To 'Awra' the family of The Woman's Voice set out, on the forenoon of a mild autumn day, to visit the artist Youssef Howayek in his retreat. We drove along the sea as far as Batroun, and from there turned up toward the mountain. The car wound its way among the half-barren mountains and hollows; here a bramble looked out at us, so harshly used by the drought that it stood nailed in its place, half burnt! And there a small terebinth, bearing among its branches the leavings of the goats' tussling...

The traveler in those parts feels that Lebanon is his alone: no coarse driver rends his ears with honking, no frantic car cuts across his road and blinds his eyes with dust... How sweet these pure sensations, for the children of Beirut to live with nature, when nothing greets their ears but the conferring of flocks of birds over a rivulet of water or a green meadow!!

We descended a valley and circled a mountain, and at last climbed a summit set apart from the road. It remained for us to walk a few minutes on foot before we looked down on Howayek's 'dara.' To call it a 'dara' — a mansion — may be to load the house with more than the word will bear; even so I shall insist on calling it a 'dara,' for the marvelous artistic touch

Youssef Howayek's house in 'Awra,' crowned with grape vines...

that sets this house apart from all other Lebanese houses. No pomp and no luxury, but

Howayek's two hands have turned the rocks standing in the garden, around the house, and even on the roof into radiant statues that spread an air of sweet optimism... Here the head of a laughing girl. There a naked body reclining in innocence and purity... And there children at play... God! How did Howayek pour his soul into them, so that beneath our eyes they seem to pulse with warmth and life!! God! How did Howayek turn this

wasteland into a fresh garden — into a little museum in the heart of nature!..

Long we searched for the artist without finding him, though his house stood with doors flung wide! At last he comes, ambling along in his high 'jallabiyas'... He had been tending with his own hands the apple trees and the pear and plum saplings, and the beds of carnations and roses — watering them from a scanty spring whose water he gathers in the hollows of the rocks, drop by drop!

Blessed be the creativity of striv

ing, stubborn man!!

In the eyes of this artist of delicate feeling we read, without any hint from him, more than one tale of the reason for his seclusion, and of a life that is asceticism itself... A tale of a proud, noble soul colliding with the ingratitude of an ignorant society and retreating into its shell, folded in upon itself, finding the heart of the earth