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...
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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
Among Najla's favorite hobbies: riding the bicycle.
Najla appears at the right with two of her colleagues in front of the Webster ward. The hospital administration forbids the photographing of patients.