In Society

* We open our society column for this month with happy news, which we convey to the friends and admirers of Miss Rose Ghorayeb: our great woman of letters is regaining her activity and is on the way to recovery, after keeping to her house for a time, prey to a bodily ailment... In the coming issue readers will be given a new article by Miss Ghorayeb, and Radio Lebanon will present a story of hers on Tuesday evening, May 19, at half past eight.

The Woman's Voice, which considers Miss Rose Ghorayeb a strong pillar of thought and letters in Lebanon, takes heart at our writer's return to the practice of her literary activity, and wishes her a complete and speedy recovery.

* On the night of the nineteenth of April, at the American University of Beirut, the Village Welfare Society presented the play "Zenobia," written and staged by Mr. Farid Mudawwar.

The performance was under the patronage of His Excellency the President of the Republic. A company of young women and young men took part in the acting, each performing his role excellently; and those who attended the performance testified, for the actors and actresses and for those responsible for staging the play, to the quality of the acting and the fine artistic direction.

The executive president, Mrs. Loreen Shoucair Rihani, welcomed the audience and explained that the aim of the Village Welfare Society is plain from its name: to restore life and light to the Lebanese village by way of woman — by fighting illiteracy and disease, and then by guiding the village women and helping them to strengthen their industrial and agricultural production and to secure a market for the sale of these products.

The history of the Village Welfare Society goes back no more than two years, and it stood under the banner of the Lebanese Women's Union. As for the founding committee, to which most of the credit for mounting the play is due, it is composed of the ladies:

Evelyne Bustros: honorary president
Loreen Shoucair Rihani: executive president
Adelaide Richani: vice-president
Anissa Najjar: secretary
Aminah Khoury Makdisi: treasurer
Nuzha Maasri: corresponding secretary
and Mesdames Victoria Dabbas, Shams Freiha, and Aliyya al-Saidi, chairwomen of committees.

And in truth the history of the Village Welfare Society, for all its recent date, is full of sacrifices, and of great works whose difficulties none but woman can overcome, with the endurance and long patience for which she is known. A national, social, and economic project like the village welfare project is indeed worthy of encouragement and appreciation.

* We may not be mistaken in saying that the concert given by Mrs. Rio, presenting the artist Miss Diana Takieddine, was an important musical event. This concert was an occasion of astonishment to those of our foreign guests versed in music, for Miss Takieddine played on the piano two pieces by Beethoven and Liszt, showing an uncommon genius and a mastery of expression surpassing what we are accustomed to hear at other concerts.

The attendance was great, and the number of those standing exceeded two hundred, which led those responsible to repeat the concert a week later; and it is hoped that the gifted musician Miss Diana Takieddine will travel next year to Paris to join one of the great musical companies.

* On Saturday evening, April 18, the election of the beauty queen of Lebanon for 1953 was held at the Normandy; the hall, for all its spaciousness, was packed until it could hold the spectators no longer.
Only 12 young ladies took part in the contest, and after a battle of shouting and clamor the committee chose, by unanimous vote, Miss Leila Saroufim, who was given the title "Miss Lebanon" and the right to claim the many prizes set aside for her, chief among them a trip by airplane to Europe.

On the occasion of her election as Miss Lebanon, the "Harouni" fashion house engaged her, and she left with it at once for Baghdad, to show the season's fashions on the occasion of the coronation of King Faisal II.

★ On Saturday, April 25, the "Beirut American" College convened a home economics conference whose proceedings lasted the whole day — the first of its kind to be held in Lebanon. Its plans were drawn up and carried out through the cooperation of the dean of the home economics department at the said college with the Misses Helen Smith and Katherine Cleveland, the experts in this branch at the American Point Four.

Some seventy ladies and young ladies took part in the conference program, most of them school principals, teachers of home economics, or workers in this field. In the lectures and discussions the various aspects of the subject were studied.

General questions were raised on a wide scale, and Lebanon's pressing need for women teachers specialized in home economics; and some handwork from various Lebanese schools was also exhibited.

★ Last month, at the club of the Orthodox College in the city of Homs, a ceremony was held honoring the principal of the Orthodox girls' secondary school, Miss Nazla Soukis.

This ceremony was under the patronage of His Excellency the Minister of Education, Dr. Sami Tayyara, and was attended by the senior officials of the province, a company of teachers, men and women, the members of the women's branch of the Red Crescent Society, and a great number of personalities and notables, until the club, for all its spaciousness, was all but packed with the invited guests.

★ At six o'clock on Tuesday, May 12, in the hall of the Ministry of Education — the Chartouni Building, Sheikh Bechara Street — Mr. Subhi Mahmasani will deliver a lecture on the subject "The Role of the Lebanese Woman in Public Life."

The Lebanese Women's League, which invited Mr. Mahmasani to give this lecture, calls everyone's attention to the necessity of attending it and of hearing whatever new and useful things our erudite scholar may bring.

★ We have received from Mrs. Suad Mahmoud al-Aawar the following word:

The participation of the Arab ladies in the Arab Medical Congress held in Cairo last month had the finest and deepest effect, for they shed upon the delegates a perfumed air of the fragrance of their learning, their gentleness, and their good company. And in the name of my sisters, the women of Lebanon, I offer my abundant thanks and my deep gratitude to the committee of Egyptian ladies and its virtuous president, the wife of Dr. Ismail Mahouz, who entertained their sisters from all the Arab lands: they were a true model of the hospitable, generous Arab woman. And we were amazed at the fine organization shown by that virtuous committee in the trips and tours prepared for the ladies of the congress, which smoothed our way to acquaintance with the landmarks of the sister country, its museums, its antiquities, and its gardens.

★ The friends of the artist Salwa Rawda, men and women alike, were surprised by the news of her marriage on April 13 to Mr. Youssef Shoucair, an official in the Survey Department.

Mrs. Salwa, who departed from convention in her art, departed from it also in her wedding, which no one attended save the two brothers of the bride and groom.. And the bride returned to her work as art adviser at Point Four on the third day after her marriage, thereby breaking the record for what they call "the simplicity of this age!"

To the two newlyweds our warmest congratulations and our wishes for an ideal married happiness ...