my room, and in a moment had taken off her dress and put on a coat she used to wear at night over a transparent shift that showed the build of her beautiful, strong black body. Then she took off her soaked shoes, put on slippers, came up beside my bed, and, with much shyness, opened her modest handbag and drew from it something wrapped in one of those thin papers in which holiday gifts are wrapped.
She said in a low voice:
"Forgive me, Dona Salma. Tomorrow is the feast, and I wanted to bring you a small present.
"I have heard you asking, more than once, for a picture of Jesus — like the one that was in room 264. I went down to the market and searched a long while for a gift that would please you and that my hand could reach. I found this wooden cross. In the gift shop there were crosses far more beautiful, but I had only fifty piasters. So I have brought it to you. Will you accept it from me?"
And I took the cross — a piece of walnut wood bearing a crucified figure of lead. I took the cross from the hand of this black woman whose race and kin — and every black hand God ever created — I had been cursing but a minute before; and before raising it to my
lips I took that black head between my hands and kissed "Aliyeh" — kissed her hair and her forehead and her cheeks — and poured out my soul before that black woman who had brought me the symbol of forgiveness for the white and the red and the yellow and the black...
And I broke into a fit of sobbing and throbbing, into a burst of pent-up grief, into the leap of a thankful soul toward that unknown inspiration which had moved a servant, a stranger to me, to bring me, under the pelting rains, the symbol of that love which no love equals, the symbol of a purity no purity approaches, the symbol of the friend of the sorrowful and the sick, the forsaken and the strangers.
It entered Aliyeh's mind that I was in the grip of an attack — and how was she to understand how so small a gift could work such an effect? — so she ran calling Sister Susanna, who came with the medicine needle, thinking in her turn that I was having a "fit." I spoke to her in French of the cause of my emotion, and she made the sign of the cross and kissed the crucifix hanging on her breast; then she said to my black friend:
"There is nothing wrong with Dona Salma, Alta. She is weeping because she is happy. She feels now the one happiness that none but Jesus gives."
To the subscribers of "The Woman's Voice"
in Homs
"The Woman's Voice" informs its women readers and subscribers in Homs and Hama that it has appointed Mrs. Hélène Merhej as its agent there, and requests them to apply to her for the payment of subscriptions and for all matters concerning the magazine.
A monthly women's magazine published by the Lebanese Women's League
P.O. Box 1384 — Beirut — Lebanon
Responsible Director: Heneni Tarcha
Administrative Committee
Afifi Majdalani, Nazik Sarkis
Salwa Mahmasani, Laure Tabet
*
All correspondence concerning the editing and the administration
is to be sent to:
Dar al-Kitab
Daouk Station, Phoenicia Street,
the Saab Building
P.O. Box 1384 — Beirut
Telephone: 48-00
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Subscription
In Lebanon, Syria, and the Arab world:
15 Lebanese liras or the equivalent
Abroad:
10 dollars or the equivalent
For official departments and institutions:
25 Lebanese liras or the equivalent.