Flights of Fancy

A sight that wounds my humanity at certain funerals...

The sight of long rows of orphanage schoolgirls walking with bowed heads and crushed spirits at the head of every dead man taking leave of the world of the living.

More dreadful still, custom has it that the girls go in before the procession sets out, gather around the bier, recite a prayer over the dead man, and then come out — some of them nearly choking with weeping — to walk before the funeral in the blaze of noon or in the sting of winter's cold.

I see no one responsible here but the administrations of the orphanages, which allow their girls to march in hope of a monetary grant or some trifling charity.

And I do not know whether the orphanages think it good to remind those girls of their orphanhood, and to keep their bond with death forever unbroken, every time God gathers one of His servants to Himself.

Do those responsible not appreciate that in the spirits of these girls there is brokenness enough — so that surrounding them with this dreadful atmosphere breeds in their souls a thousand and one complexes?..

The orphanage's mission is not food provided to the orphan girl, nor clothing to cover her; its task, first and last, is to prepare for its wards a natural, radiant atmosphere in which the girl's personality may grow — without reminding her at every hour that a father of hers has died, that her mother has departed, or that she is orphaned of them both...

As for the people of this living world, let it suffice their piety toward their dead to draw a prayer from the mouths of the orphan girls in return for a fixed sum donated to the orphanage for the soul of the departed... without demanding that the girls march in procession...

But that they should stipulate the girls' marching at funerals, and then never once think of them at a wedding — that is a sin of which the conscience of our society ought to be ashamed.

A Prayer

The mother — a doctor's wife — set about teaching her small child a prayer. She said: Kneel, my little one, and say after me:

O Lord, spread Your wings over this world and fill it with safety and peace; watch over its little ones, feed its hungry, clothe its naked, and heal its sick.

Here the little one started up, unclasped his hands, and said...

No, Mama... I won't say "and heal its sick" — He might take me at my word... and then Papa would have no work...

The Worst of It

A gracious Syrian friend was talking with me — we were on the subject of the elections, and of how remarkable the turnout of Syrian women to use their right had been.

She said: Even so... I want no part of a mutilated right.

Imagine the narrowness of horizon in a legislative article that restricts the right to holders of the Certificat, and of that alone, and does not stretch to cover equivalents of that certificate or broader educations. If there were a woman holding a licence in law, or a doctorate in philosophy or medicine or sociology or political science — yes, political science... — among those whom circumstances did not favor with obtaining the Syrian Certificat, her name would not be entered on the voters' rolls; by the logic of the legislated article she is barred from exercising her right, having committed the error of extending her culture by some road other than the Certificat. This is what I heard from my friend, and I offered no comment beyond a sour laugh whose taste is still in my mouth!!

Judgment

And another... strange... sight I happened upon...

A child in the road, gathering up some salt spilled from a paper bag he was carrying — his mother had sent him to buy it from the neighborhood shop.

He was trying hard to collect the tiny quantity that had fallen, grain... by grain... with tears in his eyes.

Someone said to him: Let it be, my boy; nothing is cheaper than salt in this country.

He said: I know — but my mother says that whoever wastes a grain of salt and throws it on the ground will gather it up on Judgment Day with his eyelashes...

Poor little friend of ours — he fears a Judgment; and I cannot see that his world, with a mother of such ignorance, is any better than it...