Woman's Struggle in the African Mahjar

The press has celebrated the struggle of our emigrant men and the manliness and strength they have shown in overcoming hardships and smoothing away obstacles, and on every occasion it has kept pointing to their eminent and famous figures. We have seen the government bestow decorations upon many whom it judged deserving of them — and all this is good and worthy of thanks. But no one has thought of the emigrant woman; no one has given her even a passing mention, though her effort falls no whit short of the man's, if it does not exceed it, and though she has shared with him every hardship and walked with him every road. That gentle, mild Lebanese woman, who grew up on the proud summits and the broad plains, and sprang up on the well-watered shores like a fresh and tender flower — and behold, the fates fling her into the burning heat, where she meets the scorching winds yet neither wilts nor bends, but stands at her husband's side, sharing his work and dividing his toil, sweetening for him with her own sweetness the bitterness of life, and giving him strength out of her weakness and firmness out of her gentleness.

The emigrant women bore the blasts of the heat and lived in tents of straw or huts of mud, managing the affairs of their households and securing for their husbands and children the rest and peace of home; then they would go to the market and to the shops, and sit behind the desks, keeping watch, selling, and keeping the accounts. If the man was away concluding his business deals, or if he left his town for another, he would go off easy in mind, knowing that his wife behind the desk was running the business in the best manner and with the most exact care, and he would return to find his affairs proceeding, carefully tended, exactly as he loves best and better than he could hope.

Nor is this all that the emigrant woman has done. She never departed from her feminine nature and her poetic spirit; rather she set herself to create an atmosphere resembling the atmosphere of her own country, with its fresh greenery and delicious fruit. She taught the Negro how to till the soil and plant the growing things of Lebanon, so that on the shores of Africa its fruits and its sweet herbs might come forth; and she taught him also how to make laban and cheese and burghul and the rest. Indeed a man traveling through certain African regions sometimes fancies himself in Lebanon — not, of course, in nature, climate, and air, but in the fruits and the foods; and all this is the result of woman's work and her striving.

So when people speak of the emigrant man, and when they take up the praise of his struggle and his striving, let them remember the woman at his side; let them not neglect her part, and let them acknowledge to her her effort and her struggle.