The Working Woman

This month was the month of the Lebanese woman, for she obtained her political right whole and undiminished: the government resolved to give woman the right to vote without exception, after that right had been given only to the educated woman. Thus from now on man and woman are equal, in absolute equality, in the exercise of elections.

This month also saw three of Lebanon's ladies — Mrs. Laure Tabet, Mrs. Ellen Rihan, and Miss Ibtihaj Kaddoura — enter the Municipal Council. They were all elected to its social committee, and they were elected severally to work on its other committees.

And it was the month of the Lebanese woman in America as well. The Washington ladies' club invited a number of the wives of Arab ministers to speak on a single subject, the Arab countries. Mrs. Eva Charles Malik was presented to the audience as a natural artist holding degrees from the American University of Beirut, and she was able to carry off the audience's admiration. She spoke of Lebanon and its progress; she spoke of its independence, only ten years old; and she spoke of the women's movement there, and how the woman's mark is to be seen everywhere — and so on to the end of a picture that captivated the listeners and made them esteem Lebanon in her person... Mrs. Malik continues her activity: hardly had she reached Beirut when she spoke at the annual meeting of the Lebanese Women's League, recalling how the American woman began as the Lebanese woman has, and kept on her way until we saw of her influence in the presidential elections what we saw in the election of Eisenhower.

In the Kingdom of Jordan, two important events are awaited. The first is the coronation of the young King, for which the second of next May has been appointed; the second is the King's marriage. The candidate for this royal betrothal is Princess Dina Abd al-Hamid, who came from Istanbul to spend a few days in the British capital. The King received her at the airport, and she then watched the military review in which he took part — and so she filled a large space in the London papers. The young Princess is at present living in Turkey, and she is her parents' only child... She is 23 years old; she knows French, English, Turkish, and Arabic; a sportswoman of the first order, she plays tennis and skates on the ice with skill; she is exceedingly intelligent; elegant, she buys her clothes from the greatest fashion houses of London and Paris.

In London the papers speak of a miracle, and its name is a mother's miracle — nor do I say so alone, for the most famous physicians of the British capital have said it. A certain lady gave birth to quadruplets; one of them died and three lived — but they lived blind, unable to see. The doctors of London tried all their skill, to no avail; then they announced that they were unable to restore the light to the small, innocent eyes, and they sent the children to the home set apart for blind children. The little ones lived blind for fourteen months. Then it occurred to one of the doctors to make a simple experiment: he sent Georgina, one of the little ones, to her mother, to see whether a mother's tenderness could do anything. The mother turned to Heaven with her whole being for three full months, and one day the child stretched out her hand to the carpet and picked up a piece of cotton lying there — and the mother wept as she watched it. The doctors hastened to examine the child, and confirmed that she could see, and they asked the mother what she had done to the little one's eyes. She cried out: It is God who did it. My faith in God restored the light to my child's eyes. I read in the Holy Book every day, and prayed fervently every evening with my husband... The doctors fell silent, and affirmed that they had been unable to cure the other two children. Said the mother: Send her to me, and God will heal her. And after this, do you not agree with me that it is a mother's miracle...?

As for the United States, sixteen ladies have set out on the journey to Egypt, each one carrying her papers and her pens to record the economic and other conditions in Egypt, and each of them a specialist in a particular art — economics, agricultural engineering, health, and the like. These are ladies of whom the American Parliament takes a thousand reckonings before it debates any law, for their opposition to it kills it, and it never sees the light. In the United States there are women's clubs scattered here and there, but they are merged in a general federation which speaks with the voice of the American woman in very truth, for it represents 40 million American ladies and misses. At the head of this women's delegation that has arrived in Egypt is a journalist who has practiced journalism for sixteen years, Mrs. Green — and the strange thing in the matter is that this Mrs. Green is married to a lawyer who lives in Indiana, while she lives in Washington, and the couple meet on the weekend holiday — that is, when the wife is in the United States!!

In most parts of the world the doctors see the danger of thinness increasing. Leading statisticians examined hundreds of girls and mothers, and then concluded that more than half the girls weighed less than they should, and that their bodies were in need of iodine, calcium, and vitamins; as for the mothers, four out of every five suffer from malnutrition, because more than half of them eat no fresh vegetables and drink no milk at all... The advice of the men of science was this: do not boil food overmuch, and do not throw away its water; do not eat canned foods; chew your food well; take it at its appointed hours. And the men of science affirm that the lack of certain minerals and vitamins in a woman's food makes her complexion dull in color, her body weak, and her temperament more inclined to pessimism, sadness, and sharpness of nerves.

This month there shone the name of the well-known French journalist Mrs. Vibard. A wish she had gone on dreaming of for thirty years has come true — the wish being a visit to Egypt, or a pilgrimage, as she says, to the tomb of the national leader Mohammad Farid, who died thirty years ago. Mrs. Vibard lived in Egypt for a stretch of time, and the people there knew her by the name of Aziza Ruston. She stood by Egypt in its cause with all the strength she possessed, and she loved it from the day she loved its dutiful son Mohammad Farid, becoming, like him, a piece of Egypt's history. In this month, in which Egypt held the festivals of liberation and journalists came to her from the corners of the world, the delegation of France arrived, made up of 28 journalists, at their head Mrs. Vibard, who had done the greater part of the arranging of this journey. She visited the grave of the leader she had loved, and shed a tear there; then she said: The first of the landmarks of modern Egypt that I saw was the airplane stewardess. When I asked her about her nationality and learned that she was Egyptian and Muslim, I wrote in my diary: "Today I saw an immense development in the Egyptian woman since the age of the harem."

And of Iraq, Mrs. Barbara Castle, member of the British Parliament and one of the six members who visited the Middle East a few days ago, wrote in the News Chronicle, saying: The Iraqi woman I met can match most Englishwomen in her ability and her training. And Mrs. Castle adds: The fact is that wherever I went in the Middle East I met women like the Iraqi woman — cultivated and active in various [...]

One woman scientist has invented an apparatus for heating the whole house. The apparatus is fixed in the walls of the house on the inside, with a part of it outside, so that it remains exposed to the sun, absorbing its heat and storing it; then, if the temperature drops because of the coldness of the weather, the apparatus distributes what it has stored through the inside of the house, and it stays warm as it was. And a man has devised a transparent, colorless solution: if the walls of the lower part of a house are painted with it, their pores drink it in, and there forms upon them a thin coating, invisible to the eye, which stops the effect of dampness in the walls for a period of four or five years.