The Problem of a Generation

(A comment on Mrs. Majida Attar's article in a previous issue of The Woman's Voice)

I read in one of the issues of "The Woman's Voice," with eagerness and close attention, the article by the distinguished writer Majida Attar entitled "Shameful, Hurtful Scenes Concerning My Language." It gave voice to some of what stirs in my breast of pity and sorrow for those who boast of belonging to other than their own stock, and who jabber in a tongue that was never the language of their fathers nor the speech of their forefathers. And there remained in my heart things upon things that I would like to say in this modest article.

Madam: what fault is it of the Armenian shoe-seller if he does not master Arabic? And what fault of the directress of the foreign institute who refused to learn it, if its own sons — the pronoun refers to the language — disdain to speak it and flee from it as the sound man flees the mangy?

Will you believe me if I tell you that when I came to Beirut five years ago in search of learning, I nearly split with rage — as the ancients used to say — when I saw the people jabbering in French and English among themselves; and I said to my companion at the time: Where is independence?

A little later a friend wrote to me from Baghdad asking how I had found Beirut. I answered him, with sorrow filling my heart: I can describe it to you no better than what al-Mutanabbi said of a town in the lands of the Persians:

But the Arab youth within it is
a stranger in face and hand and tongue.

I settled in one of the quarters of Ras Beirut, and I would often hear a neighbor of mine talking to her neighbor in French in a voice that carried to the end of the street; and I would see another neighbor speaking to his wife and children in English — and the grief would swell in my breast, and I would return to ask myself, this time: Where, I wonder, is independence?

I am no sociologist, nor a man of education, nor a guardian of the language; but I can say — and I do not know whether I am wrong or right — that the problem of the Arabic language in this country is not a problem standing by itself; it is but one face of a bigger problem, vaster and more tangled: the problem of an entire generation. It is the problem of a generation that grew up and was reared in foreign schools which do not teach learning purely for the sake of God and of truth; they drilled it in the glorification and magnification of everything Western, and taught it contempt for everything connected with the Arabs by any tie — and what heritage have the Arabs greater or grander than their language and the literature of their language! So these schools neglected to teach it its own language, or made it shrink from learning it, and made its literature hateful to it. Thus this generation grew up feeling inferior for being Arab, or for being connected to Arabism by any bond, and took to covering over its inferiority by imitating the West — and its neglect of its language is one aspect of this imitation. Nor is the story of the Lebanese minister who submitted his resignation in French far from us!

You may ask me, and I may ask you: Whither are we bound? And where does the road end? I answer that we are on the edge of the abyss, if matters remain as they are. And what condition is worse than that a nation should lose its personality and the elements of its being?

The cure is easy, as I believe, if those responsible — official and otherwise — feel the danger and are sincere in their intention to root it out before it grows malignant. This cure may be summed up in a few sentences:

A sound national upbringing for children, adolescents, and youth. National curricula of instruction, binding upon all schools, national and foreign alike, with no possible escape.

Making Arabic easy — in grammar, morphology, and literature — and making it beloved to the rising generation. Encouraging the arts of local stamp, such as zajal, song, music, and the products of handwork, and the like.

If this disease is treated with resolve and sincerity, a new generation will arise that takes pride in its Arabism and its Arabic, not in its French and its English. And then, Madam, pride will find its way to you, as you hear the nation's young men and young women, their tongues flowing with an Arabic without blemish. And I hope that day is not far off.

To you my warmest greetings.