Thoughts inspired by the cover picture of "The Woman's Voice"... July 1953

A First Encounter

The moment I received this issue of our excellent magazine, and after I had opened the cover and scrutinized its picture, I happened, on my way, to meet the editor-in-chief; and I could not help but greet her and then at once raise an objection to that wrinkled, frowning face heading this elegant magazine, at a time when other magazines adorn themselves with fresh, radiant, smiling countenances. I completed my protest, though granting in fairness that the picture is not without charm — but from an esthetic standpoint it does not please the buyer's eye, nor invite immediate admiration. And after Edvick Jureidini Shayboub had heard everything I said in this hasty outburst, with her habitual calm and her keen shrewdness she did not retort, as she would have had every right to do, "And who asked your opinion of the cover picture?" or "Who says your judgment is the measure of esthetic or commercial values in literature?" Instead she referred me to the paragraph on the following page which explains it. Then we exchanged a "smiling" farewell and parted... And from that moment — I do not know whether it was the old woman's picture alone, or the editor's quiet defense of it, or both together — an army of passing fancies was stirred up that would not leave my imagination until I withdrew into myself and said, "Let me look again at what the paragraph explains." Then I bent over the furrowed face, and behold, it unfolded its features and its secrets; light glowed in the two eyes that probed the depths of my perplexed soul, and the tight-pressed mouth opened upon a tried and tested wisdom and said:

The Old Woman Speaks

I was taken aback by the question of the modern, emancipated woman — I, the old, the fettered one — when the issues of her magazine appeared at

the opening of her new era, asking whether I had "anything to offer her" in her present general stage; for I do not know how to read, and no tie binds me to Western civilization; I understand nothing of politics, and I was not reared on the complicated social creeds.... I am nature's fosterling and the trueborn daughter of Lebanon... My modern sister described me as having "wisdom, firmness, and endurance." But in truth, whatever wisdom my features betray is with me nothing but instinct; what she called firmness is in me suppleness; and what she named endurance is the power of continuance, nature's law and nothing more:

I have never once forced my soul to do what it abhors, nor have I sought a contrived, deceiving happiness. "I weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice." I hold duty sacred — it is my religion — and I labor, toiling and content, for the sake of my little kingdom, like the bee going from flower to flower gathering honey. I am kind to the stranger and good to the neighbor; a word of thanks means more to me than the wreckage of this fleeting world. I am tender toward my kin and do not belittle them, and I look up to those above me with an eye of trust and esteem. I set truth in the place of the soul. I scorn flattery and begging, and I temper self-love with charity and giving. The most precious thing I own is my health — no argument there, for "a sound mind is in a sound body" — and in this nature is my ally; she is for me the most effective tonic and physician. We work together, nature and I: I do not push her from me by overtaxing my strength, nor does she push me away ungrateful for her bounty... Her law is moderation, and her code is growth and ascent.

Caught Between Two Things

I said to myself, while the old woman rambled on without end: "Very well —

high-sounding sayings we have heard so often and believed; very good