The Pioneers — In Memory of Julia Dimashqiyah

These pioneers!

It is as if society were dense jungles, blind unexplored wastes, deposits piling up upon time;

as if its darkness wrapped a world that surges as the worlds of darkness surge. And so thickly is it veiled that it becomes a wellspring of legend, superstition, fancy, and conjecture — woven endlessly, its material never running dry.

As if there were terrors there beyond the terrors of the deep sea, the ancient forest, the plunging gorge; none draws near them but that rare heroism which plays with death.

As if the human light had gone out, or nearly so, and humanity had turned to stone and ceased to grow, and talents lagged behind, ignorant of themselves — how much more, then, were they unknown to men.

And time seems dead — until there comes one of the outpourings of human heroism, in a human being ordinary like all others, at the edge of the unknown wastes; differing, however, in this: that people see the social forest as a fixed thing that does not change, a holy of holies whose sanctity may not be touched, while heroism faces it with a question on its lips: "These jungles — what are they? These unknown wastes — what is their nature? These worlds surging in the darkness — with what do they surge? These terrors — whence comes it that they are terrors?"

Then it differs from all other people in that the question is not content with itself. It wants the answer. And the will to the answer takes body in daring. Without waiting, daring advances to strike the first blow at the dense jungles, at the blind wastes, at the deposits heaped and layered upon time — and opens a chink for the ray of light.

And no sooner is a chink opened for the ray than the ray itself takes over the widening of its own passages; for it is of the nature of dawn that its light grows the moment it breaks — it does not tarry.

And the dead thing comes back alive and beating.

Blessed, then, be the pioneers! Long indeed does humanity linger, perplexed, its generations passing one after another in the wariness of dread before the closed worlds and the solid stagnation. Then, in a moment of fullness, deaf rock splits open upon a bursting surge of heroism; and there is a spring that flows and does not run dry.

And people see the spring flowing — flowing without running dry — and it never crosses their minds that here there was once closed, deaf rock. How, then, did the spring flow? But those who witnessed the pioneer knew the secret of the deaf rock's splitting open upon the spring.

They witnessed people's panic lest the spring turn into a flood that would drown them, so that they refused to drink of it and pelted it with stones.

They witnessed people's terror of the light, because they had grown used to darkness.

They witnessed the reviling of this infidel who had violated the sanctity of the closed forest.

And they witnessed, likewise, the pioneer's steadfastness, and the going on to finish the task.

★

I was not — personally — among the witnesses of this pioneer's — Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah's — storming of the jungles of our society, and her opening of a chink for the light. But I was there when the light had already flooded in, and the spring flowed — never to run dry. I was there while remnants of the thick jungles still stood, and the task of the heroic struggle was not yet done.

I entered this arena when society had agreed to apportion the women's awakening among three of our pioneers: Salwa Salama for delicacy of poetry, Labiba Hashim for beauty of the pen, and Julia Tu'mah for excellence of delivery. For Julia — as I know — made her first leap by way of the platform, and people heard, for the first time, a woman speaker calling from a platform for social reform, and first of all for the reform of woman's condition by way of her education.

We may not be able today — when the universities pour out over the Arab world wave upon wave of women of high culture — to appreciate that call. To appreciate it and weigh it justly we must go back fifty years, and picture the women's quarters with their heavy curtains, the windows with their thick lattices, and the "possession of the right hand" which then determined man's relation to woman. We must picture all this to grasp what heroism of heart a young girl in the first bloom of youth had to possess in order to mount a platform, issue a call, and argue a case on the subject of woman, in a city like Sidon, without trembling, without her voice shaking or straying. And this was but the first summons announcing a long mission which Julia carried; nor did she rest until the torch had been taken from her hands by one generation after another of the bearers of the women's renaissance, pressing on toward its goals, and until her striving was blessed in her seeing, from the harvest of her planting, more than she had ever hoped.

Julia went on widening her mission, the spirit of the platform always within it,

pressing her call for woman to be given a share in the means of the renaissance, so that the renaissance might stand whole and true. Her platform developed and expanded until later it became a pen ranging over the spaces of the newspapers. And when the time was ripe, it became a magazine with a program — the magazine al-Mar'a al-Jadida, The New Woman. The New Woman was the seventh women's magazine to appear in the Arab world edited by ladies: al-Karma of Salwa Salama, al-'Arus of Mary Ajami, Fatat al-Sharq of Labiba Hashim, Majallat al-Sayyidat of Rose Antoun, al-Fajr of Najla Abi al-Lam', al-Khidr of Afifa Saab, and The New Woman of Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah.

And The New Woman accomplished three purposes:

First — it gave women's subjects a regular periodical platform of wide scope.

Second — it spread the desire for writing, and practice in it, among those women's circles which had already taken some share of learning.

Third — it introduced the journalistic art into women's journalism. For The New Woman came out illustrated, took care over fine arrangement and elegant dress, and made the work of journalism, in management and editing alike, the work of a group and not of a single person.

From that broad periodical platform Julia addressed the Arab woman in a monthly address under the heading "To the Daughter of My Country," in which she took up every subject and every demand that could fall under that heading — reflections, counsels, and information on home, family, society, and morals — always reformist in method and in mold.

Nationalism — at that time — had not yet crystallized. Nor am I certain that it has crystallized today. And so her words on patriotism kept to generalities, calling to mutual love, brotherhood, and public service.

After 1918 there followed, one upon another, the founding of women's associations with charitable and social aims; the associations merged in general congresses, and then in unions. And the bearer of the reformist mission divided her effort, as far as she could divide it, among the institutions. I saw her and heard her in discussions and proposals, and she was always the orator who, in the service of her great influence, armed herself with the tactful style of persuasion — so that at times entreaty almost softened it, and it was upheld by a light overflowing in her face and a smile that never left her lips. I used to wonder at that marvelous blending of resolve and gentleness, working together in her voice and her face until most of the assembly was drawn to her side.

Among those memories: the guns of the French were raining fire on Jabal al-Druze in 1925, and the victims on both sides were multiplying. Julia was seized by a tremor of her humane instinct, and at one of the sessions of the "Women's League" she put forward a proposal that a women's delegation be formed to carry the task of reconciliation between the Mountain and the French. The assembly listened as she overflowed with pity for the victims who were falling. And the assembly was on the point of approving her proposal. Then I rose and asked for the floor. I took the matter from the other side, and reminded the company of ladies that this was not the case of two parties quarreling, but of a tyrannous occupation trying to complete its subjugation of the country. Reconciliation, therefore, was beside the point. The struggle, despite the victims, was a duty laid upon us until we should send the occupation back where it came from.

Julia's eyes are still before mine, the tears leaping into them. She said to me in a tone of sharp reproach: "And this blood? Woman is for peace, not for war, Afifa. I would throw myself before the tanks if by that I could spare blood and turn back woe."

I resisted, moved by liberty; she resisted, moved by humanity. The assembly split in two, and the subject was shelved. Yet I know no joy deeper than hers the day the country won its independence and set out upon its development in the shade of freedom.

Julia believed that the people is one, and that sectarianism is a wall standing between that oneness and its release into the field of constructive, fruitful cooperation, in an air of genuine brotherhood among the sons of one homeland. Upon that faith she devoted a portion of her powers — the powers of pen, tongue, and heart — to the call for unity and brotherhood. Yet brotherhood is little served by the mere settling of preaching. What serves it is the fusing in the crucible, the passing through the fire. And she went first, herself, into the crucible. Whatever society's attitude toward her may have been the day she married a Muslim, from that day it was given to her to live national brotherhood in its loftiest meaning. And it was given to her salon to gather hearts upon the noblest of sentiments and the most fruitful grounds of brotherhood.

★

And today, when Julia has become an abstract meaning — one of those noble meanings from whose sum the meaning of a nation is fashioned — that meaning courses through our ascending march. The light that has come to well up within us will remain joined to the kindled mind that put the first question before the blind forest, and to the generous, daring heart that struck the first blow and opened a chink for the ray. And the spring, to which tributaries now come from every side, making of it a roaring river, abundant in bounty and mighty in power, will keep forever its kinship with the first outpouring that burst, in a moment of fullness, from the deaf, solid rock.

Such are the pioneers in every nation!