when I touched the human being in "Pebbles of the Roads" and "The Reed-Pipe" and "The Road".. Brother "al-Hajj": adultery in thought is a mortal sin — what, then, must it be in poetry, and in "Nisan"?..

"Nisan".. is a prelude to a book more abundant in matter and richer in vocabulary — so that the poet will not be driven to use the same word dozens of times — and deeper in feeling, more concentrated, and more mature..

I do not wish to believe that Nicolas Qorban has locked up his poetic gift on an autumn leaf, or that he has locked up his heart on a mulberry leaf!

Here is the poem "A Feather" from Nisan.

You would imagine this the title of a book of philosophy or history, or of barren research. No — it is a story.. or rather ideas and opinions dressed in the frame of a story, so as to be easier to take in..

Mrs. Madeleine Arqash is prolific in her production; several books of hers have appeared, and she is preparing several more, and there is no doubt that she deserves thanks for this great effort, which shows plainly in what she writes.

I imagine her writing, then tearing up what she has written to write it over again and polish it until it wins her approval, whereupon she sends it to press.

The problem Mrs. Arqash treats — and for which she deserves thanks — is sectarianism, the most destructive of this nation's flaws. Nor does it lessen the book's worth that a great number, a very great number, of our writers and thinkers and young men and women have treated this subject. For the author has her own style and her own way of setting out her ideas and presenting them.

I could have wished that Mrs. Arqash had abridged somewhat the recounting of the citadel's history, the description of Ras al-Ain, and the social lectures, and had left it to the story itself to carry the idea and argue it through its events, not on the tongues of its heroes — even had she been forced to write a book on each of these subjects!

Mrs. Madeleine Arqash is a social reformer; people will remember her kindly whenever they recall that we in Lebanon were once sects at one another's throats!!