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