His Excellency President Camille Chamoun hands his catch to his lady wife. Perhaps the third of the party is President Perón!
of My Life," which Malatios Khoury translated into Arabic. In it Madame Perón expresses her love for her people and her stubborn drive to serve them, to bring ease to the working class, and to lift its morale...
Perón, too, wanted to rise above the ranks of ordinary human beings — and what she wanted, she had.
Mrs. Chamoun also expressed her deep admiration for the project of Madame Vargas, wife of the President of the Republic of Brazil, which resembles the Red Cross institution in Lebanon. Then she spoke of the person of Brazil's First Lady and of her unceasing sacrifices in the cause of public service — she is a bereaved woman who shares the pain of the suffering and takes them as her kin...
Nor did Mrs. Chamoun forget the emigrants — and they are our children, our brothers, and our kinsfolk. She mentioned that she had come to know most of them and had visited the mansions of some, and she expressed her admiration for the distinguished positions many individuals among them have attained: this one the governor of a state, that one a deputy in the assembly, and these the owners of a fortune nearly equal to a quarter of the country's budget... All of which calls for gladness, contentment, and admiration.
These emigrants gave their President a magnificent welcome, and together with the government of their second country they decked the streets with his pictures and received him with cheers and with tears of joy... for he reminded them of the playground of their childhood and their youth, and told them that the clouds of servitude, with the sickness and want that follow from it, had lifted from Lebanon... It has become independent, standing on its own... and the marks of the distant, bygone past have vanished from it and within it. The village is no longer what it was, and the city has become a city — not a modest town whose streets could hardly be told from its alleys, its dregs from its cream. — And everything the poets say of it is true and truthful!
Mrs. Chamoun matched words with tangible proofs, for she stirred the admiration of the Brazilian ladies for the works and skill of the Lebanese, and presented to Madame Vargas a splendid table cover of the workmanship of Lebanon's women. She described it as a magnificent artistic piece, worked in interlacing silver threads.
Is it not enough that Lebanon's gift should be art, taste, and beauty?!...
From talk of Lebanon in the Mahjar we returned