Story of the Month — Motherhood the Killer

I saw A. F. for the first time during the supplementary examinations in the days of the Mandate. She was a member of the French committee, and I was a member of the Lebanese committee, whose members rejoiced once a year at gathering around the senior mistress of them all, Mrs. Hanna Abu al-Rus — that wit among the people of wit, and how few they are among the men of letters, the masters of fragrant literature, in this weeping country.

We would gather on the morning of the first day of the examinations around our elder, and she would jest with this one and tease that one and promise herself the return of the "Annals" — so it pleased her to call our yearly meetings in the Tyaris building or in the Hawd al-Wilaya school.

*

On one of those mornings my eye was caught by a satin gown that molded a slender figure, and out of it rose a face of no ordinary beauty — say rather, a beauty the eye rarely falls upon. I looked at my friend Hanna, admiring, questioning, and she said:

— This is Mrs. A. F., professor of French literature at my school. She is the most beautiful woman I have known, in body and in mind — but she lives in a perpetual tragedy. And she told me something of her story.

*

Fate would have it that I met her a second time, and her ill luck would have it that she left her post with the Lebanese government and traveled to Paris, then returned to Beirut to be near a son of hers to whom her soul clung as no mother's soul ever clung to a child. She found no work to cover her expenses, so she accepted temporary work at the French College — in one of the elementary classes — for 50 Lebanese liras a month. And so the days set us face to face, working in the same institution.

One day my friend Miss A. Q. invited me to spend an evening with a few friends, and I was surprised to see my French "acquaintance" among the guests.

She was wearing a gown of black lace, her waist girdled with a length of green georgette, part of which hung down at the side in a knot tied by a hand long accustomed to elegance and refined taste.

The guests departed, and my friend asked me to stay a while longer for a matter that concerned her — because it concerned Mrs. A. F.

We sat in the hall, around the brass brazier, and my friend told me that the poor woman had found her way to her house and come to her crying for help!

As for her story: she had married, in Paris, a young Lebanese man belonging to a family of standing and merit, and come with him to Lebanon; and since she held the diploma of the Higher Normal School for Women Teachers, she was appointed professor of French literature at the First Girls' School. During the summer vacation, while she was away alone visiting her family, the mail brought her the divorce paper. Meanwhile her son fell ill and hovered near danger, so her husband summoned her; and when she arrived — the boy having by then recovered — she was barred from him! And now she desires nothing but to live where he lives, or else to be permitted to be his governess and his servant.

Her life is in the hands of the Lebanese courts and at the mercy of her husband: she wants the boy, and her husband will never grant him to her while a grain of life remains in him. He keeps moving the child from city to city; no sooner does she inquire and learn where he is than he moves him to a second town! And sometimes she has the happiness — on certain Sundays, her one day of rest — of setting out for the city to which he has been moved; she puts on a wrap and a veil and stands far from the house where they have lodged him, hoping they will take him out for a walk so that she may glimpse him from afar.

I learned after that evening that what had drawn Mrs. A. F. to my friend A. Q. was that the latter, with her great compassionate heart, had interceded with the husband's father — and he was a chivalrous, high-souled man — and he allowed his daughter-in-law to see her son at my friend's house, in secret from her husband and from every member of his family.

*

Long months passed over A. F. — months of hardship and privation, of weariness and bitterness of living; months of exhausting, murderous legal petitions and consultations. As for the details of that suit between the two spouses, which occupied the courts of Beirut for some time, the limited lines of a column with its limited place in The Woman's Voice cannot contain them.

Her life was divided between her work at the French College, a few private lessons, and visits to the lawyer. As for the few happy minutes,

she spent them in my house and in the house of my friend A. Q., and she used to call us "her soul's two sisters."

At last the court's judgment was handed down: the boy was to spend nine months of the year with his father and three months with his mother...

But the husband sent the boy with his grandmother to Cairo.

*

The Easter vacation came, and I intended to spend it at my sister's in Cairo. A. F. learned of my journey and said, "I am traveling with you." So we bought the tickets — there and back — and sailed on a Romanian steamer called the Bessarabia, which was making her first voyage to Beirut and on to Alexandria.

And I found myself, a second time, living with the tragedy of this woman, who never walked but that magic and enchantment walked with her — yet stripped of any spirit of "femininity" or spirit of allure... That was the riddle standing out in her glances, her talk, her silence, her impassivity. Often I would be asked:

— Does your French friend not know that she is beautiful? Do you suppose she despises "men," or that she looks with her eyes and sees no one?? Is she drowned in love of a husband or a fiancé? And who is this blessed, happy man??

And I would answer:

— My friend is possessed by the spell of a deep, deep love! But it is a love of which you men understand nothing...

In Heliopolis we stayed together at the house of my sister and her husband. Generous souls, Egyptians and Lebanese, volunteered to search out where the boy was kept, to bring relief to the heart of that stricken mother. When they found him, she packed her little bag and went to Cairo to be near the boy and see him once or twice or three times, until our return on the steamer Bessarabia.

At the appointed time I traveled to Alexandria and went up on board to wait for my friend. I waited long on deck, staring at the passengers coming aboard. My standing there stretched on; the sun set, and the electric lights began to blaze over the harbor; the sailors were about to raise the gangway, and the engines were snoring inside the ship — when suddenly my friend burst through the well-wishers standing on the quay and climbed the gangway. She was wearing a wide hat of soft yellow straw, its two sides drawn close to her ears by a broad ribbon of black velvet tied, aslant, beneath her chin, and a spring dress that left bare her arms, her neck, and something of her back and throat.

I hurried to the ship's entrance, and she fell upon me and pressed me to her breast and said:

— Exactly like the cinema! Had I been two minutes late, I should have stayed in Alexandria.

The ship moved off, and the questions were piling up in my head, all but scorching my lips. Had she seen her little fair-haired idol?? Had she at least soothed her heart?? She took my hand

and drew me to the ship's deck, and we stood by the railing. She said:

— I went to where they had hidden him. I knocked at the door, and it was opened to me. I asked for Mrs. F. and said who I was, and hardly had the maid gone into the house and pronounced my name when I heard a commotion and the stir of doors opening and closing. Then Mrs. F. received me and denied that my son was with her in the house. They had hidden him and taken him out through an inner door to the neighbors' house or to a friend's — I do not know. I saw his little shoes under the seat, and his toys here and there on the carpet, and I heard his voice from far away...

I said:

— And why did you not rush in and throw open the doors?

— No!

— And why did you not tell the lady that she was hiding the truth and that your son was there?

— No. I said nothing. My husband's sister is my son's aunt, and my husband's mother is the cause of his existence and the cause of my son's existence. And then, how could I say to a lady whom I respect, "You are lying"?!

I shall tell you — you who are reading this bleeding story — what I felt at that moment. I wished someone would take this woman up and cast her into the sea, that she might find rest from her killing love! Nor did I feel this strange rebellious feeling alone. My friend Mrs. A. Q. shared it with me, for after she learned what had happened to our friend in Cairo she said to me, word for word:

— It is strange, Salma, that I felt the very same feeling. She was with me on the balcony of this house of mine, and when she told me, I wished she would throw herself into the street and die and be at rest!

*

When I sailed for Brazil in the summer of 1939, I left her in Beirut, knocking on doors and appealing to lawyers and laws. Often my friend A. Q. and I tried to persuade her to abandon this suit, lost in advance; but we were like one trying to budge that towering Sannine.

— Whoever wills a thing with all his strength attains it! I want my son, and I shall take him in the end.

Between 1940 and 1941 I was in a village of the Brazilian interior lying on the border of the state of Minas. One day the São Paulo mail reached me, and among it the newspaper al-Afkar, owned by Dr. Abi Jamra, and in it I read the following:

A Frightful Tragedy

The Beirut papers have brought us the story of a lady called A. F. — and al-Afkar told the story as the papers of that day chose to tell it, until it said:

But A. F. did not despair of contending with the days: she carried her suit to the courts of France, and the French judges rejected her petition. It appears that the wounded mother grew weary of life without her son, for a few days ago she tried to drown herself in the river Seine; and when the divers pulled her out and the examining officer asked her the reasons for her attempt on her own life, she said sadly:

— For personal reasons that concern me alone.

But her longing for death was stronger than life. News from Paris reported that she threw herself from the fifth floor, where she lived, and struck the pavement of the street, skull and bones shattered! Then she gave up her spirit, murmuring: At last!!