Meet the Mothers of the Future

How does the girl in our country live today?
On what basis do we build her personality and nourish it?
What are her roles in life? In learning? In marriage?
In politics? In religion? Etc...

— 3 —

It was not easy for Miss Najla Zahir Matar, at the outset, to accustom herself to living in an unusual environment that requires training and nerves of steel. Whenever she recalls how she came three years ago to study nursing at the hospital for mental diseases at Hazmieh — Asfuriyeh — she says: "I used to tremble with dread of the women patients, and how many bruising punches and slaps I received from them! But today" — and here she cast a glance at some of the patients who were sitting about in the garden — "I feel pity and tenderness toward them. I try to treat each of them as a mother treats her child, and I have found friends among them whom I still keep on visiting after they leave."

Some may ask: why did a girl of sixteen choose to study the art of nursing at the Asfuriyeh hospital?

Najla answers that after she finished her elementary studies at the Dhour el-Choueir secondary school, she felt an inclination to study an honorable profession that would ease her way through life and lighten for her father a part of the burden of supporting the family. The director of the school at the time, Mr. Loh, encouraged her idea, and suggested that she study the art of nursing in the mental-diseases branch, a field in which our country needs specialist nurses.

Despite her parents' protests, Najla entered the nursing school at the Asfuriyeh hospital on August 11, 1948, certain that her profession would be arduous and would demand continuous, exhausting work.

The lessons of the first year dealt with general subjects such as physiology and anatomy. In her practical training she was entrusted with supervising the workroom, where the patients do various kinds of handwork such as embroidery, knitting, and sewing.

Najla greeted this year, her third and last, with determination to go forward in her work and confidence in her ability.

The theoretical lessons in it are confined to three subjects: the science of "anatomy of the brain," taught by Dr. Manoukian; the course on "mental diseases," given by Dr. Avzian; and the course on "mental derangement," given by Dr. Shukri. These three physicians are specialists in mental diseases and work in the same hospital.

As for her daily working hours, they are subject to a strict schedule, and are distributed as follows: Najla takes over the Webster ward from the night nurse at seven in the morning. This ward holds thirty-five patients who are nearing recovery, and by day she is responsible for the proper running of things in it, assisted by another colleague and four attendants.

Najla supervises the serving of breakfast to the patients, and when they have finished eating it is nearly half past eight, so she goes in her turn to take her own breakfast in the dining room reserved for the staff and the nurses. Then she returns to her work in the same ward, cleaning the rooms and observing each patient individually; by then it is twelve o'clock, and she goes to attend the nursing lesson, staying until one o'clock. Then she takes a period of rest until half past five, when she returns to her ward, where she supervises the distribution of the supper and the preparing of her patients for sleep. Then she hands over her responsibilities to the night nurse, returns to her room, takes her supper, and settles down to study her lessons.

I asked Najla whether, during her day's work, she could manage the patients' affairs without the doctor's help. She said: "The patients show a calm that lets me talk with them, and we usually exchange stories, happenings, and anecdotes; sometimes I take some of them with me to the cinema, if the doctor permits it. If one of them is seized by an acute fit, I try, with my colleagues, to calm her, and I call the doctor only in exceptional cases — as happened once in a violent quarrel between two patients. We heard screaming in one of the rooms and hurried there, and behold, one of the patients had been seized by an acute fit and had fallen upon her neighbor, showering her with blows. We separated the two, but we could not quiet the patient's frenzy until we called the doctor and he relieved her with a special injection."

It also happened to her once that she went in to a patient who had recently come to the hospital and was in the third month of pregnancy, and saw the signs of miscarriage plainly upon her, without the patient being aware of what was happening to her. The doctor came at once, and the patient was moved to the clinic for treatment.

The nurses' service is confined to the women's division, for the men patients have a special division served by the male students of the said nursing school.

Najla received her first fundamental lesson when the head nurse interviewed her privately and proceeded to give her instructions on how to handle insane patients. It was hard for her that day to understand what her teacher meant by the necessity of reconciling gentleness on the one hand with severity on the other. But experience afterward taught her how to reconcile the two, and she learned how to guard against a patient's frenzy and anger without being harsh with her.

Often Najla is standing, talking quietly with one of the patients, when a sudden, acute fit of frenzy seizes the woman and she springs at Najla, trying to strike and slap her. At once Najla closes with her and pins her hands behind her back, thus paralyzing her movement until one of the attendants comes to her aid.

*

At the end of the first year, Najla moved on to training in the treatment room, where she records the patients' condition under treatment by insulin and by electric shock. She remembers how she trembled and leaped from her place when she first saw the signs of convulsion on one of the patients during his treatment by electric shock.

Exhausting as her work is, Najla shows an interest in what is happening around her in the country: she follows the news in the Arabic daily papers, and every month she reads the two magazines al-Hilal and al-Adab. She inclines toward an appreciation of art and music, reading the lives of the great musicians and liking to listen to classical Western music. Her merry nature also inclines her to dancing, and she usually dances with her colleagues at their own club, which lies within the hospital itself.

She is likewise fond of sports: she plays tennis, makes long excursions by bicycle with her companions, and has a passion for hunting. When Dr. Robertson, the director of the hospital, forbade her to shoot birds inside the hospital grounds, she took to carrying her rifle on holidays and roaming the fields nearby.

Najla says that her favorite hobby is tending flower plantings and raising poultry. Her absorption in her work, however, does not allow her to pursue it these days.

The study of the art of nursing at the Asfuriyeh hospital is free of charge, and the administration gives each student nurse, in addition to providing her keep, a monthly salary of 35 Lebanese lira. Najla spends this sum on the purchase of a few small luxuries, on books, and on the cost of cinema tickets and excursions. And since the amount is modest, she takes from her father the price of any dress she buys.

I asked her whether she longed to wear a variety of clothes instead of her daily white dress, and she assured me that the two are all the same to her. It appears that Najla belongs to that small class of ladies who attach no importance whatever to their adornment: she prefers wearing simple, clean clothes — or even making do with a pair of men's trousers — to decking herself out in an ornamented silk gown. She always shies away from taking up sewing and embroidery, and she prefers to spend her money on the purchase of books, tennis balls, and hunting cartridges rather than on articles of adornment.

When I asked her about her plans for the future, she said: "I love the nursing profession, and I count it the most honorable calling for a girl after motherhood. The hospital administration has offered me a journey to England next year to specialize in my branch of study, and it will provide all my traveling expenses. Of course my father will not accept my plan to travel, but I shall persuade him as I persuaded him before about my coming here. There is no doubt that going abroad will help me to see the world and to gain further study and training in the field of my profession. After that I shall return to my country to practice my work as it should be practiced."

As for her opinion of marriage, she expressed it by saying that she is not thinking of it now — then she added that the reason for that may go back to her not yet having met the young man of her dreams.

I asked her whether she would practice her profession after marriage, and she affirmed it, saying: "Of course — because my profession is an honorable one, and humanity needs it, exactly as it needs motherhood!"