you are left twenty-four hours without a maid, your whole being is not shaken. Or if someone comes in upon you before your lips are freshened — do you not steal away to the mirror before you say: Good day?"

If you can shed a tear not at the cinema

but over some poor wretch.

Or if your soul thrills to the trilling of the birds and the dances of the daughters of dawn.

If your husband's relatives direct a word of criticism at you and you do not lose your balance.

Or if your neighbor summers in Europe and you do not burn with envy and spite.

If the artiste swaggers down the street in trousers and you do not lie awake wide-eyed with shock.

Or if whisky is set before you, you refuse it without flinching.

If you do not smoke until your

breath reeks with the perfume of tobacco.

Or if you rise fresh and radiant to build up life and energy in those around you.

"Come back to nature — to running on your own two feet, to sweat, to the scorching sun in the generous plains or the rugged terraces. Here are the hills and hollows my feet have known stone by stone since the days when I was a bounding gazelle; and I shall remain in love with them until movement fails me and my breast embraces their dust in the last sleep."

And When We Met Again...

The old woman's face faded from me after I had come over to her way, and I resolved to greet the first signs of dawn the next day on one of the peaks of Lebanon. And when I rose for my early walk, exercising my legs on the narrow winding paths and opening

my lungs to the pure breezes, I began to chant the words of Rose Ghorayeb:

Whenever the east wind blows, my heart is shaken with longing for the days of youth,

and it drifts toward the hills, where the spring-water glistens...

And my eye fell — while I was still on the slope — upon "a burial ground of one of the far-off vil-lages, where one of the Lebanese grandmothers lies at rest — nay, one of those struggling heroines, number one," in the words of Salma Sayegh... I let my gaze linger on the enchanted spot, and her words of yesterday flashed through my mind; then I turned back slowly, the morning breeze playing with my hair and the forenoon sun kissing my cheeks, while a heart completed the song...

drawing from her resolve and guidance, humble to the end of days.