Woman and Summering

The summer visitor comes to our land seeking rest and in quest of health and vigor. Not long after he is among us he feels vitality and energy: his cheeks have grown rosy, his muscles firm, his step light, his spirits leaping — and he begins to think about how to pass the time, lest boredom overtake him where amusement should, and he longs to discover whatever is new and diverting.

Our summer visitor has grown used, summer after summer, to the pleasure-spots of the Lebanese resorts — which have nothing Lebanese about them: borrowed names, look-alike programs, fixed hours — a mere string of cafés, dance halls, and taverns where he pays much to get little; not to mention their din, which contradicts the very conditions of rest he has wanted ever since he set foot in our beautiful country, fleeing the clamor of his work in pursuit of some delightful pleasure.

Some objector may say: if our guest is a lover of history, there is the citadel of Baalbek and there the palace of Beiteddine, which the Department of Antiquities has taken in hand. And if he loves the open chase, let him tuck a rifle under his arm and shoot sparrows in the neighboring vineyards. And as for swimming — is there no place for him on our azure shore from Tripoli to Sidon where he can pass his time so as not to grow bored?

Summering is no longer merely a matter of exploiting what nature has bestowed, or the monuments and antiquities that past generations created, or what ordinary cheap taste demands; it has become a science and an art — in publicity and allure first, in entertainment, recreation, and direction second, and in gain and profit third.

And art — however scant my knowledge of it — is heart and the sense of beauty. I appeal to woman — for if man is the nation's thinking mind, woman is its beating heart — I appeal to her to draw upon her delicate sense of beauty beyond the bounds of her own person and her house, and to imagine with me Lebanon, coast and mountain, a homeland for tourists, just as her own house is a destination for callers. Just as we women do our utmost to please our guests — with splendid furnishings, gracious courtesy, good food, sweet company, and abundant entertainment — so the visitor in our great house, which is Lebanon, requires special attention for his rest, his amusement, and his contentment.

And there is no exaggeration in this saying: the unity of traditions and customs, the unity of tongue, the unity of aims, between the host family, Lebanon, and the guest family — Egyptian or Iraqi, Syrian or sister Saudi — makes it easy for us to cast our lovely summer land into a captivating mold with a special Eastern stamp, a unique local form, and a color at once Arab and modern, so that it may rise to keep pace with the advanced nations, above all those that count themselves a resort for tourists and a shrine for pilgrims.

Have you ever heard of a traveler in Madrid who did not see the bullfights? Or does not everyone with money and time enough melt with longing to attend the cinema festival at Cannes? What nation did not take pride in joining the Olympic Games in Berlin before 1939? And was it not a rare opportunity for whoever pressed himself among the thousands of souls in the Holy Year in Rome three years ago, or at the recent coronation of the Queen of Britain?

What garment, then, shall our dear Lebanon put on — a splendid new garment to hearten the tourist and draw him to its blue shores and its towering mountains?

Beirut strutted in a splendid new garment the day the UNESCO organization held the first of its conferences there. We Lebanese came to know, on that day, our artists and our men of letters, our universities and our associations, our newspapers and our organizations. Why then have we ceased to call upon their inspiration and to keep them steadily serving themselves and their homeland? Might not summering be fertile soil for art, literature, and music, for comfort and recreation, and for the public health? Then whoever passed through the streets of our capital would be struck by their cleanliness and their freedom from filth both microbial and human — exactly as we housewives do when a guest descends upon us. For it is only natural to remove whatever offends taste, and to prepare whatever leads to delight and good cheer — because the spirit of beauty latent within us, and the love of being moved by it and of moving others, takes no tangible shape unless some incentive summons it or some occasion arises.

And what occasion better suits us for displaying the best that we have been given than the occasion of the summer season, which brings us our most important economic resource? If we can manage to maintain perfect cleanliness through the summer — the season in which nature does least to help man — our coastal and mountain centers will emerge in the most splendid of garments, one it would be hard for them to cast off afterwards — by force of habit. And where is the harm, if we make ourselves clean and adorn ourselves for the sake of others? Do we not do the very same in our private lives, when we go to receive a guest or make ready for an engagement?

Around the year 1932 the Greek steamship company organized an excursion to the Cedars, beginning at the port of Beirut and running to the harbor of Tripoli, whence the travelers took motorcars up to the Cedars region — a short trip taking two days and costing no more than ten Lebanese liras. But today we are no longer satisfied with

the Qadisha grotto lit with electricity, miracle though it be, nor with the sight of the lofty, calm, majestic Cedars, nor with Gibran's gentle, tranquil tomb. What ails us, children of the age of the atom, of speed and radiation, that we are so frozen and so drowsy? Come, let our artists and writers, our poets, singers, and actors go up to Lebanon's Olympus and present us with what nature and history inspire in them. What a wonder — festivals of literature breathed by Gibran at Bsharri: Naimy, Akl, and Labaki. And where is a splendid exhibition of his symbolic pictures: Farroukh, Onsi, and Douaihy. Then, instead of passing carelessly by his tomb and reading Here rests among us "Gibran Khalil Gibran," a touch of the beauty of that native place would have worked deep into our souls, and we should have offered our summer guests a treasure from our inmost selves — and our tongue would rise up to declare: "Here lives our genius, Gibran Khalil Gibran."

Let us pass on to the courtyard overlooked by the statue of the knight Youssef Karam, and hold there an evening of zajal and folk songs, of qaradi and ma'anna — the troupe of al-Shahrur, al-Zoghbi, and al-Murr. And let the figures of the fair maidens sway in "folklore" dances: the dabkeh, say, to the tapping of the darbukkeh, in the old national costumes with their gay, vivid colors; hearts keening with the yearning of the reed-flute, souls leaping to the tones of the oud — its melodies crossed by the clash of the sword and the clatter of the shield, the game of bygone festivities and one of the spectacles of the chivalry of old. And in this atmosphere brimming with the pure folk spirit, dishes of the finest local foods are handed round: tabbouleh and raw kibbeh, ghammeh and stuffed marrows, prepared by our famous restaurants; baklava, ma'moul, and karabij of Aleppo.

At the close of the program a dance is held at the Grand Cedars Hotel, at which the queen of youth and beauty is elected.

You ask me, where is the money to come from? I ask you, where are the planning, the organization, the publicity, and the sacrifice to come from? If the numerous women's associations lent this vital subject genuine attention, and adopted projects for the well-to-do as they adopt projects for the poor, and worked hand in hand with the Commissariat of Tourism and Summering, we should have at least one program every summer for hearts to yearn toward and purses to open for.

The summering season is a pulse of awareness in the whole nation's frame, nourished by the newspapers and magazines, the radio, the cinema, and the popular songs. And were the woman's magazine, and other magazines besides, a living exhibition of her private and public life, in which the glances of her counterparts travel — a living mirror reflecting the beauty and invention God has bestowed on her, toward which her peers gaze with eagerness — they would agree, all willing: "Come, let's go have our dresses made in Lebanon!" This fair one, turning the pages of "The Woman's Voice," would have had her eye fall upon an elegant costume there: the makeshift mannequin — a lady of prominent Lebanese society who kindly presented her photograph in the newest evening gown, by permission of her private dressmakers — stood... Mrs. So-and-so stood among the columns of the Temple of Bacchus in the citadel of Baalbek (or at least so the picture suggests), her hair swept up above a bare neck and shoulder, the folds of the flowing, harmonious gown falling to the soles of two feet strapped into light sandals of the Roman style so widespread today; over her left arm hung a sheer embroidered shawl of the Lebanese Artisanat's making, while her right arm curled about the mute stone column — into which life had crept, nay, which the spirit of the builders of our glorious history had quickened.

"Ay, ruins of Baalbek, greetings" — then let the ruins of Baalbek speak.

If the Girl Guides troupe held one of its formal parade festivities in the courtyard of the palace of Beiteddine, and its music rang out to the tread of rising Lebanese womanhood as they performed the duty of salute to the residence of the head of the country, the granter of woman's right — while all the while the motion-picture camera recorded, recorded their movements, together with snatches of acting, song, dance, and verse — under the gaze of the image of Abu Saada, whose eyes have broken so many backs in ages past — so that this film might be shown alongside the newsreels in country after country.

Woman is the mistress of the house, and the summer visitors are her guests. Let us then give what we can in knowledge, and wherever we can in deed, for their happy sojourn.