Pain... Dawns and Smiles: With the Artist Nabila George

Palestine — in Nazareth, that town small in its area, glorious in its history, in this beloved spot of earth Nabila George was born!

The days and months passed, and the child grew and crawled about, merry among her family. Her first steps went laughing amid their laughter! Then the first year of her life came to an end — and behold, she was back in her bed, stricken with infantile paralysis!

Seven long years passed with the child confined to her bed, watching her brothers and companions at play; she would sit among her pillows, turning over the toys in her hands and tracing with her pencil on paper simple, primitive, childish pictures!

Seven years the doctors attended her, fighting the disease together with her family, until she was able to walk a little; so her family sent her to the German school Talita Koumi and assigned a nun to care for her and watch over her comfort!

She began her elementary studies, and among them the rudiments of drawing, though she was forever going along the paths the art mistress followed. The disagreement came to a head at last on examination day, when her mark turned out low! And the child marched to the headmistress's office with her book of drawings in her hand! And of course the matter was settled, and she received the mark she deserved!

She returned home after the elementary stage, and the teachers took to coming to her, to teach her music — the piano — and languages: Arabic, English, and German.

She dreamed of finishing her higher studies; she dreamed of studying medicine! But her health stood in the way, closing the road of her hope in her face.

She did not study painting! It was a hobby to her; it was a recreation!

Once, while Umm Aziz the washerwoman was washing the family's clothes, Nabila sat before her, passing her pencil over the paper! The washerwoman froze, staring at her own picture in amazement, while Nabila wrote beneath it “Our washerwoman Umm Aziz.” And the Saint George's School (the Bishop's School) in Jerusalem took her first picture and hung it in one of its corridors!

That year — her twelfth year — she held the first exhibition of her paintings! She was proud of herself! All those visitors, all the callers at the house, had come to see what she had achieved! They came to the house — where she held her first exhibition — for her own sake!

And the days and years pass slowly while she passes her brush over her canvases, giving voice to her pain of body and of soul!

Then comes Beirut, when she is eighteen years of age.

And Palestine — her country — is partitioned, and the catastrophe descends, a new catastrophe in her heart, and grief and a dark atmosphere spread over her paintings.

The Lebanese artist Rafat Mujayri saw her paintings, and knew the seat of genius in her, and began to encourage her, becoming her critic and her guide in art. He tried to lift her out of the pit of despair that showed in her paintings. He asked her to introduce the wretched world to beauty — to gaiety.

And her father stood beside her, helping her! How many nights they sat up together, she painting and he encouraging her to bear the fatigue and bear the pain! How much relief she felt, after days of work, seeing her father smile at a painting she had finished!

“I always wanted to depend on myself for part of my living. And I knew that art does not still hunger. I wanted to work with the needle and with knitting wool! But my father would often snatch the thread from my hand, putting the brush in its place and saying: ‘There are thousands who knit and embroider, but my daughter is one of those few who

are able to express themselves with their brush...’ And I would leave the needle to take up the brush!”

And the words of the artist Buhayri moved her, and she saw the world around her laughing!

She saw around her companions who loved her and loved her work and loved life.

“I knew that art must be something else in my life! Our pains are many, and our joys few and rare! And the world around us is beautiful — beautiful in its trees, beautiful in its rocks, beautiful in its waters, beautiful in its expressions!”

She threw herself into her paintings! She threw herself into her knitting and her embroidery.

And on the twelfth of December 1953 she opened her third exhibition in the public hall at West Hall in the American University of Beirut, under the patronage of the League of Women's Organizations.

And is there anyone worthier than women to sponsor an exhibition by an artist among whose difficulties was the fact of being a woman — and in the East?

Out of the flood of past pains, through the tears that went before, we lived in a beautiful atmosphere pulsing with happiness, pulsing with gaiety, overflowing with life and hope.

Paintings... and paintings... and paintings, from every one of which optimism shines out, in every one of which hope appears.

Her colors are all bright and merry! Her lines all expressive and studied.

And in all of them the beholder feels a delight; he feels happiness flooding over him as he contemplates them!

Who has disbelieved in man and in man's power?

Who has disbelieved in man's beauty and his creative strength?

Who has disbelieved in the power of smiling hope?