"What happiness envelops these girls!"
Among the Pines of the Dhour
... A while ago, the sun of our mountains lazily gathered up its transparent, fiery veil... and it was not long before the vanguard of darkness began its slow creep down into the tranquil valley, accompanied on its way by a gray mist that engulfed the pine trees one by one... And behold, the deep valley and the mountain stretching away into the distance were greenery and shadows... shadows and greenery...
And I, at the mouth of the valley beneath a neutral pine, was drinking in the melancholy sunset, motionless as a rock among the rocks, but for the fluttering of my two tired eyelids from time to time...
For a long time now these green summits of Lebanon have been the destination of the camp folk and the resting place of their caravans. They pick out the loftiest and the greenest of them and spread their brown tents across those wide horizons — and behold, the whole world lies crouching at their feet while they soar above it... like eagles!... And behold, the paths are boys and girls, coming and going... and the nights are fire and evening talk, and voices ringing out with the night, distant and deep as the night!...
Our Camps in Lebanon
Our Lebanon leads the Arab
countries in the practice of the scouting life, having borrowed it from the West in its certainty of the fine benefits it holds for our rising generation. I do not consider myself the skillful historian who will take up this movement in detail, though it deserves detail. No, I will not entangle myself
The nurse has a large part in studying their state of health...
in that thorny attempt, lest I be called to account for dozens of errors; I will content myself, in this tale, with the journalist's task — a passing chance carries him to some "situation," and suddenly, to the very last of his senses, he is stirred by the effect of this "situation," and the pen in his hands flows on, recording what it can of these emotions...
Yet I know, at least, that the boys' camps had driven their tent pegs into the flanks of the mountains for dozens of years before the girls, in modesty and timidity, dared so much as to utter such a wish!...
And the summer camps in our mountains grew up and grew large, as does everything that begins small and then grows and grows... And I know that the Muslim Scouts here have fine women's branches in Beirut, Tripoli, and elsewhere, and that on the heights of Aynab, in the last three summers, they set up camps that brought together students and non-students alike, who practiced the scouting life with nature in the open air and reaped — in health, in education, and in society — benefits beyond price.
And I know that Lebanon has also a camp unique of its kind, gathering a mixed cluster of brothers, sisters, and age-mates, founded last summer in memory of, and in the name of, al-Ghazzawi, the Lebanese scout who died a martyr during a scouting expedition in Europe.
As for the camps of the Young Women's Christian Association, they are older in history and more firmly rooted than any others.
Under
"... and acting has its share in the summer gatherings."