My Last Memories of Fouad Suleiman

His image is still in my mind, filling all my mind: writhing on the bed of pain, turning his face away from us to hide two tears that welled up in his eyes. His voice is still in my ear, saying with prayerful fervor:

"What have I ever done for these people, that they should throng at my door to ask after my health? Strange, this tender solicitude, which refuses to hide behind suppressed tears glistening on the lashes, or behind forced smiles that carry none of the marks of reassurance!...

"...Faces I have not seen for years, and faces new to my eyes, that I never knew before today — from Damascus? from the Cedars?... And faces from my beloved Koura, coppery and wrinkled, that have thrown down plowshare and mattock — they who gave their whole lives to plowshare and mattock — and come tapping anxiously along on their canes, asking the people: where might this Beirut be? Where might the hospital be in which 'Tammuz' lies?...

"...These, of all people, are the ones who most draw tears of joy from my eyes. They are good folk, and my plea to you is that you honor them and respect them, and that you appreciate the nobility of the feeling that brought them to visit me... Write down their names... write them down, Josephine, and do not forget a single name, so that I may not forget a single one of them. The day I recover, God willing, I shall visit them all and thank them, and I shall write sweet things about their affection... Nothing works upon my soul and shakes it like this flood of feeling with which people — all the people — overwhelm me...

"What have I done for them, to deserve it?

"Why do they throng at my door, when there is neither gold nor silver in my coffers?

"And why do they grieve so over me, when I have no influence and no inherited power from which they might hope for gain?...

"How much I needed this disease, to discover through it these lofty feelings... I feel I am on the verge of grasping the secret of the universe and its far-off meaning...

"How rich I am in the love of people! And how great is love! — the love that gives, above which no feeling rises. Is all this love in mankind, and shall we still fear some shadow of spite or hatred?... That is puny, meager, restless; and love is big, majestic, great!!

"Today I discover myself and grasp my mission... I shall live only for pure, limpid love. Never again shall the phantom of a deformed, sickly feeling pass through my mind. I shall devote my mind and my heart to love, and to love alone...

— "Bring me a drink of water... How happy I am today!"

*

These are words he often repeated in our hearing, whenever his great heart brimmed over with feeling, and whenever a deceiving hope visited him that his portion of life still stretched wide before him — only to return afterward, in the storm of his pains, broken-winged, his limbs plucked bare, in the surrender of a wounded lion, crying out to his Lord with the supplication of a believer:

"I am in pledge to Your mercy, O God. I accept these crushing pains with a patience I draw from You. Hammers, hammers beat upon my brain, and at their beating every nerve of my nerves shudders... I am in pledge to Your mercy, my God: do not deprive me of the light in my eyes and the pulse in my blood... Life is still sweet in my mouth, and I still have need of it; so leave me my life, and have mercy on me, O most merciful of the merciful."

*

It seems to me, now that forty days have passed since the death of Fouad Suleiman, that every new day that carries us farther from him only brings us nearer to an understanding of the message for which he loved life. It is the message of "love," which revealed itself to him in the most splendid revelation lofty and noble feeling can attain; and he gave it to his students and his friends on this earth as an immortal example, which will live with them as long as they live, and which will be for the new generation the cornerstone on which to build its life.

Into God's keeping, then, my departed friend... Life is yours!! This is your school, and we are the disciples of your creed; we carry upon our necks your great human message to the youth of this nation — spiritual food, the food of every age and every time.

And God the Most Great, who plucked you out from among us, has left your good roots planted deep within us, to grow in the morrow and put forth fruits laden with goodness, truth, and beauty...