At the Egyptian Embassy with... Mrs. Ibtihaj Ghalib

They ask about femininity... and go every possible way in defining it, while it is quicksilver in a woman's personality... and who has ever been able to grasp quicksilver?

Many say that woman's femininity today is in danger... because she has taken to storming the fields of life and settling herself in the seats of business... I almost believed them, and almost retreated to the howdah, content with whatever air and light seeped into it — until I learned that howdahs were the refuge of the helpless...

I almost believed everything that has been said and is being said about us, and about the future we are preparing for ourselves, which many have seen as dark and lowering — until I saw and heard, and love of life and longing for it came back to me. Can we be in danger, with our femininity, when we possess the elite we possess?

I met Mrs. Ibtihaj Ghalib one evening in a corner of the elegant salon of the Egyptian Embassy. And there was a long conversation...

Do not ask me about her dress and (her jewels — or her charms?), for I no longer remember them in detail; all that has settled in my memory is that I beheld a simplicity in which elegance held complete sway. And elegance, believe me, is the child of authentic simplicity.

She introduced me to her husband, the Major-General, and we sat talking, with all diplomacy, about the nature of that "diplomacy" whose definition has baffled people; and I was astonished when I heard the two of them clear it of every charge we have pinned to it. In the Ambassador's view it does not spurn frankness and uprightness. And my eager astonishment did not last long: His Excellency the Ambassador is a pillar of the army who in his political life has joined the diplomat's depth of thought and far-sightedness to the soldier's uprightness and force of personality. They spoke to me at length of Egypt, and of Egypt's new sky; a lively enthusiasm stirred in my soul, and a hope awoke in me that had almost sunk out of sight and become a dream among dreams. Is not Egypt a piece of our country? Is not her soil an extension of our Arab land? That, at least, is what His Excellency the Ambassador and his lady wished to tell me.

As for the women's renaissance in the sister country, it is growing promisingly, and many women — the likes of Doria Shafik and Ni'mat Rashid — are paving woman's road to the light. Here Mrs. Ghalib paused to remind me that motherhood is a profession like all the other professions, and that political work must therefore be confined to one class and no other — to the class that has enlisted itself for it with no impediment or responsibility of any kind to hold it back; which means that political work must never be an indulgence of a passing fancy or of a reckless, restless vanity.

As for Mrs. Ghalib, the profession of motherhood was generous enough to grant her a leave — and what a leave!... She accompanied her husband to the fighting zone in the days when Palestine was bidding farewell to its Arabhood, in a war whose horrors and whose fruits may God make us forget. Mrs. Ghalib volunteered to comfort the wounded and care for them, and her calling required her to put on the military uniform... and I hold it certain that the uniform never for a single day betrayed a woman's elegance and her radiant femininity. I glimpsed a photograph of Mrs. Ghalib in soldier's dress, tucked modestly into one corner of her office.

The hobby of the Embassy's mistress is sport in all its varieties. And at the opening of this season the "al-Mahaz Club" gained two active members!

In the atmosphere of the Egyptian Embassy there is an energetic optimism... optimism about the future of our country, and the culture of our country, and the women of our country...

And in the Embassy's atmosphere there is a clarity and openness that promises me the dawning of a new color in diplomacy. Is it not time for this new color to dawn — so that Machiavelli and Machiavelli's followers may be granted their final mercy?!...

I left the Embassy with a question on my lips that all but broke out... whence comes all this attractive, cheerful newness in the house of the Egyptian Embassy? Whence?...