... If You Ask Me, I'll Answer You

My dear reader:

Here is a new corner at your service, which we resume publishing today in the pages of this magazine, in deference to the wish of a group of our readers, and in the hope that it will proceed on its steady, regular course, so that we are not obliged to withdraw it a second time.

The immediate reason for our return to conducting the corner "If You Ask Me, I'll Answer You" is that we have found the womanly element fit to conduct it, in the person of Mrs. Almas Salman al-Duwayk, whom we introduced to our readers in the last issue.

In this corner "The Woman's Voice" welcomes every question that reaches it — whether on health, on matters of the mind, on society, on politics, etc... — and it assures its readers that Mrs. Duwayk, to whom the supervision of this corner has been entrusted, is fully competent to bear the responsibility of the experienced mother, and that in whatever is closed to her, and whatever lies outside her field, she will turn to the people of specialty and learning.

So, my dear reader, disclose to us the thorny problems that sway in the folds of your soul and have worn you out for a solution — for burying them in the depths and bearing them in patience avail nothing... Does your head ring with matters of the mind or of society before which you have stood helpless and in the utmost perplexity?

Is there some counsel or wise guidance we can offer you with love and sincerity?

Write to us at once, at the magazine's address, and you shall see what care we will take!

— The Editors —

Q — Yesterday there was a violent quarrel between me and my wife, and it was not the first of its kind. She stands against me in every matter; she meets my every remark with a storm and no word of apology, and with generous scolding, until my anger boils; and I have come to hate entering the house where no request of mine is granted, until it has become a hell in my eyes.

After yesterday's incident I came home to learn that my daughter, who is seventeen years of age, had left the house after slipping a note into the drawer, saying:

Do not weary yourselves searching for me; I am in a safe place, working.

Tell me, for God's sake — is this not the result of her bad upbringing?! And is not the mother responsible for her daughter's conduct, which allows her to run away from home? My mind is lost among my domestic troubles — come to my rescue.

(Perplexed)

A — I read your letter several times, and it has become a certainty with me that your daughter's departure from the house that has become, as you say, a hell in your eyes, is the result of the quarreling whose painful scenes she witnessed more than once. She has thereby taught you and your wife a profound lesson. If you both looked closely into it, each of you would accept the other's point of view with an open heart, without quarrels and without commanding or forbidding.

As for your daughter — since she included words of reassurance in her note, this is a good sign that should set your minds at rest rather than distress them; in it there is a lesson for you both, and no reflection at all on her upbringing.

So return to yourselves in sincerity, and feel your way through this situation with a living conscience: you will have performed a sacred duty, and you and your daughter will enjoy a life of ease.

Q — The beauty of a piece of cloth caught my eye and I bought it, and the seller told me it was Western goods.

After I returned home, my neighbor assured me that she had bought its exact like, and that it is of home manufacture. So I marveled at this seller; had he told me it was national goods, I would have taken pride in it and held it in the very highest esteem.

What is your opinion of this?

S. D.

A — This seller of yours is not the only one who professes this principle, and the fault for it comes back to us ourselves. For among the great mass of the people there has spread the silly notion that "everything Frankish is fine" — and even that would not matter greatly, did they not stoop to belittling our own goods.

This feeling of inferiority, and this scoffing at the citizen's capability, are a humiliation the soul refuses. Our competence has become plain, and the days have proved it. Be assured that national goods occupy a large part of our market today — and yet they keep passing them off upon us. In the face of this, it has become incumbent upon us to lift our morale, to strengthen our confidence in our own powers, and to take pride in what we have, as an encouragement to it and a spur to progress in the field of industry and production.

Q — I grew up in a house of standing and wealth, and was my family's only child. I drank from life all that pleased and delighted me, heeding no advice. After my father's death I carried what remained of the money off to the lands of the West and lost it here and there in pleasure and extravagance. Between one night and the next morning I had to live somehow; life showed me its true face, and I entered it humbled. I worked as a porter, then as a servant in a kitchen, then as a newspaper seller. And so on, until circumstances led me to Africa, where my luck shone and I gathered a considerable fortune. I returned to my people vastly rich and full of dignity, and they never cease pulling at me with their embarrassing questions about all my past.

Do my confessions lower my standing, or demean me among them?!

A. H.

A — Do not wrong yourself with these illusions. And know that the money you have gathered is no more precious than the harsh experiences that accompanied you and curbed the impetuosity of your recklessness.

Had you not suffered in winning your daily bread, and come to understand life's harshness, your hands would not have kept the money you gathered; and by this story of yours you stand as a living example to our reckless youth.

Q — I am a man's wife, and the mother of three children. Today's teeming life demands, if one is to keep pace with one's surroundings and the age, expenses that take a large part of the income. I have met with no approval for an idea that occurred to me — namely, to share with my husband in productive work — although this would not keep me from performing my household duty, especially as my children are of school age. Is there any blame, or any touch upon dignity, if I carry out this wish?

R. A.

A — I salute in you this noble feeling, provided your household duties allow it. Productive work is better than squandering time without profit. There is no criticism whatever to be laid against you — we are in the age of light. You would work to support your husband, and that is the pillar of the marriage bond; and you would produce in your hours of leisure, and in that lies all dignity.

Q — My neighbor and her husband go out every evening to the gaming circle, according to her arrangement, without fail, and leave their sick child in the charge of the servant. The first watch of the night passes... and the child's screaming stretches in my ears with a sound that cuts the heart. Zeal and pity came over me; I went in to him and did not find the maid — there she was in the street, meeting a friend of hers. I gathered the child in my arms and patted his shoulder, and he laid his fevered head upon my breast, comforted. What a painful state of affairs!! And who is responsible for it?!

L.

A — God bless you, virtuous lady... You performed a woman's duty, you answered the call of humanity, and you kept the sanctity of neighborliness: you were the highest example.

The responsibility falls, without question, upon the woman. It was she who consented to found the home, and it is her duty to care for it. What ails her, that in this civilized age of ours she has taken to loitering away from her duty, permitting herself what is not permitted, and turning away from guarding her kingdom — the ailing one and the suckling within it — toward a den in which degradation flounders, killing her feeling as a woman, scattering her duties, and holding the sanctity of motherhood in distaste? It is a calamity!!... Woman must turn back from this, that her affairs may be set straight, and return from her straying to her fold and to the discharge of her first duty.