Her Life Was a Wonder

The story of the pioneer, in every age and every land, is this: the story of resolve, challenged by hardships, which surmounts them to the summits.

The story of insight, overspread by darkness, which cleaves through it, by faith, to the places of light.

The story of love, torn at by hatred, which conquers it with an outpouring of love, forbearance, and tenderness.

It is enough for the pioneer that one of these virtues shine forth in his life, for him to breathe into his generation, and the generations that follow it, what benefits mankind and abides in the earth, and to cut for them through the rough country a road to plenty, or goodness, or strength, or truth.

And our precious departed showed them forth all together; and so her life was a wonder.

From Mukhtara, to Sidon, to Choueifat, to Shefa-Amr in Palestine, to Broummana, to Beirut — in all these towns, whose names have their ring and their echo in our souls, our precious departed set up conclusive proof after conclusive proof: of a resolve that neither softens nor bends, in the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and in placing them within reach of the boys and girls who sought them; in wrestling with the disease in her body by the stored-up powers of the soul, and in helping the sick to wrestle with it, joining hands with people of good will; in breaking the fetters that shackle woman and man alike from becoming what their Lord intended them to be — a unity of two equal halves, fit to be the foundation and the emblem of a sound society.

She set up conclusive proof that her luminous insight pierced through the thick deposits of the past to what lay beyond half a century of the unknown future, and saw the vision of the Lebanese home, and the Arab home — "her first heaven," as she described it in her great first lecture, delivered forty-five years ago. Upon the throne of this home she seated the wife and mother, endowed with such means of education as made her fit to share in the building of the nation in the fullest and most honorable way. So when she brought out her magazine "The New Woman" in 1921, she made its motto: "The nation is the weaving of mothers." And no sooner had her insight seen this radiant vision than she set out toward the goal, calling others to her and working together in the "Women's League," or alone, if there was no help for it and no escape.

And for all that surged in her soul of longing for the future of the Eastern woman as her insight saw it, splendid as the sun, and of resolve to smooth away every difficulty, her endeavor never sank to the sweeping revolution that uproots and smashes by violence; rather she passed beyond it, by the nature of goodness compounded in her, to what is higher and more availing — to the love that builds, slowly, but builds an edifice anchored against all time.

And it was of God's grace upon her that she lived until she saw with her own eyes, from her bed of sickness, the lines of that picture completing themselves little by little; and her rejoicing in it was the best theriac and balm for the pains that gnawed her.

(*) The eloquent address with which he eulogized her in the Evangelical Church.

And despite those pains she remained, a full decade of years or more, down to her last hours on this earth, sending forth from her thin, luminous face, her tranquil soul, and her intelligent eyes, the signs of her love, her encouragement and her urging, and the distillation of her experience, to all who came and all who were far away of the strivers, men and women, for a better life, and for a homeland stronger and sounder for woman and man alike.

It is easy for whoever wishes to cast his gaze back to the beginning of this century and to see — knowing what he knows today — that this development in the life of the Lebanese woman, and the Arab woman generally, was a thing fore-ordained, dictated by the logic of society.

But if he withdraws into himself, purifies his soul of the taints of passion, and reconsiders that judgment, he will realize that the small band of pioneers of this social development, at the opening of the century, had nothing assured to them, the day they set their feet on the beginning of the rough road, but the rigors and pains of struggle; and no assured reward but the feeling of peace of soul — that in what they were doing they were sharing in a war whose object was the freeing of half the nation, and the release of the good power stored within it for creative work; and that this was enough for them. In this their case is the case of all pioneers in every age and land. Their glory is the glory of fathers in their sons; their gladness is the gladness of the giver, for giving is the secret of his being; and their reward is the reward of the laborer on the face of the hard rock through the black night, cutting footholds in it so that those who come after him may climb by them to the heights — to the places of light. In this chosen few, who prepared the way for the emancipation of the Arab woman in a time when "the road was obscure to the pioneers," our precious departed was in the vanguard.

Hardly had the news of her death reached me when I choked with tears; but before long I saw her living and pulsing, in successive stages of her useful life, through the six-and-thirty years in which I had known her; and I found myself reciting to myself, with Khalil Mutran — God's mercy upon him:

How helpless is the eloquent tongue
before the dumbness of the dead one's tongue;
how foolish are the tears, pouring down,
while the bier veils a smiling face.

After that I grieved no more for her, for she had been set free from the bonds of life after a struggle waged with girded loins; but I grieved for myself, because I shall not find her in her place after today — to renew in me a resolve that had grown blunt, or to give me back cheerfulness after a frown, or to make me, with a look or a word, grow greater in my own eyes because I had sat with her. And it is enough for the virtuous woman — her price is far above pearls. God's mercy be upon her.

Nadim, my brother: you have carried in your public life, in East and West, the message of Lebanon, perfumed with the fragrance of love, forbearance, and brotherhood — you took it from the bosom of your mother and your father, after they had taken it from the secret of Lebanon; and blessed is Lebanon in those of its sons who make it their compass and their constant way. And in your private life also you have been — and remain — an emblem of these virtues. This is the glory of fathers in their sons. I pray God to bestow upon you and your sister and all your kin the grace of patience, and to inspire us all to find consolation for her loss in profiting by the memories of her excellence — for God is the most generous of all who are asked.