Congratulations to the Three Ladies, Woman's Pioneers in the Municipal Councils

★ What a warm congratulation is this, addressed by the doyenne of our women of letters, Mrs. Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah, to the three ladies whom the esteemed government has seen fit to choose as woman's pioneers in the Lebanese municipal councils.

My dear sisters, Mesdames Laure Tabet, Ibtihaj Kaddoura, and Ellen Rihan:

I tried again and again this morning to reach you by telephone, and did not succeed — and so I find myself compelled to call upon my crippled pen to express my feelings, before anything should occur to dull the splendor of this refreshing wave flooding over my being and the whole of my feelings — some sudden bodily pain, for instance — and so sap my resolve. No! I shall not let go of this glad rejoicing, of which you are the messengers and the bearers, to me and to every woman citizen who feels its import and its importance in the life of woman. And so I thank you and congratulate you!!!

Hardly had I received the morning paper when your dear pictures looked out at me — like a radiance from behind the clouds — heading the front page of the newspaper al-Hayat, in confirmation of a report that followed concerning the expected appointment!!

As for your selection and your appointment to the Municipal Council, for all its very great importance in my eyes, the fact of it did not astonish me, since I had expected it in any case — but what did astonish me was these three pictures, in their artistic arrangement and their beautiful three-headed display, harmonious in size, in features, in the far-reaching gaze, in the deep and earnest thought, and in the sober good sense that united them; and my astonishment grew until I fancied I was gazing at an artistic tableau by some master sculptor of statues, who had set out deliberately to make of it a symbol of triplets — for all the natural disparity among you — in likeness, in nearness, in stock, and in setting!!!..

Truly, the newspaper al-Hayat did well to place this picture at the head of its other matter; and it seems to me that its proprietor — that ambitious man, unrivaled in drawing readers to his paper — perceived with his keen sense the importance of these moral forces that hide behind these outward lines showing on the three faces, and the part they will play in this new era of the higher life, in its comprehensive meaning, in the history of our country — and in the life of the Eastern woman in particular..

As for raising my voice, faint though it be, in congratulation, like the rest of the women and men who offer their congratulations on so happy an event — what lies beyond my strength is this: that the wishes and hopes I would join to this congratulation require one who is your equal in strength, in activity, and in resolve. Ah! Would that I had some measure of these, that I might make you feel something of the stirrings of soul that surge in my breast at every step my country's daughters take forward! How much more so now, when, through you, we have reached the point nearest to the goal toward which we aspire?!!

Yet though my attempt is deficient, and far from expressing my feeling as I wish and desire, I shall go on following your news and your endeavors, step by step. For I still count myself a colleague of yours. And I shall not renounce this fellowship, which embraces the better self of my being — this spirit, which is all that remains of Julia.