only because, in their affairs, they refused to walk the way of the sensible. They denied women their right, and bore down upon them with confinement and long immurement, and they imposed the veil upon them, and refused them any outing except under a cover.

Then the poet, in his poem "Our Women," utters with all his being his complaint at the life of women shut in the houses, cut off from sharing in the fields of work and the arenas of cooperation with men, and his complaint against the folk sunk in ignorance, who do not distinguish truth from falsehood, reality from fancy, and who reckon the tightening of the veil as belonging to the religious law and leading to it. And if the veil and its tightening were of the law, ought then the dove to be destroyed, and silenced in the branches from pouring forth her warbling and her cooing? As he says:

Indeed I complain of a custom in our land by which fate has struck the height of glory with a crack:

it is that our women still live in ignorance, cut off from the assembly;

and the greatest of my complaints against the folk is that they count the tightening of the veil as part of the law.

Is it in the law to strip the dove of her feathers, and to silence her, upon the boughs, from her cooing?

Then he says — and how truthful and apt a saying it is:

We, the unveilers, know better what the Prophet Muhammad laid down as religion.

Can what the Prophet Muhammad laid down be a thing at odds with the law of civilization?

And al-Rusafi after this shows his pessimism, in his poem "The Freedom of Marriage among Us," over the conditions that grip the East by the throat and stir in its joints the spirit of decline and pain: for the people whom the flashing glitter of gold tempts, and whom

the pleasure of fleeting money sweeps along, force girls to marry old men advanced in years, their backs bowed, out of greed for vast fortune and abundant coin. The poet believes — and his belief is reasonable — that a girl's heart is too precious to be bought with money; it can be chosen only by true love, which binds two hearts with its firm cord in a fast knot; so that if marriage takes place without this immortal love, and without the acquaintance that has its good merits, it is a wearisome affair, and we must fear it for its grievous... painful consequences.

They wronged you, O maiden, in their ignorance, when they forced you to marry a graybeard;

they coveted his ample money, and so they put Ash'ab to shame by the excess of those greeds.

A girl's heart is too noble to be bought with money; rather by love is it won.

Marriage is love; if it takes place with anything other than love, it is a wearisome thing;

and if marriage takes place without acquaintance and mutual affection, then better that we turn monks.

And al-Rusafi wonders whenever he reflects on the matter of the backward East and its folk who deserve lament and blame, who have gone to extremes in cheap-ening woman's worth, robbing her of her rights, and looking upon her with a "carnal look," stormy... unruly... shameless... where he says:

She is the pleasure of the pleasure-takers — and would that it were made binding that she may not be sold.

though this verse carries within its folds other meanings as well!? For the folk in the East claim — and their claim is false — that every renewal and civilization and release from absurdities within the highest ideals and the true religion is vice, disgrace, and

infamy, without knowing what goes on beneath the cloak, and without knowing that their life will not rise or ascend except by rearing the girls with a fruitful rearing that guarantees success and draws women near to men, in a nearness that assures happiness and well-being for all. As he says:

Our folk in the East are in a state at which, the more I ponder it, the more I wonder.

Say to those who struck the veil upon women: do you know what goes on beneath the cloaks?

Does the Easterner know that his life rises when he rears and refines his daughters?

And the East will not rise except when it brings women near to men, and draws them close.

These are the words of the late Ma'ruf al-Rusafi, which show us the truth of woman in society and in the perishing East that submits to what holds it back — shown in a showing into which not the least doubt can creep. And let not the would-be learned, with their sickly tastes, their short views, and their reactionary minds, suppose that the free poet raves and roams in the valley of winged fancy merely because he is counted among the poets; for there are many poets who portray the human tragedies and their manifold conditions in a realistic, marvelous portrayal that spreads sorrow and regret through souls — and al-Rusafi is one of those great ones, where he says:

And I am no wanderer in the valley of fancy, though I be counted among the poets.

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Mr. M. S. Mansour

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