A monthly women's magazine published by the Lebanese Women's League

P.O. Box 1284 — Beirut — Lebanon

Responsible director: Heneni Tarcha

Administrative Committee

Afifi Majdalani, Nazik Sarkis

Salwa Mahmasani, Laure Tabet

Nahiya Ghulmiyya

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All correspondence concerning the editing and the administration should be sent to:

Dar al-Kitab

Daouk Station, Phoenicia Street,

the Saab Building

P.O. Box 1284 — Beirut

Telephone: 48-00

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Subscription:

In Lebanon, Syria, and the Arab world

15 Lebanese lira or the equivalent

Abroad

10 dollars or the equivalent

For official departments and institutions

25 L.L. or the equivalent.

To their mother

So you too are among the advocates of the old legend — the legend of the Middle Ages — which calls for deifying woman and considering her a source of enchantment for man and a mere instrument of inspiration?

I hold you above looking at woman with this narrow view — you, the gifted poet — just as I hold inspiration above being confined to the circle they allege.

Why do you find the wellspring of inspiration in the beautiful woman alone, and not find it in the athletic boy bounding with youth, in the child of angelic sweetness, in the young man of firm-knit muscles, and in the old man on whose face the gray hairs have traced the meanings of stillness and majesty?

Do you claim that I deny woman her beauty, and her power to nourish this beauty and turn it to account to the utmost degree? God forbid — I am among the admirers of the enchantresses who inspired Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci to their immortal canvases.

But I see in woman one kind of beauty and in man another kind — both are part of the absolute beauty that floods the universe — and it is one, however the kinds may differ. And I should count myself the most wretched of mortals if I confined my gaze to a single kind of it and saw all inspiration in that kind.

Nor do I suppose you forget Schopenhauer's campaign against feminine beauty, when he found fault with woman for her narrow shoulders and her short legs. Certain aestheticians shared his view, deciding that man's body comes closer to proportion in its lines than woman's body, while she is distinguished from him by the roundness of her lines rather than their proportion.

You see inspiration in the beautiful woman; I see it in the colors of the blossom and the smile of the dawn, in the stillness of nature, the flutter of wings, the rustle of leaves, the bending of the mountain and the outstretching of the sea.

You see it in a new Eve, all coquetry and charm. I see it in the strong woman who bears children sound of body, and in the industrious woman whose hands have grown rough with excess of work in the house or in the field or in the factory.

And in the student who bends long hours over the piano or over the laboratory table and does not lift her head until she has mastered her lesson to perfection.

And in the old woman stooped over her spindle or over her needle despite the weight of the years.

What? Would you have woman a doll in the salon, distributing her smiles to naive admirers? Or stretched out on a soft couch — after the fashion of the Sultan's harem — amusing herself chewing mastic and looking

into her mirror while she waits for the maid to dress her hair and tint her nails?