My Mother-in-Law... the Greatest Woman in My Life!

Mrs. Margaret Nadim Dimashqiyah, wife of Lebanon's Minister Plenipotentiary in Egypt, is an English lady of distinguished stock who has made her forays in the world of writing and letters... She wrote this article for the magazine al-Musawwar a short time before the death of her mother-in-law, Mrs. Julia Dimashqiyah.

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Many women will not believe me, and I myself would not have believed such a story had it not happened to me, for nothing is harder on a lady than to love her mother-in-law.. and trust her.. and write about her.. We in Britain have a saying: "The best way to tame your mother-in-law.. is to have no mother-in-law at all" — for the mother-in-law problem is international, and there is nowhere in the world, in Britain or in Beirut, a mother-in-law who does not believe her dear son too dear and too precious for any girl to deserve him!

And my problem was more than any ordinary problem, for my mother-in-law was no ordinary mother-in-law, and my marriage was no ordinary marriage, because I am a stranger girl from the farthest West.. who snatched from an Eastern mother, from the heart of the East, her only, beloved son.. and so my heart would melt within my ribs whenever I thought of my mother-in-law!

A Love That Overcomes Obstacles

The story was strange and wondrous from its very beginning. My husband came to London with the first Lebanese diplomatic mission to Britain after Lebanon's independence, carrying a letter of introduction from a British diplomat in Beirut to his fiancée at Oxford. The fiancée was my intimate friend, and so it was not long before the fiancé's friend became the friend's fiancé..

Ever since my childhood I had felt that something in my soul drew me toward the East and away from the West; I felt that the warmth of the East, its humanity, its ardor, stirred something deep within me. So at Oxford and in London I mixed more with the foreign Eastern students.. My schoolfellows wondered how I came so quickly to an understanding with these "strangers," but I found in their Eastern nature — frank, merry, deep — something more beautiful than the coldness of the West, its rigidity, and its utilitarianism..

And when I met "Nadim," he embodied all these virtues for me, for he overflowed with frankness, vitality, and tenderness.. And he was not — and I do not think he will ever be — the diplomat who means "no" when he says "yes."

A Lady of Personality

But one thing there was that troubled me, and that was his talk of his mother. His mother was everything in his life, and he spoke of her with enthusiasm, love, and admiration on every occasion.. From him I learned that his mother had been the first Christian woman to marry a Muslim in Lebanon, and that her marriage stirred an uproar at first, but before long became one of the most successful of marriages, and became a symbol of the unity of the races in Lebanon.. From him too I learned that she had been the head of an institute for the education of Muslim girls, from which graduated young women in whom Lebanese society takes pride.. And from him too I learned how his parents' love story began..

His mother was speaking one day at a meeting, calling for subscriptions to build the first tuberculosis hospital in Lebanon, and he was director of the Makassed charitable society; and no sooner had he seen her and heard her speak than he loved her at first sight, and he spent every effort until the hospital project succeeded. Then he proposed marriage to her, but she excused herself.. She came to Cairo; he followed her, and in the immortal city he was able to turn her from her opinion and to persuade her..
And the romance came to its happy ending.

Nadim also told me.. that his mother was in the vanguard of the Lebanese women who fought for the emancipation of the Arab woman, and that before her marriage and after it she never for a day ceased the struggle, and issued three magazines to spread her call, among them the magazine "al-Nadim," from which she derived the name of her only son.
He also recounted to me something of her ardor for patriotism and Arabism, and her share in the stages of the Arabs' national struggle — with her pen, her effort, and all she possessed.

A Piece of Literature..

I admit frankly that all this stirred admiration in me, but it frightened me at the same time, for I had drawn in my mind the picture of a lady militant in the cause of woman's rights, of Arabism, and of patriotism, facing a Western girl who was to share her only son with her. And my experience of most of the women who fight for woman's rights among us in Britain, and perhaps in the whole world, is that they are cold and rough, until they forget even their womanliness.. and see life from a stern, rigid angle.. and these traits could only be more intense in the East..

I spoke to Nadim of my fears in this matter, and what he sometimes repeated made me feel that I was right.. But one day he came in to me beaming, with a long letter which he said he had received from his mother; he had summoned his courage and written to her telling our story and our resolve to marry. We sat down to read the letter together.. I had learned enough Arabic at the Egyptian Institute in London to help me read, with my husband's assistance.. and the letter took hold of me. It was a piece of lofty humane literature.. And among its most delicate touches was her advice to me to study Arabic, because my father-in-law speaks nothing but Arabic, and she wants understanding to be complete among all the members of the family. I translated the letter into English and published it in one of the literary magazines.. It was destined afterward to be published also in the newspapers of Lebanon, and broadcast from its radio.. It contains ideal counsel for any young man about to marry. And this was the first flash of my mother-in-law's spirit that revealed itself to me!

We were married in London.. and everyone spoke to me of my mother-in-law.. Camille Chamoun, Hamid Frangieh, Abdul Hamid Karami, Riad al-Solh.. and every Lebanese I met.. and the more they told me of her, the more my awe grew.. until the appointed day came, and the airplane began its descent with us toward Beirut airport, and I began to feel a real terror, and to wish the impossible would happen and the plane would take off with us again for some place other than Lebanon.. And while my husband, full of joy, was explaining to me the beauty of Beirut from the sky, I was in another world, thinking of my mother-in-law.. Will she hate me? Will she turn her face away from me?.. Can she possibly love me?..

We stepped down from the plane, and everyone met us with welcome, and the most welcoming of them all was my father-in-law; and I felt, from his tenderness and gentleness toward me, that I had won half the battle..

A Strong Spirit.. in a Crippled Body!

My mother-in-law is a crippled lady, who has lived in her bed for twenty years, since a painful accident.. But from her bed — and I prefer to call it her chariot — she is in touch with everything in life.. I entered trembling, and found myself surprised by a magnificent sight! She was a stately lady, majestic, radiant.. She gave me a look that did not last a minute, but I realized that it had pierced my soul, that with it she had weighed me and learned everything about me.. Then she smiled a smile of light, and opened her arms, saying: "Come forward, my dear," and kissed me a sweet kiss, and said: "We shall be intimate friends." And so it was!

I cannot describe, or forget, the happiness I felt that day.. It was an extraordinary happiness, of a strange kind.. And I felt that in this woman there was another secret! Our meeting had kindled a spark in my soul that will remain alight forever!

A Wife.. Her Mother-in-Law's Pupil!

From that moment our relationship and our friendship began, and I learned from her the most precious lessons of my life.. I came to believe in humanity, and in woman, and in the East — not as a legend, but as a supreme truth.

I lived two long years with her in one house, and my greatest pleasure was to sit with her in her room, as she lay on her bed, and listen to her speaking to me or to others, in English, or in French, or in Arabic, which I do not understand in its various dialects.. But even when she spoke a language I did not understand, with people I did not know, I found a great delight and pleasure.. Indeed, sitting with her became for me my greatest solace, which I preferred to seeing the ancient monuments or the modern sights, for this lady reflected to me, with simplicity and ease, the genius of the East, and the genius of woman, and the genius of humanity in its ordinary individuals.

She received people every morning, and I felt that meeting people was, with her, a hobby, and a beautiful art. I would see her receive a minister, or a leader, or a man of letters, with the same enthusiasm and eagerness with which she received a bedouin come in from the desert.. And I would see the most tedious and shallow of men, his face lighting up and brimming over with vitality in her presence; and I felt that she bestowed confidence, and love, and knowledge on everyone who sat with her, so that his spirit was not long in reviving, and what was within it overflowed.. And she would always say to me: "We must go to people, because they love the truth, and we must try to uncover the treasure hidden in each one of them.."

She held in her hand a magic bow, and humanity, for her, passed under her bow, and the sweetest melodies came forth.. Another might take up the same bow, and play upon the same lyre, and never produce anything but discord!

At my mother-in-law's hands I was rid of the great Western failing, and I crossed the thick barrier that separates you even from your neighbor before you have been formally introduced to him.. And I learned that the most precious, most beautiful, and most important thing on earth is man's love for man, and man's striving toward man.

The Power of Faith

And my mother-in-law taught me the East's greatest secret, which is "faith" — a mustard seed of which moves mountains. For my mother-in-law, in her seventies, and crippled in her bed, is still a flame of vitality and activity: she reads and writes, and dictates her letters, and follows the latest events, and sends for the newest books and works.. And when illness overtook her, she kept her strength of soul — she who had never ceased moving and traveling, to attend congresses, and to speak, and to lecture.

And it is faith that granted her that extraordinary strength, and this wondrous power of resistance.. Faith in this world, and in the next.. Faith in herself, as part of her faith in humanity at large.. And faith, with my mother-in-law, is also tolerance.. My mother-in-law kept her own religion, and lived her whole life a devout Christian, with her devout Muslim husband, and raised all his children in Islam, and taught them pride in their religion and their heritage; but she taught them also that religion is faith, and that faith is tolerance, and that this is the message of the great, abiding creed.

The Eastern Woman's Struggle

And my mother-in-law taught me also that woman was not created for pleasure but to bear responsibilities; that the female is the one first responsible for the whole race, and that she is the cradle of the nation, and the trustee of its character and its heritage.. In her magazine "The New Woman," and in all her writings, she called on woman to know her responsibilities and perform her duties — and then all her rights would be laid for her at the door of her house.. And I learned from my mother-in-law what has never been told of the story of the Eastern woman's struggle and her sacrifices, and what she did, and still does, in stillness and silence, from Khadija the wife of the Prophet until now, under the veil and unveiled alike. And thus I learned that not all the women of the East are like Scheherazade, and that not all the men of the East, either, are like Shahriyar!

And from my sitting with my mother-in-law I came to feel that I love life, and love people; my rigid, skeptical Western outlook was transformed, and I became able to love, and to trust, and to divine the genius of humanity that lies latent in the simplest of God's creatures. And this is life's greatest meaning.

If Only Wives Would Listen!

"I do not know whether many women can, like me, learn from their mothers-in-law what I have learned! But every wife can reverse the role, and take up the bow of the lyre, and pass it over the wooden box that is her mother-in-law, and bring forth the sweetest melodies — if she reads this article once more!"