Our Women's Delegation in Baghdad

The annual meeting of the General Arab Women's Union convened in Baghdad under the presidency of Miss Ibtihaj Kaddoura, with the members of the bureau, Mrs. Muneera Shehadeh and Mrs. Nazik Sarkis, and, from the participating Arab countries — Syria — Mrs. Ihsan al-Shatti and Mrs. Thurayya al-Hafiz; Iraq — Mrs. Asia Wahba and Mrs. Ismat al-Said; Palestine — Miss Zulaykha al-Shihabi and Mrs. Sadhij Nassar; Lebanon — Mrs. Salwa Moumina and Mrs. Anissa Najjar; Egypt — Mrs. Ihsan al-Qusi and Miss Hawa Idris.

The opening session was held in the King Faisal Hall, which was packed with ladies and journalists. Mrs. Asia Wahba, president of the Iraqi Women's Union, opened it, welcoming the members and pointing out the benefit of women from all the Arab countries meeting to confer and to lay organized foundations for work. She was followed by Miss Ibtihaj Kaddoura, president of the General Arab Women's Union, who thanked the women of Iraq in the name of the delegations for their invitation and explained woman's aims, and that her purpose in these meetings is understanding, cooperation, and fruitful work in social service, which leads to woman's progress and the good of the country. Then the secretary of each country read her report on the work of the union to which she belongs, showing the extent of woman's struggle and her mighty work in the cultural, social, and charitable fields — continuous efforts and fruitful work; she works with determination, sincerity, and faith for childhood and motherhood and for combating social ills. All this she does, moved by zeal to raise woman's standing and advance her country.

In the sessions that followed, the members laid down the subjects and plans they will work to realize and carry out, namely: first, continuing the effort for woman to obtain her political and civil rights; second, protecting the family in health, morals, and society — from which branch out detailed articles for combating illiteracy, compulsory education, raising the moral level, reviving the village, etc. Each association and each union will work according to the need of its own country.

And we saw with our own eyes the mighty renaissance of the Iraqi woman — the woman of letters, the physician, the lawyer, the poetess — and the numerous associations working with one hand and one heart, so that no family or individual goes without their generous hands. The Iraqi government backs them and assists them, and women employees in the government offices are many. The government presented a club to the Iraqi Women's Union — a spacious hall, numerous rooms, and a verdant garden, complete with its furnishings — and another club to the Red Crescent Society, where the ladies gather to work: here the sewing room, there the handwork room and the office, etc.

We visited the Higher College of Arts — coeducational — and listened to a debate on woman's political rights between a young man and a young woman; the young man won first place, and it was he who defended the affirmative side.

At Queen Aliya College we visited the numerous classes and the modern laboratories, and we admired the arts department: the sewing, the handwork, and the drawing showed taste, mastery, and precision.

Of the organization and the works we witnessed, I mention in particular the chest diseases hospital at Salman Pak, and the government's care for all of these things, and the building of the workers' city, in the newest

style, which promises a swift, organized renaissance — these establishments whose effect is to wipe out ignorance, disease, and poverty.

As for the warm welcome and the honors we received from the government, the people, and the Iraqi Women's Union, my pen is incapable of rendering them their due of thanks. We saw ourselves in the palaces of the Thousand and One Nights and in the hospitality of the caliphs — for they are the descendants of those great men — and none of this astonished us, for jewels from their own mines occasion no wonder.

As for the ladies and young ladies of Iraq, alongside their high culture they are models of kindness, delicacy, modesty, and geniality.

May God bless the renaissance of the Iraqi woman, advancing apace — nay, in flight — she will be in the vanguard of the procession of progress.

Nazik Sarkis
Secretary of the General Arab Women's Union