The Egyptian Red Crescent

Secretary of the General Arab Women's Union

This is a second installment of Mrs. Nazik Sarkis's impressions of the sister land of Egypt, during her visit last spring to attend the meeting of the General Arab Women's Union.

Mrs. Julian Bahan, wife of Dr. Bahan and president of the Red Crescent's nursery branch in Helwan, invited us to visit the kindergarten. The cars devoured the ground beneath us all the way to Helwan, that beautiful, healthful town. We visited the baths of Helwan and admired beyond all admiration the buildings old and new, and the organization and precision of the treatment. We visited all the wards while the chief physician explained to us the treatment given to the patients in every room and every corner, and we came out grateful and full of admiration.

Then we went to the primary kindergarten. The children gave us a warm welcome with their innocent smiles and their angelic melodies. This house holds two hundred and fifty children and eighty older girls. The school comes under the Ministry of Education.

Breakfast and lunch are served to them. We passed by the kitchen, and our noses were met by the appetizing smell of cooking. We were, in truth, hungry; the lunch was beans and rice, and the fruit was oranges. The one responsible for the children is Madame Aida Shaker, and in truth she carries out her responsibility in the best of ways.

The children learn all the prescribed lessons, and music. Each child pays one piaster a day, so that he may feel a personal dignity and a pride of soul — that he pays in return for what he receives.

The society also provides seven hundred and fifty children with winter clothing, food, and monthly assistance, just as it provides fifty families with monthly allowances, and a hundred and twenty consumptives and eighty blind persons besides.

The Ministry of Health provides them with the necessary medicines, the Ministry of Social Affairs with financial aid, and the Ministry of Waqfs provides the milk, which they distribute to the children three times a week; and they obtain no small amount of money from donations and members' subscriptions.

I shall never forget how those children gathered around Mrs. Julian Bahan, calling her "Mama," while she caressed and embraced every child among them.

Mrs. Julian Bahan did not leave us hungry. In her elegant villa, standing on a hill in the beautiful town of Helwan with its refreshing air, she prepared for us a sumptuous luncheon containing everything delicious and good in the way of tasty dishes, delectable sweets, and fruit. The tables were set for four apiece, and Mrs. Bahan went around the tables bringing still more varieties and kinds; and the members' attention to us was no less than her own, and their delightful, profitable conversation only sharpened our appetite.

So to Mrs. Julian Bahan, the president, our profound thanks for her surpassing hospitality; and to her, and to the lady wife of Sheikh al-Baqouri, the secretary-general, and to all the women who labor in this noble service — the service of childhood, of the sick, the stumbling, and the wretched — a salute of thanks, esteem, and admiration.