When the Years Speak Through Their Sages... An Hour with Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah and Youssef Howayek

The time was late afternoon, the hour when a cup of tea tastes sweet, and sweet with it the talk of friends; then the tale comes, alluring in the garb of legend, and the distance of years only makes it the more wondrous, the more instructive!

I listened to the talk of two people who hold in my soul a special place — the loftiest that a human being can occupy in a human heart. I listened with something like reverence — and can one who hearkens to two great souls like the woman of letters Julia Dimashqiyah and the artist Youssef Howayek do otherwise than grow reverent, soaring in an ideal world he dreams of, and burns, despairing, without ever attaining it?

And like an arrow a thought struck me: what, I said, if I set down at once, from their talk, such excerpts as may be set down, and convey them faithfully to the readers of "The Woman's Voice"??

★

"... What are my most beautiful memories??"

Mrs. Dimashqiyah's answer to Howayek's question was not long in coming, for she is, as her habit always is, quick of wit and clear of mind, with a felicity of speech and a beauty of expression rarely granted even to the sound of body. And how astonishing her mastery, in this "shadow of a body" reclining wearily among the cushions!! Our interlocutor said:

"My most beautiful memories go back to the day I began to grasp the meaning of beauty and to value it at its true worth... We were summering at Sofar, and I once met two Iraqi gentlemen of the Kilani family asking after Badr Dimashqiyah. I answered them, 'He is my husband'; but the bewilderment of their glances, wavering between my dress and my hat, told me how far gone they were in doubting what I claimed!! Badr's arrival, however, rescued my position, and it ended in our all becoming acquainted and, as courtesy required, in our moving over to their nearby house. In the house I was brought in to the harem, while, as usual, the men kept to themselves in the salon — and there I stood before two ladies in black veils and long, flowing gowns. At the first moment I felt a tightening of the chest and something like regret. What have I to do with these women, I said to myself; their eyes never leave my hat, and in their eyes a thousand questions?!

"At last God made it easy... and I found something to say, addressing my words to the comely lady:

— 'Do you read — I mean, do you peruse anything?' — and I feared I had offended her without meaning to. What if she were unlettered, and took my question as a taunt at her simplicity?

Her answer came deliberate and grave:

— Yes, I read. I am a subscriber to al-Mar'a al-Jadida, and I have a mind to get in touch with the management to have the summer numbers forwarded from Baghdad to Sofar.

— And what do you most love to read in al-Mar'a al-Jadida, I asked her?

— I love it all... I read it twice and three times over... and what pleases me most is, without question, the article 'To the Daughter of My Country' — and here, with the greatest enthusiasm, she began repeating by heart whole passages from my articles, while I strove hard to hold down my feeling and my joy at what I was hearing — until she asked me:

— Do you know the magazine, and do you know the lady who writes this section?

— I know her well!

— You know her well? And might it be granted me to make her acquaintance?

— Certainly!

— ... And is she a Muslim or a Christian?!

— ... Betwixt and between!

— What?! And is her house far from us?

— No — right here... she is in your very hands!

And how lightly that heavy-set woman sprang up, and how quickly she gathered me to her, and began showering me with kisses wherever they might fall.. She wept, and I wept with her, and her tears clasped hands with mine. In the flood of her overflowing feeling she rose above the secondary considerations that had been, until a moment before, her first measure; she forgot the hat which, for all its triviality, had been the greatest barrier between us... and I loved this lady who, in the language of her heart, gave the truest expression to something beautiful — I do not know what to call it, my friend!!

On that day I discovered that the artificial outward differences between one human being and another, however far apart and however many, must vanish and dissolve the moment people meet on the human plane — the plane that is above petty things and free of these worldly differences..."

★

Howayek's turn came, and all ears turned his way... He said:

My most beautiful memories go back to the dawn of my childhood, when my years could be counted on the fingers of one hand...

My grandfather, the priest, used to furnish the peasants of our village, shortly before they went down to Tripoli to buy their yearly provisions, with a little note of recommendation to a friend of his called Hajj Ahmad — a merchant in Bab al-Tabbaneh. And Hajj Ahmad, once he had made sure of the peasants' identity, spared no pains in extending every assistance; sometimes he would even make good a deficit, small or large, that their budget fell short of, and instead of having them sign a note for the amount, he had them carry back a simple declaration to be kept in trust in my grandfather the priest's cabinet until the silkworm season came round and Hajj Ahmad appeared at Helta on his mule.

I remember how I would let my legs fly like a colt, to meet Hajj Ahmad at the edge of the village — meet him with clapping and cheering, and with dancing eyes!... He would lift me up to him — "You've grown, Youssef," he would say to me — and seat me before him on the gaily decked mule, and off we would go jogging together to the ringing of its yellow bells!!

... God! How those far-off nights live in my memory — all the while Hajj Ahmad stayed as our guest, to carry out his chief errand of buying the silk cocoons and settling his accounts with the peasants!

I remember well how my grandmother, the priest's wife, at every sunset, would spread out for Hajj Ahmad, on a corner of the roof, a little mat that she kept clean in his name, year after year, for the performance of his prescribed prayers...

And my grandfather, he too, would withdraw with his stole and his rosary to another corner of the same roof to complete his prayers... And after prayers, the Hajj and the priest would move to a round low table set on the ground, laid with dishes of mujaddara and saliq and olives, and sometimes grilled chicken... and I would sit between them, happy and content, as we dipped the thin flat bread into the dishes and traded anecdotes and jokes.

In those serene, God-given moments Hajj Ahmad delighted in teasing me, and he would ask me, to my embarrassment: — Tell me, Youssef, whom do you love more, your grandfather the priest, or me? And I would answer him with a child's simplicity and with something of that virgin shyness that knows no dissembling: — I love my grandfather the priest dearly... but you I love more... because I am mad about the jazariyya sweets you bring me every year from Tripoli!!