talk, Mr. Youssef Khalil laid the cornerstone of the school he had dreamed of founding, near a great oak beneath which he used to play when he was a child, at a ceremony to which were invited the princes of the Catholic Church, the Abillama Emir, the Minister of Education, and a great throng of those who prize his good feeling toward Lebanon, and the feeling of his graceful wife Josephine.

And before leaving the soil of Lebanon, this dutiful Lebanese laid a foundation for a factory project, and a second foundation for financing the village with loans to be spent on the planting of fruit orchards, relying for the carrying out of all this on the energy and devotion of that excellent friend of youth, Mr. Jean Skaff.

And now... here are the pebbles following one upon another, and schools and dispensaries and little workshops rise in our little mountain — and the jar stands firm — upon props of health, knowledge, and work.
God bless you, O emigrants.