Pictures and Memories

Dedicated to my weeping friend
Mrs. Fayza el-Solh

The time: before the First Great War.

The place: my house, standing opposite the old British Consulate — "Tabaris" today.

... My husband, Dr. Farid Kassab, called me, and I came; he took me by the hand to the reception room, and there I found myself face to face with an elegant young man with a radiant face. His complexion was white, tinged with rose, pulsing with strength and health. He said:

"Let me introduce you to my friend and brother, Riad el-Solh." The two sat talking, and I sat listening... They spoke of their days in Istanbul and in Paris; my husband had studied dentistry in the latter and had been sent to the former as representative of the Arab Orthodox of Palestine at the time of the famous dispute between them and the Greek Patriarchate in Jerusalem.

The visit came to an end and Riad went his way; and I learned — while the world, the world of youth in Lebanon and Syria, was in labor with the renaissance of independence from the Ottoman Sultanate — that this young man of the radiant face, whom at first glance I had taken for a thoroughbred son of Paris, was the mainspring of the national movement among the Arab youth dwelling on the banks of the Bosphorus.

*

The days passed, and the lands of the Arabic-speaking peoples were severed from the Ottoman throne; guarantors of our independence were named, here and in Iraq and in Syria and in Palestine, and in place of the Turkish army came armies of the fair, the black, and the brown. And no sooner had the commanders of those armies taken up their posts in the capitals than they found upon their desks the dossiers of the dyed-in-the-wool colonizers in those lands — those for whose sake armies are mustered and campaigns organized only to defend their dinars, only to protect their dinars...

And naturally Riad — Riad who outran his generation — returned to a struggle of long breath and far reach.

I met him after that at the Secular College, at the gatherings that used to be held for that free Frenchman, our friend and the friend of liberty, the late Edmond Binard.

One day he was invited to deliver a lecture, and he spoke of the aims of youth and of their duty. I still remember his citing this verse:

My companion wept when he saw the road before him
and knew for certain we were bound for Caesar.
I said to him: let not your eye weep — we
strive for a kingdom, or we die and stand excused!

*

His eye never slept. He sought out literary and cultural endeavors and made the acquaintance of those behind them, in order to link the circles together and set direction moving.

He visited me one day at my house in 1930, while the battle to replace the Mandate with a treaty was crystallizing and taking form, and that day I enjoyed a delicious, graceful conversation — the conversation of a man of rare intelligence, to whom God had given such gifts as His heavenly bounty willed. He spoke to me of the necessity of women's entering the political arena and the political parties, and asked me why I did not occupy myself with politics. I said: "Had I been living with a brother or a husband, I would have acted on your view; but I am a woman alone, living with a young daughter now standing at the gates of life."

He said:

"You and your daughter shall work together. Women's hands are indispensable!"

I said:

"Or do you forget that we are in the East?"

He asked my opinion of Arab unity and of the destiny of Lebanon, and I answered him frankly, and my frankness found a welcome echo in his heart...

He was in perpetual motion: no literary figure or women's group came to the East but he hastened to set out his arguments and hearten the supporters. So he made contact with the delegations that passed through Beirut in 1935 on their way to attend the Istanbul congress. He befriended Mademoiselle Clara Candiani, correspondent of the newspaper Le Figaro, and accompanied her on a journey to the interior. When she returned to France she began publishing in her paper article after article. She had been won over, and she threw herself into defending the right of a people that asked only to be an ally and a friend. As for the practical result, it was a retribution that came down upon her head. She said to me, the day I visited her in Paris, as she bade me farewell at the door:

"Tell Riad Bey and my friends over there that I have lost my position at Le Figaro!"

*

Those who will write history will not wonder at the events of 1943 and their consequences. The man of struggle who lived thirty-three years with no care but a cause that ate from his plate and drank from his cup and slept in his bed — that man of struggle kept both sight and insight open; for months and years he had been awaiting the opportune moment, and when it passed by he seized it — say rather, he bound it fast between his hands so that it could not escape. And from that hour, the name of Riad el-Solh entered the register of history.

*

O my friend of the noble heart, Mrs. Fayza, bereaved in him of husband and brother and comrade and son! Consolation and patience! It is pride enough for your two hands that you were the companion of a man of struggle whose like in gifts fate rarely bestows, and that you have a rightful claim to an ample share of his struggle and his striving.