Dear Edvick

.. Here is the literary letter of the guiding woman of letters, Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah, written under the inspiration of the last issue of "The Woman's Voice," which carried the editor-in-chief's "tear" for her friend Fouad Suleiman...

It is seven o'clock in the morning — and behold, your voice and the copy of "The Woman's Voice" reach me at one and the same moment.

There is a "hoarseness" in your voice that did not please me! Since I am not used to it from you — how did you allow it to reach you?!!..

I do not rule out that your hoarseness is one of the inventions of my receiving set — the lame thing — which takes it as a means of returning to its old habit of heavy sulking and affected quivering, to spoil for me the calm of my morning and evening hours in this cold, heavy weather!!

Nor do I rule out that this "hoarseness" which prompts me to this talk with you is the product of that historic, grievous farewell journey — to "Fiaa" — after your parting from your friend Fouad!! And I find this supposition the nearer to the truth!!

I was not — not under any circumstances — disposed to read on this cold morning; but I wanted to turn the magazine's pages to cast a passing glance at an old letter I had once sent to our poet Fayyad — for word had reached me that it was printed in this issue — without my knowledge or my will!!..

But no sooner did my eyes fall upon that tear which turned, between your hands, into an elegy in prose and verse that is a marvel of faithfulness and devotion, than I could not keep myself from reading its lines — laden with the hottest tears and grief and burning regrets that can be — twice, and three times, and four.

Would it not have been more fitting for me, I wonder, to avoid such a subject and put it away from me, out of pity for my health?!.. And yet — beyond all doubt — weeping and pain have at times a sweetness of the soul surpassing whatever we may harvest of the gay pleasures of this world. This reminds me of some verses our friend the poet "al-Najafi" recited in this sense:

I savor melting grief as the listener
savors the plaintive song;
grief has an intoxication like wine —
it is the keen heart above all that attains it.

The intoxication of grief fills the heart with revelation —
is grief, then, a prophet to hearts?

So no harm to you, then, my friend, from this hoarseness, or from this glorious, sorrowful memory — for though it pains you now, each of the two is as a restorative, strengthening your spirit whenever resolve fails and the strength runs low. The memory of this friendship you were blessed with will remain your companion as long as you live — it is a spiritual treasure from which you may draw help whenever you wish — and you will go on gathering from that living literature — from the "clusters" of your friend, generous with their fruit — whenever you will — so long as the literature which joined you two together remains your favorite emblem in life!!..

And a limpid friendship indeed is this, to which your spirit and your mind opened, so that you came, at that awesome funeral, beneath the dome of the firmament, calling the people of heaven and of earth to witness its purity and its integrity! And is there any proof more splendid in purity, more radiant in brightness, than the following words which you set down against yourself in ink and on paper, calling the thousands of your women readers to witness what you pledged to your friend as he breathed his last?!!..

"I pledge you, my friend, to be to Josephine the loving sister, to lighten for her the bitterness of the cup, and to bear her up as far as my two wings help me to rise... and we shall not stumble, God willing..."

And in closing I can do no other than congratulate you on this literary courage — I am tempted to name it the model letter — with which you look out upon the daughters of your sex at this critical hour of our history — this era which needs honest cooperation between man and woman — needs joint work — without heed for those worn-out traditions which have set woman apart from man, as they have set apart the various peoples and nations...

Julia