The Youth of a Woman of Letters

Labiba Madi Hashim, a famous writer. Her magazine "Fatat al-Sharq" appeared in Egypt — twenty-nine volumes, 1906–1935. Its pages number more than ten thousand. And she founded the newspaper "al-Sharq wa-l-Gharb" in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, in the years '23 and 1924. She also has several published works.

She was Beiruti by birth and upbringing. A pupil of the French, English, and American schools. Wife of Abdo Hashim, of Ain al-Qabu, at the foot of Sannin. Her father was the teacher Nassif Madi, of Kfarshima, and her mother Rahil Karkabi of Beirut.

Our Labiba's genius began very early, with her personal letters, at nine years of age. She would picture her family far away from her and write to them things unbelievable from a girl her age. And she would correspond, on behalf of her schoolmates, with their relatives wherever they were, showing artistry in her styles and subjects — until her brother Najib named her the little "Madame de Staël." He took to correcting her spelling and forming her in letters. He held a bachelor of sciences from the American University of Beirut and was director of the Three Moons Institute.

At the age of twelve she set about translating her first novel, "The English Maiden," as a school exercise — it was her first reading outside her schoolbooks. When she was asked to print it, she shrank back out of modesty. But she revised it

"The champion of woman," Mr. Jirji Niqula Baz, had the good fortune of discovering, accompanying, and encouraging the first generation of our women of letters, and he still gives this patronage a great deal of attention — may God prolong his life!

The truth commonly told of our champion, the venerable elder, is the extraordinary power of his memory, such that not a single item of the old news escapes him, coming or going...

Who, then, is worthier than Mr. Baz to relate the charming stories of: "How did our women writers begin to write??"

and made a fair copy of it quickly for the press, when she reached the age of the full moon, 1895.

She made pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her thirteenth year. And she wrote up her journey, describing the monuments she had seen. When she reviewed it after a time and found its grammatical and linguistic errors too many, she tore it up.

Two years later she wrote to the Egyptian magazine "al-Hilal," on the subject of woman, learning, and money, in reply to Dr. Amin al-Khoury — to whom the famous writer Farah Antoun also replied at the time, as did the Damascene writer Afifa, I believe, then residing in Cairo.

And in that year, 1896, she traveled with an agha to Egypt. She perfected her composition under my kinsman, the erudite Sheikh Ibrahim al-Yaziji, and the Persian script under the famous calligrapher Najib al-Hawawini.

She wrote in the magazines al-Thurayya, al-Bayan, al-Diya', Anis al-Jalis, and al-Majalla al-Misriyya, and in the great newspapers, and she composed the novel "The Heart of Man" and printed it in 1904, two years before founding her magazine.

In Beirut she busied herself, together with the two writers Esther Azhari Moyal and Hana Kasbani Kourani, with forming the society "Nahdat al-Sayyidat" (the Ladies' Renaissance), 1896. And in Egypt she called upon its ladies to form a similar society, 1897, but obstacles stood in its way.

In her childhood she learned music and excelled at playing the oud. She practiced drawing and painting. She was skilled in handwork and in sewing. Later on she also became proficient in mind-reading and hypnotism.

She painted my kinsmen, the two sheikhs Nassif al-Yaziji and his son Ibrahim, in two beautiful portraits. The son said: this portrait of his father is the best of all his portraits.

And how fine are the verses the poet of the Cedars, Shibli Mallat, composed about her:

What is the beauty of Shirin, with lovers worshipping her,
and the throne of Bilqis, with swords standing guard,

beside a keen pen, moved
by the hand of Labiba, with letters for its two pillars?

God rest our dear Labiba.