Jihan Gazawi Aony: The Friend We Lost

The Woman's Word

Jihan Gazawi Aony
The Friend We Lost

By the Editor-in-Chief

A writer of a color all her own — that was Jihan. Hers was a pen rarely matched in the tightly-set, perfectly built phrase, in which you are captivated by a breath so tranquil it seems to belong to another age, and by the graceful word, chosen with taste — leaping, stately, its very letters pulsing! — until it seems that Jihan, in raising her literary edifice, quarried its stones from pits of deepest reach — from rare marble — with all an artist's cunning in polishing them and bringing out their magic...

But Jihan the superb writer — and I say it in a voice choked with sorrow — is all but unknown by name in the world of letters. As though her production, when first it appeared before us in that firm, sober style, had come out of nothingness — born thus lofty, having known no growth or evolution. Or so it seemed to people, who did not know that Jihan had kept appointment upon appointment with the pen, going back fifteen years and more. How many a fragrant literary breath, how many an authentic poetic whisper she scattered in all modesty, neither for love of display nor in pursuit of fame. And how many a well-wrought, daring piece of criticism shook the readers of Arabic to their depths and stirred doubt and questioning: who can this woman be?

And how much truth is there in ascribing this writing to her? But Jihan the writer is like a spring hidden away in a cave. Of its murmuring roar only a single rill reaches your ear, seeping through a small crack in the rock, while the greater part of its bounty and its melodies remains for its mother, the earth.

How could her literary gifts have known blossoming and fragrance in somber airs that labored to stifle and suppress those gifts? How could intelligence and burning sensibility have found soil fit for growth and open space for soaring?

And in her conservative Tripoli surroundings illness never once granted her a truce, as though she and it were locked in perpetual combat... Her happy marriage moistened the gloom of her existence and eased the strain upon her health, but it drew her away from giving herself to writing, and set a distance between her and the literary works of worth she meant to accomplish — works that remained in ink, unpolished. How Jihan dreamed of them, while between her and them stood three little ones, a generous husband, and school and household duties without end...

Her burden was the heaviest a single human being can carry. Her body was stricken, and she fought that affliction with the positive spirit of a brave soldier; with her uncanny vitality she carried the responsibility of wife, of mother, and of writer — until her strength betrayed her midway on the road, and she fell, slain by her own faithfulness and self-sacrifice.

Companion of the road and of the struggle Jihan was, and sister of heart and of soul — how precious, how dear, is what we have lost!

How many a battle we went down into, to come out of its field hand in hand and eye to eye. And how many a literary or social principle we differed over, only to come back, after discussion and debate, closer than we had ever been to understanding and to accord of opinion.

Companion of the road and of the struggle Jihan was, and sister of heart and of soul — how precious, how dear, is what we have lost!...