To You, "Irene"

I write this about you, "Irene," and to you — and to everyone who says: "Chivalry has gone out of people, and the bonds of kindness and mercy between them have snapped." Or: "These days a person has no dear ones or friends but his own family and relations." Or: "Human friendship has become lies and falsehood!"

No — there are still in the world souls that shine with loftiness and tenderness, pure and loving hearts whose fragrance is stronger than the fragrance of lilies. They are scattered here and there, in the East and the West, in village and city, on sea and on land — and even between earth and sky!

It was evening, and I was waiting in the airport of Curaçao for the arrival of the plane that would carry me to Lebanon, where I was to spend a year, recovering some of the health and strength the tropical climate had stolen from me. I was sad and aching after taking leave of my husband and my brother at the airport of Barcelona, Venezuela. I needed no mirror to see my disheveled hair and my reddened, weeping eyes; as for my arms, they hung slack from sheer fatigue, with no strength left to play with my baby, who saw fit to proclaim his displeasure and his boredom by crying — so I let him cry, my spirit bewildered, loneliness and desolation closing around me. Suddenly I found my arms lying slack over my empty lap! Where had my baby gone? I turned my gaze and saw his abductor: a lady with a laughing smile, carrying him away from me and motioning with her hand that I should be easy and rest! God Almighty had sent me an angel to carry my angel and lift away some of my distress!

I rose and went to the rest room, washed my face and tidied my hair, then drank a glass of orange juice. Before long I felt refreshed in body and spirit, and I returned to the waiting hall all eagerness and longing to shower that generous lady with a torrent of words of thanks and gratitude. I found her sitting calm and serene beside a small girl, cradling my baby, who lay nestled in the folds of her arms! She greeted me first, saying: "Thank God the clouds have lifted — at least I can tell the color of your eyes now."

We talked as we killed the time, and I learned from her that she was a wretched, unhappy wife whom life — her own life and her only daughter's — compelled to live with a tyrannical, oppressive husband who respected in her neither feeling nor bond. She was then on her way to Canada, to spend with her mother, who lives there, two months only — the whole term of the "visa" her husband would allow! She spoke of her sorrows as though those sorrows were duties fate had laid upon the shoulders of her soul, whose burdens simply had to be borne; and the tear that welled in her eyes seemed a passing gleam with no right to remain there...

As I bade her farewell at the airport of "Montreal" I whispered: "Will you remember this meeting, Irene?" And she answered in her gentle voice: "Always, my dear — at every drone of a plane and every beat of a wing. And if distress should ever wrap itself around your soul, repeat the name 'Irene' and you will find my memory in your hands..." And she went out of the room, her head high, a smile on her lips, her chestnut hair falling loose and dancing on her shoulders...

Irene... may God scatter the clouds of your sorrows and sprinkle your pure soul with a rain of hopes... For you I pray always, and for those like you of lofty, exalted souls: that people may reach into your depths and meet them with kindness and care, even as you fill people's hearts with a love that springs from your own pure hearts...

*

Mercy dwells in the hearts of many men and many women; we have only to open our hearts to those hearts, and we shall meet!

Do our souls or our hearts, I wonder, look at people's feelings as our eyes look at their finery and their clothes — with the same sharpness and attention? In these feelings, madam, you will find what you may take and what you may give and offer! Let us give in order to receive — and let there be no taking without giving!