thinkers — these have gone to extremes in separating woman from the human species, which they have all but confined to man. The fact is that every merit distinguishing woman springs from the universal human soul, every defect marring her goes back to the common human frailty, and every trace of her intelligence is but one face of general human thought.”
And May says in another place, in the voice of a girl watched over by her family with strict surveillance:
“Treatment like this makes me doubt my own goodness and my dignity, and rage and pride may drive me to do what I would never do if my family trusted me. Plants are free — why should people not be free?
“I say freedom and I mean it; it is not license, as many claim. The difference between them is that the one has limits which the other tears down and oversteps.”
And Malak Hifni Nasif says: “Nothing vexes me more than men's claiming that they pity us. We are no object for their pity; we are worthy of their respect — let them exchange the one for the other. Pity comes only from the sound to the sick, or from the great to the lowly. Which of the two kinds do they take us for? By God, we disdain to be either.”
And she goes on in this vein: “Men tell us, and assert it positively: you women were created for the home, and we were created to earn the living. Would that I knew what law to that effect ever came down from God. If they were fair and not partisan, they would not taunt us with our scant genius, or with the fact that no one has ever heard of one of us changing a rule in arithmetic or geometry, for instance. Let one of them kindly tell us what he himself has derived from those rules. We acknowledge to the men of invention and discovery the greatness of their works — but had I boarded the ship with Christopher Columbus, it would not have been beyond me, either, to discover America!”
Malak Hifni was a storm — roaring, scowling, mocking, attacking.
She loosed lightning at one moment and thunder at another, fearing, in speaking the truth, no blamer's blame. What she saw and heard among the daughters of her sex in general, and Muslim women in particular, wore upon her nerves, and she let it fly in scorching gusts, because she did not wish upon them what she had seen, nor accept for them what she had heard. She looked toward a higher level for woman — and perhaps she will attain it one day, so long as right is on her side.
And May was a teeming sea, drinking deep of the rivers that pour into it and scarcely quenched, surging and swelling under the storms that clash upon it. But when its waves draw near the shore, they draw near slowly and lightly, and no sooner do they touch the brown sands than they retreat, gathering up their train for fear some grains of sand may have clung to it and sullied its whiteness.
And with all that, she never ceased returning to the charge, time and again, to achieve what she wished of the reform of woman, of institutions, and of the world.
May and Malak Hifni Nasif were a necessary need of that era,
that through them the elements of progress and reform in literature might be complete.
The divergent voices ringing in the ear of existence with clear signs of lawful magic lacked a feminine voice to soften the sharpness of that clangor and pave the way for a lofty literature that would take its fitting place among the living literatures.
As for the influence each of the two writers wrought, singly, upon modern literature — criticism above all — it is great and effective, and demands a broad study that cannot be summed up in a hasty sketch like this, limited to minutes.
God rest Malak Hifni Nasif, and God rest May. The first rendered the Muslim woman a shining service such as hundreds of women like her could not have rendered her all at once.
And the second bestowed upon Arabic literature a splendor of her own splendor, so that it thrilled from its farthest reach to its nearest, glorifying the personality of woman in May, offering up those fragrant breaths, and making for her, in the innermost core of its heart, a temple where she might devote herself and worship.
Yes, this is your melody! — your favorite melody!.. Its echo answers within me, a stirring tremor, and how quickly it carries me aloft... and in something like the flutter of a lash I find myself in your world — yours... A few counted minutes I live with you, and with your beloved melody... as though the fifteen years were five minutes!...
•
... With this melody you come back to me, strong and unbridled, like a splinter of volcanic lava!... It is summertime, and I am alone on the balcony of our house, listening to the whispering of the pines in the night... Suddenly, you rise up before me! To this day I do not know from where you descended!! And in your hand was something you thrust toward me, saying: “These are melodies I chose for you myself. They are the heritage of the world's music. And this one is my favorite melody... Play it for me now, while I lie back in the face of the moon. If you only knew what this melody means to me! It is the ‘Hymn of Life’ — so remember me whenever its strains pass your hearing, or your mind...”
•
Yes, this is your melody, your favorite melody itself — and how quickly its lulling breaths fade away, while I am alone in the night, with my turbulent, bewildered memories... ... No moon over my balcony... and no companion!