I Was Alone... and I Was with Them... and I Was Not!

By Mrs. Nahida Fadli al-Dajani

We wanted it to be a "word" set down by the pen of Mrs. Nahida Fadli al-Dajani, recording her impressions of Damascus when she visited her friend Abla al-Houri during the Ramadan holiday — and behold, the "word" leaps and pulses with letters and meanings, bearing glad tidings of freshness and of invention in meaning and in presentation..
Is it not a shame that Mrs. Nahida should not have, in every issue of "The Woman's Voice," a word like this one??..

In every glance I was enraptured
Our sky — letters of longing
And our earth — hiding places and countryside
In every voice I lived
As though I were the letter.. alone, I am nothing
And with the sons of my country I am love and light and goodness
I wished I could work with the sons of my country...

The men of the frontier in their official uniforms see that we cross our own land in peace.. we pass from Lebanon into Syria to meet those we love..
And I was alone.. and I was with them.. and I was not! I overstepped time and frontiers.. and I was not!

And I spent in Damascus hours that were, by the reckoning of the calendar, two days. With poetry I lived, wrapped in its silken threads; and up to the Rabwa that overlooks the city I climbed with Adonis in a carriage drawn by horses, driven by an old man who has kept company with horses and roads all his life

And I wished I could drown in his eyes, to live the beauty stored up in them! With the story I lived — the life of a woman setting out from across the far-off years, laden with envy and with meaning, flinging herself upon scattered pages — I swear they are the dearest thing Abla owns today.. She read me chapters of it, and at every instant she would look up at me, into my eyes, probing the wakefulness of my mind and my senses and my heart; and she threw the pages down between herself and me..
— "Well?"
— You haven't wished me good morning.. and it is your habit to fill your listeners' mornings with good
— Good morning

— Abla, your story will make its mark..

And with society I lived.. Whenever Sami was free of his medicine and his philosophy he took me along to his ideal society, mustering all his logic to prove that the life of dignity lies before us.. calling to us — our weapons faith.. and unrest

"You have not grasped the creed, and so you have not yet awakened to the truth of your existence, Miss.. pardon — Madam!"

And with motherhood I lived.. In the glance of a few instants, Salma's two arms winding about her little girl, enfolding beauty.. And how often has a mother wished that her two arms could take in every atom of that beloved body all at once..

Her lips murmuring racing words.. I did not hear them, and I understood them.. I understood them — the language of motherhood: it is feeling slipping free of the fetters of the word and bursting into a sweet melody upon the lips!

And with idealism I lived.. What lies in the depths of Asma — were she to breathe it out, and were it to spread its shadows — the world would shake with mighty convulsions.. Her pen is her world, and refuge enough; whenever she clasps it, her existence is made new..

— I have no friends.. I am alone

— You are an idealist.. give me your hand.. pass it over my face, that I may see you a human being like the rest of us.. O white dove!

And with the radio I lived.. on a troubled night!

Yahya wanted it calm, rich with giving.. gathering four in a meeting whose term runs out though its desire does not.. so that we might hear one another from near, we who before had met from afar, each repeating the other's every word about Saigon and Hanoi and Pyongyang..

These waters, and this reality.. and poetry and the radio and Damascus and Cairo and America..

With the night..

And Beirut tomorrow, with the sun.