Mr. Rushdi Ma'alouf. In those days "The Woman's Voice" appeared as a weekly paper, then developed into a monthly magazine; as for the elegant womanly garment, its tender body did not enjoy it until 1946, the day "Dar al-Kitab" took it over and Mr. Youssef al-Khal became its editor-in-chief.
"The Woman's Voice" keeps for Mr. Youssef al-Khal the deepest feeling of gratitude, and welcomes him back to Lebanon after an absence in the United States that lasted seven years, during which he worked at the United Nations and then as editor-in-chief of the New York newspaper "al-Hoda."
— The Editors —
Among the happy coincidences is my return to Lebanon just as "The Woman's Voice" celebrates the tenth year of its birth. That first birth was, like all births, difficult and painful.
I know this by report and by inference from the nature of things, not by witness and deed. I know it also by analogy with the difficult second birth that "Dar al-Kitab" brought about, and in which I had a hand and a share.
It was this second birth that clothed "The Woman's Voice" in its beautiful garment. Indeed, it is what made it what it is: a women's magazine, well edited and well
produced, which has never ceased to defy difficulties and surmount obstacles in its steady march forward.
And why not, for after me this magazine was blessed with two pens: the first stamped Arabic literature with a new stamp — what a loss literature suffered in losing him; the second rose upon this literature one day and shed blessing and goodness upon it — how fortunate literature's star is in him. Add to that an expert management, watched over by an elite of our noble women and strengthened by woman's wakefulness and
her care for a "voice" of her own, unique in the world of the Arabic press.
If there is one obstacle before "The Woman's Voice" that it has not yet been able to surmount, it is the obstacle at which the entire Arabic press has come to a halt. I mean the language, in style and in rules. Writing in the classical tongue, insist upon it as we do, still turns within hackneyed molds of expression and barren compositional styles that reach the reader's understanding only after a wearisome circling that weakens the idea and kills the desire to read. The direct style of expression has been attempted, so far as I know, by no one but Said Takieddine. Were we to
practice it, or to write in the colloquial tongue, which is by its nature direct expression, the field of literature would be emptied of the majority of its knights.
This is a long discussion, and this is not the place for it. For now, let "The Woman's Voice" take joy in its tenth year, and let us wish for it what it deserves: long life in glory and dignity.
... This difficult first birth to which the writer of the article refers took place at the hands of