Ten Years...

... Like one who strolls through a garden of far-stretching reaches, Nahida Fadli al-Dajani strolls through the issues of "ten years" of The Woman's Voice. With a knowing hand she points to the rose, breathes in the fragrance, and steps past the thorns — and is there a garden without thorns? Let us go with her, then, on this delightful tour...

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My age — its meaning is what is hoped for... I measure it by what I love to do, not by what I have done...

My life is an escape from time: there is no far-off yesterday and no tomorrow. It is a continuing that halts at no number...

And "ten years" is a work completed, a past traversed... a mission fulfilled...

What have I to do with it?! And how shall I turn my eyes toward it?

I remember the sweet dreams and the embroidered fancies that used to dwell in my heart whenever Lebanon was mentioned before me... And I remember the first time I held The Woman's Voice in my hands and went turning its pages with longing until I reached a little corner at the far left — and oh, that the joy in my eyes might flood every eye, and the world become pure happiness — my name was in that corner!.. The first time in my life I saw it in print! The first time in my life a magazine published what I wrote... a beginner's piece... a drop from the heart of aspiring childhood.

These "firsts" came again and again, and the joy steadied, and the self grew, and the eyes widened, until they saw names other than mine, and read articles and poems and reports and news by others and about others — and the end of the month came to have a meaning..!

I came to know pens, and kept company with souls... and lived friendships...

Rose Ghorayeb writes on art... on society... on woman's rights, giving her opinion with assurance, her head high, and on her lips the smile of the triumphant woman... I could die for that smile of triumph!

And Rose Ghorayeb goes on writing, and the years are folded away... and the editing of the magazine passes to face after face, while the mission remains one. Fouad Suleiman proclaimed it: "The magazine The Woman's Voice is a magazine with a mission, carried out by the Lebanese woman — a mission of thought, conviction, and freedom; it cannot and must not be anything but a mission. We never wanted it a showcase of fashions and aristocratic elegances, nor did we want it an amusement with which woman beguiles her idle hours... we wanted it a noble mission bearing to woman the strivings of human thought." He proclaimed it in 1949, when the magazine brought out a distinguished special issue on UNESCO, edited in the three languages — Arabic, English, and French — and printed in the loveliest form... Nor was that the only special issue that appeared that year: it came out with three special issues in a single year — UNESCO... the women's congresses... and Mayy... And the editors wrote in comment: "It is a feat which no Arabic paper in the Arab world has yet been able to match."

And The Woman's Voice achieved it — this magazine that appeared "in the days when privation stretched from paper to freedom; the grain of wheat was cast into the sands, and its sower had to make ready for it the soil, the rain, the fertility — and the hungry as well." (1)

Its sower bestirred himself and watched over it with his own eyes, and when it yielded its harvest he fed it to hungry souls; and there came the surge of production, the leap toward a better life. Our homeless children, our deprived women, our enfeebled youth, our unknown artists... and the faithful pens rose up calling for the protection of the child, justice for woman, compulsory military service, the championing of art — and, before all that,

(1) From remarks by Rushdi Ma'alouf

Palestine! These campaigns which The Woman's Voice led through years have today become decrees in force, however far from perfection they may be... The mission holds to its covenant, and the grain of wheat is threshing-floors of plenty... and the hands that tend it are faithful and free-flowing..! It believes in the interplay of thought and in thought as a common possession, and so it turns to its leaders, questioning them on the issues of our life, each in the subject of his specialty: Fouad Sarruf, Salim Haidar, Anis al-Khoury al-Makdisi, Muhammad al-Naqqash, Philip Hitti, Muhyi al-Din al-Nsouli, Ishaq Musa al-Husseini.

Yes, gentlemen! What say you of woman's rights? Of the fate of the rising generation.. of the press.. of education? Of poetry?!

And poetry, in The Woman's Voice, has gardens of lilies and roses. Michel Trad — a primitive baking-oven glows in his great soul, and he cries out: no house without poetry has ever lived! And before a woman thinks of an elegant table to dine at, she must think of a volume of verse. And we listen.. God, how splendid is what we hear — it is woman.. Said Akl, Nazik al-Malaika, Fadwa Tuqan, Fouad Suleiman — and she who wrote poetry in prose, the departed woman of letters Salma Sayegh, who tended the grain of wheat in The Woman's Voice for a stretch of time, and for whom the grain of wheat kept faith... for in her memory a special issue appeared, in which the great writers wrote...

On a summer day of cruel heat there blew a green, dew-wet breeze, announcing the launching of feminine verse into the horizons of love-song. On that day "Aphrodite" was born — a sweet word that steals deep into hearts — and she went on growing and growing sweeter, issue after issue; and The Woman's Voice, the mother, went on bending tenderly over her sweet word, holding it close between her covers, as jealous of it as of its brothers and sisters among the people of letters: Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah, Asma Tubi, Anbara Salam Khalidi, Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari, Tawfiq Sayigh, In'am al-Saghir, Samira Azzam.. Jihan Gazawi Aony, Emily Fares Ibrahim, Salwa M. Moumni, and many names shining in the world of letters which I pass over for suspense's sake..!

And after all this, I know not how I have turned my eyes across ten years of a past I have crossed — I whose age means what is hoped for.. which I measure by what I love to do, not by what I have done! And I would love to keep company with The Woman's Voice for another ten years, which I begin counting for her from this moment.