The Woman's Word

Perhaps the period through which the Lebanese woman is passing at this moment is one of the most delicate she has known in the long history of her emancipation. Woman is still demanding, still insisting, still consoling herself with hope as she waits for "the word" to come from the mouth of man, restoring the right to its rightful place.

And I do not know why woman — whose shoulders have been weighed down by the servitudes of long centuries — takes this anxious, feeble stance, which leaves her broken and abased before herself and before man.

We want for woman the broad, well-paved road traveled by the caravans of women in the civilized world, a road on which she walks with head held high, her right upheld, her foot firm, becoming a citizen and a human being who has her dignity, and has what justifies her existence.

My word to my sister woman, as she passes through this period with a measure of fear and caution, is that she trust in herself, in her strength, and in her energy which has not yet burst forth... Let her be strong in faith in her natural capacities and in her full right to a free life...

As for the stones lying in wait along her path to obstruct her progress, she must step over them with courage, and make of them a spur to resolve and stubborn steadfastness... Our cause is a just cause, and justice must triumph in the end, however much those responsible dally in applying it.

As for those who make war on woman, they live in this age and think with the mentality of the Middle Ages. A people like this people — one half of it thinking this twisted thinking, with such a petrified mentality, and its other half crippled and ailing, groping for the road of light — a people like this people, and a generation like this generation, we do not know how it can ever set its nation and its country aright...