A small visitor: My ears were startled by the fall of two small feet approaching my desk briskly — and this office has seldom known any but grown-up people. I turned toward the visitor, and before he could open his mouth I forestalled him: "I know you. You are the little boy who won the prize!"

His face lit up, and he smiled with a full mouth and wide eyes. I rose to my feet, not knowing how to welcome this guest "the only one of his kind." Should I shake his hand and go back to my seat — or ought I rather, like his mother, to embrace him and kiss him?!...

And I found myself bending down

to shake the small brown hand extended with perfect politeness...

— Welcome, welcome, ...

— Mahmoud Bazzi — said the little one, and sat down on the chair! beside me!

Winner of the first prize:

I felt at once that I was in a "presence," and a wave of delight swept over me. I remembered that after his picture — the one that took the first prize in the art competition of the magazine "Dunya al-Ahdath" — had won my admiration, I got in touch with its proprietor, Mrs. Loreen Rihani, and asked her to introduce us to this gifted child... and I envied "Dunya al-Ahdath" for having discovered him before we did...

He loves Youssef Howayek:

I turned to Mahmoud and found him with his attention fixed on

the wall at his left, where four drawings hung in a row. He began moving his eyes from Julia Dimashqiyah to Huda Shaarawi to Salma Sayegh, and gazing long at the face of "Mayy" — then he asked me:

— Is this the work of Youssef Howayek?

— Yes. Do you know Youssef Howayek?

— I don't know him in person. But my teacher told me about him.

— And do you know Omar Onsi and Moustafa Farroukh and César Gemayel?

— I saw their pictures at UNESCO.

— Which of the artists would you like to become when you grow up, Mahmoud?

— I'd like to be like Youssef Howayek, he answered