Get to Know the Mothers of the Future

How does the young girl live in our country today?
On what basis does she build her personality and nourish it?
What are her views on life? On learning? On marriage?
On politics? On religion? Etc...

— 4 —

Maryam Abd al-Latif is not the only village girl who toils and labors all the days of the year in pursuit of her livelihood; there are hundreds like her scattered through the villages of Lebanon, plain and mountain alike. And although the village where Maryam lives lies scarcely more than fifty kilometers south of the city of Beirut, the girl who lives there is all but deprived of the most important means of comfort, while the girl of Beirut swims in a material and educational ease that is to be envied.

To one who looks at the village, it seems barren; its houses, built of mud and mud-brick, resemble dried-up ruins. If you wander through it, you find its paths narrow and twisting, muddy in winter and blown with dust in summer. Nor is it strange that green trees are almost nonexistent, for the village lacks water and suffers thirst six months of the year.

And the scanter the means of comfort in a village, the greater the hardships of its people; responsibilities pile upon the village woman, and she works to discharge them with nimbleness and energy. There is no doubt that the greater burden of running the affairs of the house falls upon her, since the husband's work is confined to the field, while her own function branches out and varies, taking in the affairs of house, family, and field together.

Maryam has been accustomed since childhood to her village's ways of living. She knows that her father is a poor peasant who toils seven months of the year for a big farmer in the village, receiving a wage of six hundred Lebanese lira; and since this sum does not suffice to support his wife and five children, he works the remaining five months moving from field work to building, and then to the olive and dibs press.

No wonder Maryam spent her childhood roaming the lanes and fields of the village, for her family lives in a single room lacking the most important means of health and comfort — it even wants a kitchen, a bath, and a privy. And since the village's government elementary school has been running in order only for the past two years, the street was Maryam's first "school"; and here she is, having reached seventeen years of age, completely illiterate, the time for schooling having passed her by because of her continual occupation in helping her mother with the work of house and field. She was ten years old when she began carrying her little jar to fill it at the spring; and with every year she advanced in age, the jar grew bigger, and today she carries it with lightness and grace, and makes for "the spring" morning and evening every day — and it lies some ten kilometers from the village.

The tasks Maryam performs vary with the seasons of the year and the seasons of farming, but there are household duties she must discharge before setting about the work of the field. She rises at daybreak and says the morning prayer, then cleans the room and goes to the spring; after that she makes for the rough outskirts of the village and gathers firewood, returning home with a great bundle on her head. If her mother is away in the field, it is she who prepares food for her brothers and sisters — usually confined to one staple, "burghul": either she cooks it with lentils as "mujaddara," or she adds to it some kind of vegetable, according to what is plentiful. She is skilled at preparing the dough of "marquq" bread and baking it, and every week she helps her mother bake upwards of two hundred loaves on the saj.

And since water is not to be had in the houses of the village, every ten days Maryam makes for the bank of the Litani River to wash the family's clothes; it lies about two hours from the village on foot. She carries the clothes and the washing vessels on her head, pulling her little brothers and sisters along behind her. There, on the riverbank, she kindles a fire in a hearth with a tin full of water above it, and sits in the open before the washing-basin to clean the family's clothes. Afterwards she bathes with her brothers and sisters in the river, then returns to the village in the evening.

The toil of work grows lighter for Maryam in the winter season, and she keeps to the house. In spring she picks the za'tar plant to sell to the merchants of the city; and no sooner does harvest-time draw near than she takes her part in it, gleaning what remains of the grain and wheat in the field; then she moves on to work picking the fruit of the fig and the olive for the owners of broad estates.

In the autumn season she makes for the orchards of the coast, which lie some twenty kilometers from the village, and there she works for a daily wage in the growing of vegetables and fruit. She gives her mother whatever wage she receives, except for 25 Lebanese lira, which she spends yearly on the purchase of her clothes. And though she owns only two dresses — the first of glossy silk, which she wears on wedding occasions, and the second of red cotton, figured with bunches of flowers — she is entirely content with them; and her wish is to visit the city one day to buy a necklace and gold earrings.

Maryam returns from her work at four o'clock in the afternoon, rests a little at home, then puts on the red cotton dress and goes to visit one of her girl friends, at whose house the young girls of the village gather; and they fall to telling anecdotes and stories, or they dance the dabkeh to the strains of the "mijwiz." Maryam dances the dabkeh well and counts it her favorite pastime.

Maryam laughed when I asked her opinion of politics, and said: "And how should we village girls know what goes on in the world, when we are all ignorant of reading and writing?! Why do you not visit the village from time to time with your educated companions, and tell us the news of the city and its wonders?"

And she showed me her regret at her ignorance of embroidery, sewing, and wool-knitting — which is owing to the want of women teachers who would volunteer to train the village girls in these important crafts.

Social life in the village prevents the mingling of the sexes at parties and gatherings, yet the village girl works directly alongside the man in the field. And no marriage takes place except by way of acquaintance and mutual love. Maryam declares that she will marry none but a man she knows; and her face reddened when I asked her whether she was really thinking of a certain person. She answered me that she inclines toward her cousin, who is a peasant too, seventeen years of age, and that she will wait for him until he becomes able to bear the responsibilities of a house and marriage.

Maryam holds the city of Beirut in reverence, and hopes to visit it one day to gaze at its houses, supplied with running water and the means of electricity and heating. Then Maryam sighed and said: "How lucky you city girls are — it is enough that the skin of your faces does not dry up and burn from the flame of the hearth and from work in the field under the blaze of the sun!..."