In Bechtefine and al-Knisseh with the Village Revival Society

The Village Revival Society was born in 1952. At the beginning of the current year the election of its administrative board took place, with the following result:

President: Mrs. Anissa Najjar

Vice-President: Mrs. Victoria Dabbas

Secretary: Mrs. Marie Karbakos

Corresponding secretaries: Mrs. Nuzha Maasri and Mrs. Nelly Ayoub

Treasurer: Miss Aminah Khoury Makdisi

President of the Bechtefine–Knisseh committee: Mrs. Zulfa Rawda

President of the Mansef committee: Mrs. Victoria Dabbas

President of the Maaraka committee: Mrs. Aliyya al-Saidi

President of the Habbouch committee: Mrs. Ra'fat Arab

The League of Women's Organizations delegated Miss Zahiyah Dughan — directress of Makassed College for Girls — to accompany the Village Revival Society at the two parties to which the said society had invited the associations that cooperate with it in the rural field. Miss Dughan told us:

We were five automobiles crossing the Damour bridge to reach Deir al-Qamar, branching off from Kfarhim toward the centers of the Village Revival Society: Bechtefine, Deir Kousheh, al-Knisseh. Besides the members of the society, we were accompanied by delegates of the Children's Welfare Society and Al-Nahda An-Nisaiyah. It is a fine gesture with which the Village Revival Society surprises us — cooperating with sister associations in the service of the country.

The people of the village of Bechtefine, ladies and men alike, received us with a warm welcome, and the speeches began to follow one another, thanking the associations that assist them, in correct language, with beautiful diction and sincere acknowledgment of kindness — the kind of thing that endears to us our language and our own people.

The society's teacher, Miss Alice Maalouf, spoke of her experiences and recalled the village woman who came to Miss Alice's mother, pressing her not to send her young daughter to a Druze village. Miss Maalouf said: "I am hurrying the days along until I return to my village and tell that woman how mistaken she is, and how I have felt none of these sectarian differences."

Speakers, men and women, took turns thanking the society for its project and praising the teacher of the center — though the mukhtars of the two villages and their schoolmasters demanded the opening of the road, and lighting, and the enlargement of the schools, and the piping of water.

Thirteen certificates in the art of sewing were distributed to those who had earned them, and the public was invited to a buffet made up entirely of the village's delicious sweets: awwam, ma'karoun, mahdawiyyah, and preserves.

After this we visited the society's club, where we saw how the society cans the vegetables and fruit exceeding the village's needs, and how it bottles tomato juice by the sterilization method, then sells all this to its friends, the housewives of Beirut.

My esteem for this mighty work grew still greater when we continued on our way and reached the villages of al-Knisseh and Deir Kousheh, to which the society's work extends. This village has no paved road, no electricity, no water, no doctor, no nurse, and no school for girls. The people lined up in a large square awaiting our arrival. Speeches, ma'anna singing, and zajal followed one upon another, all thanking the society for opening a club for itself there, for their daughters had seen the light of crafts by its hands. What they ask is a complete school for the girls of al-Knisseh and its two neighbors, Amiq and Deir Kousheh. The society's president, Mrs. Najjar, promised them a school and a cooperative for production and marketing, both of which the society will endeavor to bring about soon.

Fifteen certificates in sewing were distributed, and we were invited to a village buffet at which the meghli and the candied quince and pumpkin were delicious.

Were I asked what pained me, besides the two villages' deprivation of learning, I would say that their deprivation of light and illumination and of water pipes is no less harmful than their deprivation of the light of knowledge.

As for the good impression the visit left in my soul, it was the display of love and fellowship between the two villages despite the difference of creed and rite. The Druze in his turban and the monk in his cowl are bound together in a single bond by the spirit of love and patriotism. I shall never forget the sight of the Druze woman in her flowing white kerchief and the Christian woman in her fringed black kerchief, standing side by side, each pouring out to the other feelings of joy and congratulation at their daughters' winning the sewing certificate. This scene left in heart and soul a great esteem for the Village Revival Society, for the care it expends in teaching woman the affairs of the household alongside the art of sewing, to raise her economic level.

To this generous, striving society, the sincerest congratulations and the loveliest wishes.

Zahiyah Dughan
Directress of Makassed College for Girls