Mrs. Zalfa Chamoun — The First Lady of Lebanon, the Good Example for Every Lady (A Reportage)

... In the President's House

... I do not feel like a stranger in the house of President Camille Chamoun. The atmosphere is calm and serene, and everything in the house is friendly and familiar: the old maidservant beams at us, and even the rooms of the house are not locked against us. Dr. Edma Abouchdid, the family's close friend, knows everything about this house and about the ways of its people. And now we are alone, waiting for Mrs. Zalfa Chamoun, for lunchtime has drawn near and she is bound to return from the Presidential Palace, where she is personally supervising the work of cleaning it and breathing life back into it.

The house is tidy and elegant, and in every one of its corners there is some artistic touch that bespeaks a refined taste. But the Doctor assures me that this is a disfigured version of the house as it really is: the curtains, the carpets, and the unique objets d'art are all away for the summer, and efforts at present are directed toward readying the Palace... Yet despite all these excuses, the house remained, in the eye of the exacting critic, that beautiful, restful corner where anyone would wish he could sink into one of its seats for a few minutes!

I steal a glance into Mrs. Zalfa's bedroom... The prevailing color is brown, and the sheer, soft curtains are cream-colored... Perhaps it is summer that has stripped the room of every picture — save one small picture of the Virgin, and beside it a book,

"Value & Capital" by J. R. Hicks. Perhaps the lady of the house has a practice of reading this sort of intellectual book...

In the hall is a new portrait of His Excellency the President in a brown leather frame... and in the corner a small colored photograph, which I learned was a picture of Mrs. Zalfa's mother — and I understood at once the source of that refined feminine beauty in the First Lady of Lebanon!

My First Impressions of Her

At this moment Mrs. Zalfa comes in to us.. She enters like any other lady, with no aide or policeman going before her... and she orders coffee...

I train my eyes on her with reserve. I notice that she is natural and simple, and that her speech is a melodious whisper without affectation.. Fair-haired, with delicate features; as for her eyes, they are of an artistic blue, like the color of our sea these days, or the color of the forget-me-not... And how strange that this lady should be the mother of two young men, and that she should keep this tall figure and this slender waist!!

And what more about her person? She is elegant — very elegant — she talks with sweetness and fluency, for she knows what she wants to say and says it with complete frankness and simplicity!! Not once did she refer to her husband by anything other than plain "Camille," and I do not suppose she will ever speak of him as "His Excellency the President!"

... Colors of Her Childhood

If some glimpse of Mrs. Zalfa's childhood must be given, we would mention that she is the daughter of Nicolas Tabet, and that while still a dewy bud she was deprived of the wing of a tender mother; and her mother, an Englishwoman of old stock, was not like every mother, nor was the loss of her like every loss... As for her childhood, it brims with painful memories and with tears... memories that turned the delicate, keenly sensitive child into a quiet girl who adored solitude, and who made up for a mother's affection now with reading, now with drawing... At an early age her father discovered that his child had genuine artistic gifts — her drawings and her handwork all foretold an early maturity and a notable innate taste; but there was no way to direct these gifts along the artistic path to which she aspired..

"The Madonna"

At the American School for Girls, where she received her education, "Zalfa Tabet" the student was a lovable, quiet, hardworking girl... They nicknamed her "the Madonna" for the beauty of her character and her person, and for that gentleness and purity in her eyes... She was not a flame of brilliance, nor at the head of her class; rather she had one quality that was hers alone: "to do everything in the best way possible"... And this quality clings to her to this very day, for every task entrusted to her comes out from under her hand complete, beyond reproach.

This quality shows most of all in her home and in her family life. For, out of care for her own peace of mind, she takes upon herself, and with the greatest relish, many of the household tasks that most ladies consider beneath them — scrubbing the tiles with brush and soap, polishing the copper pots, dusting... These essential matters

lived alongside Zalfa the young girl in her father's house, and alongside Zalfa the wife of Lebanon's Minister Plenipotentiary in London, and they still live alongside Zalfa... the wife of the President of the Lebanese Republic... Did not people see her lately in "Souq al-Uqiyya," rummaging through the modest shops for whatever curtains, coverings, and the like were beautiful and suitable, to save the state a few liras?

Her Marriage to the Lawyer Camille Chamoun

He met her for the first time at the house of a friend; then he saw her again, swimming — he, like her, is athletic and loves the sea — and he saw in her that soft feminine beauty joined to beauty of soul, and she too saw in him the man of her dreams... And it was natural that such an atmosphere should inspire such a happy accord!.. And over the roar of the sea, the young man gathered his courage and asked the young girl, his companion:

— Will you consent to be mine?

— Yes... came the answer..

"There was no romantic passion between us," Mrs. Zalfa affirms. "Just a question and an answer!"

That was in 1931.

The Fruit of Her Marriage

From her marriage Mrs. Zalfa was blessed with two boys, Dory and Dany. And so the mother found herself sunk in work up over her head. She was not in such comfortable circumstances that she could obtain the easy help she wanted, and her maid was not competent to be near the children... So all their care must be in her own hands — add to that the responsibility of a husband and the meeting of all his wishes, and the cheerfulness and warmth he wanted her to show to everyone who came to his house or sought him out for some purpose..

In this period of her life Mrs. Zalfa's virtues crystallized and were smelted in the crucible of married life.

And so this lady is the good example for every lady.. She centered her attention on raising her two sons in a modern, athletic way, so that they followed their parents' path; and they became her companions to the hunt and to the sea, until they came to surpass her in marksmanship and in swimming. Dory is now in Beirut, passing through the final stage of his law studies, while Dany is studying engineering in England.

Mrs. Zalfa in London

Whoever knew the First Lady of Lebanon as the wife of Lebanon's Minister Plenipotentiary in London will grant her that gentle, contented nature, far removed from any love of show, which does not know how to put on airs however high her husband may rise in office!! A lady told me

that she saw her with her own eyes wiping the floor tiles of her house in London, where working hands are scarce... and that Mr. Spears once visited them unannounced, and she apologized for being late, saying she had been cleaning the windowpanes.. She meets her women friends and tells them with pride of the work she has accomplished that day.. And what shame is there in work! So long as the house is her house, all its tasks are sacred in her eyes, and have their own sanctity...

At whatever hour you come to her — in the morning, in the evening, or at any other time — you always find her trim, as though ready to have her picture taken! By that I do not mean that she is extravagant in finery and adornment, spending hours before her mirror; on the contrary, she is orderly, and elegance is an inborn trait in her. Her hair may be tied back with a ribbon like a schoolgirl's, but it is dressed with art; her face is clean, and her dress is the very dress that ought to be worn for that particular occasion — whether it be cooking, or tidying the house, or receiving a dear friend, or a cocktail party!

And when we come to speak of her taste we reach the summit: it is she who designs the styles of her dresses herself, and sews most of them with the help of a simple home seamstress; and she boasts that this dress cost her such-and-such a trifling sum, and if one of her friends admires it, she invites her with sincere enthusiasm to copy its style, and smooths every facility for her!!..

And after all this, it is natural for a woman with such a sense of responsibility, and such devotion in her work, that her time should fall short for social activity — or perhaps there are other reasons; in any case, Mrs. Zalfa Chamoun is by no means the society lady. She is a lady of the house, in all the noble feminine meanings of the word — nor is she inclined toward political affairs; but she agrees with her husband in the view that the Lebanese woman has until now suffered a great injustice through man's tyranny, and that efforts will be made in this era

to do woman justice and bring her to absolute equality.

And it is worth mentioning on this occasion that Mrs. Zalfa Chamoun's house was, during the famous November events, the gathering place of the ladies of Lebanon, on the day they resolved to go out in a great demonstration against colonialism... and that she was seen in the front ranks, cheering for freedom.

This is Mrs. Zalfa Chamoun, the First Lady of Lebanon, as I knew her and heard of her. She is the pride of the women of Lebanon, and the smiling hope on which they pin their hopes...