How Do I Want Him?

Here Miss Nur Salman brings us the second part of her delightful reportage, in which she polls the fair sex... What are the qualifications that must be found in the man of their dreams?!..

They said — and would that they had kept silent — that whoever puts this question to members of the fair sex is like one trying to catch a fistful of wind... For woman's imagination is fertile and many-colored to a far degree, and her thoughts turn with the turning of the pages of her days.. As for her ideal man, he resembles, more or less, the hero of the week's film — and how many those heroes are... A droll piece of advice, this... needing, truth to tell, no comment... But women's eyes today have shifted from the cinema screen to the walls of the streets, where the candidates' "retouched" pictures have been posted, their faces wearing smiles of every kind and riddle... Some of the women extol the boldness of Abdullah al-Hajj and the frankness of Jamil Makkawi; some praise the personality of Ghassan Tueni; and some, again, admire Ibrahim Haidar, on the principle that men are not measured by their length and breadth.

My arduous task was not confined to searching out woman — she is to be found, praise God,

everywhere — but I went on to choose the frank ones among them, and frankness is dangerous in these days of ours. As for him who carries its banner and preaches it, he is a poor simpleton crushed under the wheels of a society that has come to believe in the "Machiavellian" school.

Miss Ni'ma Houri — My feet led me to one of the laboratories of the American University, and there, among the multitudinous bottles, the assorted beakers, and the anesthetic odors, I stood like "Alice in Wonderland," searching for a human being to return my greeting...

And behold, I glimpsed from afar Miss Ni'ma Houri in her white — I will not say spotless — coat... preparing her chemical dish without salt or allspice.. The question of The Woman's Voice came as a disturbing surprise, a discordant note in the chorus of sounds and smells she was accustomed to in the atmosphere of the laboratory; but she proceeded to describe her ideal man with the utmost scientific precision.. He is

intelligent, tactful, cultivated, and pleasant; he proves his worth at home and abroad and commands the respect of all.

Miss Amal Ashkar

On one of the athletic fields I met by chance Miss Amal Ashkar, training in preparation for a basketball match — not for the election season, in which every voter may need impregnable muscles to protect him from the evil of punches...

I put the question to her from a good distance, for fear of her well-practiced punches... Miss Ashkar began to recite to me "superman" specifications; listening to them, I fancied myself before an Olympian god uniting in his hand the strength of Apollo, the wisdom of Minerva, and the might of Jupiter.

Then she said: We must sow the seeds of perfection in ourselves, however corrupt their soil and however exhausted its fertility... It is time for us to come out of our defeatist isolation, to free ourselves of our destructive mentality, and to march forward toward the summit of the highest ideals — and whoever keeps to the road arrives...