In Memory of Riad al-Solh

We knew him as a fighter who crossed many a wilderness and moved through distant lands as the stubborn birds move — seeking here some benefit and advantage for the sons of his nation, standing there to represent its surging renaissance and to defend its scattered, orphaned rights... while his nation was lost, its limbs disjointed, its bonds severed, struggling now against this one, resisting now the tyranny and enmity of that one, subsiding from time to time — only to rise up fighting anew whenever its ardor returned, its zeal came back to it, and the opportunity offered itself...

And he was ever himself, in his striving, his wandering, and his struggle — never flagging, never resting, never subsiding.

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And he would return to his home. The strange thing is that he should have had a quiet home to return to at all! For his nation, from his earliest youth, was his home and his haven...

He made of his home a model for the entire Arab nation: in it was generous love, in it was free yet balanced liberty, in it was respect for the familiar among men and for the unfamiliar alike... He was the ideal leader of his nation, and at the same time the ideal father to his family and kin. And how can a leader be worthy if he is not also a good father!?... For leadership, too, is fatherhood...

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He taught the people the meaning of struggle and gave them real, tangible lessons in it — and it is he who would then give them lessons, besides, in fatherhood, in upbringing, and in tenderness.

We knew him as a statesman, and we reaped the fruits of his struggle; but few of us paid heed to him in his fatherhood or took notice of him in his home. For the man who gave himself over to building the nation's towering edifice and its unsullied independence did not neglect to build an Arab home that spurred him on to struggle and perseverance — a home in which the sons of his nation might find an example to follow, a model to pattern themselves on, an ideal to build upon... a home Arab in character, Arab in spirit, Arab in tongue — and this is rare in the homes of our "leaders" — Arab in blood and in custom, where no difference was made between boy and girl, but each alike was fit to be a distinguished national model and a praiseworthy human example...

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Has he not set you, in this, an example of the Arab father's power to plant in a daughter's soul the spirit of the leap; to train in her arm the vigor of struggle; to awaken in her a strength with which she knocks at the doors of combat without fear, and raises the banners of freedom and liberation without hesitation — making her, by all this, a helper to a sister of hers who groans in Morocco, and a counselor to a brother of hers in Tunisia who makes ready!?...

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As for his home!...

It is the home of the persevering fighter, the bold and daring man — the home of a man who builds for others, not for himself. In it is selflessness; in it are devotion and conviction; in it is profound faith in Arabism and its sanctity, and confidence in its right and its dignity...

And a home whose pillars are values such as these is a home over which honor casts its shade, and in which dignity grows. In it matter dies, and the spirit revives and flourishes... So there can be no difference in it between a girl and a boy...

And since when has the spirit had male and female!?...