O educators, be gentle with these souls, opened wide to receive goodness, and love, and beauty; for a word from you,
or a gesture, or a wink, may spread lasting joy in the depths of these souls, and open the doors of hope, and so of rising, for tomorrow.
And likewise a word, or a gesture, or a wink may cast doubt into them — and woe to the soul that doubt invades — and then do not ask how talents turned to stagnation, nor how those lofty resolves were crippled. If you do such a thing, then you are ignorant indeed:
She had reached ten, or nearly: a girl whose whole will was merriment, her spirit all but leaping out of her movements; playful whenever she could find a way to it; tireless, never wearying of contriving pranks at every opportunity, until we came to believe nothing from her without weighing, reckoning, coaxing, and scheming — and with all this caution of ours we could not help falling for it and surrendering at times, whereupon she would peal out for us her silvery, rippling laugh, while her two green eyes filled with tears of I know not exactly what.
She is, with all this, delicate of feeling; she avenges her dignity as the Japanese soldier avenges his homeland: either he fights with a valor without equal to recover his plundered right, or to ward off from himself the humiliation of enslavement — or else he kills himself without any hesitation or fear!
She had begun to appear among people with a serious mien, in the manner of young girls. But she is still somewhat shy; she respects her elders with a marked respect, and humors the little ones and pets them, with the gentleness owed to those younger than herself; toward her comrades and her teachers she bears the devotion of one who finds in devotion
a duty whose sanctity may not be touched.
When she speaks with strangers, or with those older than herself, it is in a soft voice and a sober tone that breathe esteem and confidence.
Such, in part, was her way before we moved her from her first school to a new school she was obliged to enter, while she still kept of the old one memories, and friends, and teachers who remain in the inmost core of her young, faithful heart.
But she had spent hardly a few days in this school of hers when she came to me one evening asking, with reproach and challenge in her tone: Mother... don't you know Miss Hayfa?
I said: Indeed I do; long ago we were schoolmates in the same school.
She said: Then why have you never once spoken to me of her?
I said: No occasion arose for me to mention her. Her look
hardened, she knit her brows, and mockery showed in her tone as she answered — But Miss Hayfa, Mother, needs no occasions to be mentioned, because, as it seems to me, she is not one of those personalities that are forgotten quickly and easily...
I said, trying to suppress a broad smile — And in what does she excel all others?
She answered with a rushing, frantic enthusiasm:
— She excels in everything, Mama... in her soft way of speaking, in her manner of pronouncing, in that flush that covers her face if anything displeases her, in her small, exquisite figure, in that smile that never leaves her lips however hard she may try, in her spectacles, in her dress, in every single thing about her.
She is sweet, sweet, and I love her.
I said, my patience run out with her endearing chatter: The important thing in all this is that you study the lessons she asks of you; after that, love her however and as much as you please...
A few days later she came to tell me, her face lit with an overwhelming radiance of happiness — Mother, do you know that Miss Hayfa wears nothing but black?
I said: Yes; she is in mourning for her parents.
But why did her parents die? she said.
I said: As the parents of all people have died, and do die.
She said, pressing on: But she is still young.
I said: And there are those younger than she who lose not their parents only but all their
The sweet little girl Hanan, daughter of Dr. Constantine Zurayk, Vice-President of the American University of Beirut.