Or is it those nerves which God grants to certain people, as though forged of steel or of something harder still?
I do not know — only that I admired her with an admiration whose effect showed in me, until I found myself one day following her trail. I happened to be passing through one of the poor alleys when I saw her stop a shabbily dressed man of middle age, pushing before him a cart carrying some lupine beans; then she whispered a word to him. Her eye fell on me, and she was not abashed; rather she drew her small frame up to its full height to tell me: This is Papa.
And I found myself moved to greet him and to tell him that his daughter was one of the gifted; but he paid no heed to what I was saying, for his whole concern was bent on making me understand that he supported a wife and seven children, and that what the schools demanded of his children loaded him with more than he could bear...
I searched in him for his daughter's personality and found no trace of it — except in that frankness with which he met me. And I saw in the furrows of his face something of a justified resignation: it was neither despair, nor revolt, nor contentment with anything.
But before I bade him farewell and went my way, I saw a woman slight of body and comely of feature, closer to a playful girl than to a woman with husband and children. No sooner had she come between us, and the lupine vendor introduced her to me, than she began beaming and smiling at me, pressing me with entreaties to go with her to her house close by and rest a little.
She was Suad's mother — her mother, in flesh and blood; but she was never her mother in her independent personality or in her noble qualities. She kept pressing
one hand in the other as she spoke — and on her parted smiling teeth poverty hovered menacing, then slept and vanished. Yet I noticed in her one thing only: that self-confidence, that faith in what she wants and does...
What, I wonder, will become of this girl if she has the chance to continue her studies — having understood more than a girl of her year understands, and grasped
more than a daughter of the alleys grasps — if this intelligence ripens in her, and this captivating pride keeps pace with her: pride in those values of the soul of which she now knows only that she will not swerve from them a finger's breadth?
He came to me one day distraught and bewildered, and said, before even offering me a greeting: "Who are these people who want the ruin of homes, the scattering of families, and the weakening of mankind's faith in motherhood!" He fell silent a moment, then went on with the utmost earnestness and feeling — Imagine: this country, deep-rooted in its traditions, ancient in its civilization, proud of the conservatives among our fathers and forefathers, suddenly turned upside down — its women become men, and its men become subject to the tyranny of the weakest of the weak among the Almighty's creatures...!
And my interlocutor — the poetic spirit of Khalil Mutran having taken possession of him — went on repeating gloomily, "And is there any tyranny like the tyranny of the weak?..."
Here I tried to speak, but he prevented me, resuming his talk as is his habit. And when he saw that I was serious and heated, he fell silent, dumbfounded, and I addressed him straightway: The laws of human evolution decree everything that angers and grieves him personally — the equality of woman with man; and there is no crime in the matter, no trespass against the sanctity of his conservative father and grandfather — and he is one of them — for woman is a first and vital element in the shaping of the rising generations. If men appraised woman's works in all the fields of life, they would find them the best thing the advanced nations rely upon for the reform of human society, the straightening of its morals, and the shoring up of what has collapsed of the foundations of its sovereignty, its being, and its prosperity.
— And do you believe what you say?
— With complete faith and confidence. There is nothing before us but to choose: to remain an ignorant nation, shrinking its way toward extinction and decay — or a nation that triumphs over its worn-out traditions, and continues, growing and advancing, toward life and flowering.
And how great was his astonishment when I told him that everything had already been accomplished, and that woman would emerge from this battle with head held high, her honor guarded, her dignity intact.