"Would that it were mine to fill people's mornings with good, so that my voice rose upon them from here only in the seasons of roses and good things." "Tammuz"
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— I shall go to you, out there where you have loved to sleep — you went early to it, for fear the storm should pass you by, the great storm; and you loved storms.
— I shall go to you, out there where you sought seclusion, and I shall trouble it for you, O Tammuz, as you troubled for me a hope I had long nursed: that I should see you recover and return to your corner, wishing the people good morning and good things.
— Yes, I shall go to you, now that I have made certain you will not come back to us; I shall wish you good morning in my turn, having felt that you have brought your morning greetings to the people to an end.
I shall go to you myself and rub my pen in the holy dust of your hermitage — perhaps my pen, O Tammuz, may draw from the soil of Fiaa one of the secrets of the storm.
Out there... to the far place — and already I seem to hear, in the neighing of the wind, your rebellious voice giving its greeting of good; I shall bring the people glad tidings then, that seasons of good things and roses will rise upon them. Into history's keeping, then, O Tammuz.
And history is enamored of storms — and you loved them.
So live on, with history, in a world that knows no passing away, and is all mornings.
The Law Institute Joseph Khoury — one of his readers
.. And this is a new slap from the slaps of fate... under which literature reels and a whole generation is shaken — a generation that looked to you with the eye of hope, O "Tammuz"...
It is a premeditated plot to smother that blazing ember which lit the path of thousands, between pupil and companion — oh, the deep breach you have left behind you!
The pains baptized you, yet they could not prevail against you; in spite of them you stood firm in the face of that headstrong storm, defying it with a heart to which fear never found its way.
You used to rise upon us with a good morning... I would take up the newspaper al-Nahar every day, that my eyes might settle on a masterpiece of yours occupying its lower corner.
And I would ask about Tammuz, only to be told: he is Fouad Suleiman. Then fate led me on, and I met you at the newspaper al-Nahar, and a friend of us both was the means of acquaintance between us.
And I went out firmer in my faith in you, O "Tammuz," and my admiration grew...
You lagged behind, O "Tammuz," the procession of the caravan — of which you are not the first, and will not be the last — only to overtake it today.
That caravan at whose head Gibran walked... Gibran, who rose up in a surge of proud defiance, flinging sickness against the wall.
And so we had a literature, and we had the honor of liberation.
That caravan behind whose funeral a generation walked...
It began with Gibran... and it will not end with Tammuz!..
In the Koura, where the olive tree stands mocking the storms, Fouad Suleiman was born. And he was a fruitful olive tree in the thoughts he gave: if we read them with the eye, we see them as olives; if we press them with the mind, we find them oil; and if we kindle them with the heart, we find them light and fire.
And if "Kanun" has hidden him away in the soil, a body, together with the sowers' seed — after he had delivered his message as poet, writer, and teacher — then "Tammuz" will raise him up in the book, a spirit, together with the harvesters' sheaves, to take up his message again as a national guide.
And if "the storm" has torn him up from among us, without pity for the wife and the children, it cannot tear up the house he built for the new generation. For it was not built of stone and timber and tile, but of thought, creed, and faith — and these the storms only make firmer, stronger, and more shining.
And if the storms will change the face of the East and overturn its conditions, Tammuz will remain, down the passing of the generations, mocking the storms. And history will record that Tammuz is Fouad Suleiman.