When Children Dance

The clock struck five in the evening... and there were throngs of children... flocking to the children's party.

It was a lovely thing of the Ahram Hotel in Beit Mery to think of the little ones in a year when Lebanon has been taken up with the grown-ups... its emigrants and its tourists.

And it was lovelier still that it did not hold the party for mere amusement and the election of a children's beauty queen, as is usual... but exerted efforts to discover the artistic leanings in the little ones... and to seek out the talents lying hidden in some of them, and encourage them.

Here is a little girl of only seven who dances every dance... the hard and the easy... the stirring and the soft... moving with the movements of one sure of herself... performing an official duty with no limpness in it... measured movements of the loveliest ever seen... upon a body of the loveliest ever seen... I could have wished that more of it were hidden than was hidden, in mercy to creation... this little one has a future in the world of art.

And here is another, ten years old at most, dancing a magnificent Spanish dance... you close your eyes and fancy yourself in Andalusia... the red dress... the skill of whoever sewed it, as though the costume had been taken from the pictures of history or from one of the moving-picture films... the ornament of the head... the thing like mute castanets in her two palms, which she brandishes so that now it is above her head and now at the level of her body... even the exquisite dark coloring and the features of the face, all of them from the country we lost, in which our soul still dwells.

The Lebanese dabke was led by a marvelous little girl who found in the orchestra's playing a false note — or, more exactly, a drift toward the Western melody — and so went on strike from the dance until, once the playing was got right, she performed wonders... everything in these little ones, from the measured movements to the leader waving her kerchief and leaping into the air and then striking the ground with her feet... all of it composed an astonishing Lebanese folk tableau... where are the organizers of the emigrants' festivities, to search out the likes of this gifted leader and her companions?

Then there was the mimic... the one who made us hear all the voices of the animals and the birds, down to the roaring of lions and the grunting of pigs... her single voice was like dozens of voices coming at you from here and from there... people fancied themselves in a zoo, when there was nothing there but a little girl before the microphone... she owns a pliant voice and an obliging throat... this little one, too, has a future on the stage, if mimicry is one of its requirements.

Then came the turn of comedy, and at first the little ones hung back — for crowds have their terror... then the bravest of them stepped forward and delivered, in a limpid voice free of affectation, a joke that set the audience roaring with laughter... whereupon the terror fell away from the little ones and they gathered around the loudspeaker, each awaiting his turn... here was training in public speaking and in meeting crowds without a tremor or a fright... it was one of the best things in the program... some of the little ones won the round by the beauty of their delivery more than the beauty of the joke... and some lost it by the haste of their delivery and its triviality, if the expression may pass... I remembered Taha Hussein's saying: 'Ideas that are presented badly lose their value.'

And the winners received their prizes... then everyone received prizes... and joy peeped out from the mothers' eyes... indeed, it had been peeping out all through the party, shining and beseeching, as though praying that no harm might touch these livers of theirs walking upon the earth...

Delightful it was, this children's party... it bespoke the efforts of those who ran it... only... why do some mothers insist on daubing their little daughters' faces with white and red and all that goes with them...? Is the little girl's attention to be turned, from her very childhood, toward borrowed beauty, until she comes to see that natural, angelic beauty has no worth...?

Why is the little girl's attention fastened upon paints, so that she hurries toward the day she will use them? I have heard with my own ears a little girl say to her mother, all eagerness... When shall I grow up, Mother, so that I can put red on my lips and become beautiful like you...?

And why, indeed, at parties such as these, is the little girl's attention directed toward beauty alone, when there are a thousand other sides that have their worth?