We Are at War!

Here is an emancipated woman's pen trying to cut its path in the world of letters, and with stubborn resolve it means to prove its existence!

There is no doubt that Layla Baalbaki has her own stamp, her own style, and her own intellectual bent — and who knows yet what literary future awaits her!!?

We are at war... and in war, man is born at every moment, and dies!

I, and many with me — how many of our hopes we have buried in these few days. And how much... how much has been born in us — so much... so much...

Sweet hopes used to tickle my mind: that the fruit should ripen on the body, and I would strut with it among the ranks of the pickers, searching for the one into whose hands and mouth I, myself, would fling myself, to let him taste the delicious flavors... and so live through him. No — for the one who would devour me, he, and dissolve my existence... and so I would perish.

The harvest drew near, and I rushed along the road of life, dreaming of the beautiful nest. Dreaming of the warmth that would course through the promised hours... while in the present hours the cold kills me. And loneliness. And fear. And anxiety. And the threats of death!

And I met him on the road. No, I do not want to be obscure: I met the man I loved.

We are at war...

And the palace of my young dreams came tumbling down, as though I had built this palace of cardboard, and in a moment of daydreaming! As though I had not devoted the years and the months and the nights to my struggle to weave its foundations and plant its pillars firm! As though my body had not grown damp with the sweat of mad rebellion, to raise my will above the will of family, and inherited codes, and the narrow, ignorant surroundings!

It came tumbling down, as though I had never tried to be a god upon the earth: creating palaces, fulfilling dreams, and granting life! It came tumbling down, as though I were still a silly thing, lost among the collection of silly things, and in our silly house!

Do you ask me about the fruit in my body? How stupid we are — we women — how we deceive ourselves, and weaken ourselves, so that the chain of enslavement may sit lighter upon us!

Some days ago I stood before the mirror, and behold, my body was tissues of flesh threaded through with blood vessels. These tissues turn blue and grow rough in cold weather... the sun's rays burn them. And gunpowder tears them.

And so tomorrow I shall wrap the body in the somber military uniform. I shall set upon my shoulder a rifle hanging down to the thigh. I shall cut the pampered nails, because they would fill with dirt. I shall suck in my lips as I march, to wipe from the two hungry, dewy lips the dust kneaded with blood. And I shall rise by myself — while the forearm planted with thick hair, the one made to protect us, clings to me — I shall rise by myself, while that arm beats the void distractedly, and join the rebel column... to the battle.

Perhaps... it will please me to carry out a mighty task, one that none can accomplish but a god upon the earth:

To bind my body, bearer of the delicious fruits — to bind it, like the Japanese fedayee, to a torpedo, and set off... to raid the barracks of the usurping enemies, the vile ones... The torpedo explodes, and the aggressors melt away. And right rises high. And freedom roams free. And I — I live forever!

But... I do not want to die! I want to live. To slip out of the ordeal with a new life, great and unconquerable! How can I resist both: death and the enemy?

Do you ask me about the man I loved? I am now floundering in a state of unjust despair that eats at my lips, and at the scraps of flesh on the tips of my fingers. I am a mass of storming hatred, rolling along the sidewalk between the place where I work and our silly house. And I am a mass of passion that will light the whole world with its glow!

Before I met him I neither loved nor hated.

And since meeting him: I wrestle with love and hatred in their quarrel!

Who has lived, as I have, in the raging flood, between love and hate?

Who has lived, as I have, in the scorching instant, and in the freezing instant that follows it? In the silent confession at the flutter of an eyelid, the straying of a glance, the trembling of the lower lip, the pressing of fingertips, the numbness of the senses, the word's retreat, and then its loss?

Who has believed in love as I have, rising by his faith to the heights of heaven to face his Lord... and the Lord blessed him, and freed him from the monotony of ordinary people, and granted him a power from which to draw the arts of life?

And then who has renounced love as I have, his hatred sinking him to the depths of the earth, to weave with the devils of hell a power by which he can dispense with the existence of a god? And with his need for a partner?

We are at war...

And divergent feelings breed within me — wrath against everyone who has troubled the peace within me, and in the world I fill... For the war is my war!

And the war is the Arab woman's war, because it is she who will resist. She who will lose the child, and the man, and the house... and she who, after the fires die down, will come back to lie with the man, and bear the child, and build a house anew!

And the war is woman's war wherever she may be, for she will be driven out. She will be shipped from France, and Britain, and Israel... and the other states whose men are pirates and madmen... She will be shipped and unloaded on the docks of the ports, to be sold cheap in the world's markets, like packs of cigarettes, and shoes! And after she has been chewed, and after she has grown stale, and after she has worn down the nerves of the "buyer's life partner" in the importing country — then... she will be thrown away, to be hunted for by those who today hunt for cigarette butts in the corners of the dirty street, and for worn-out shoes in the "garbage" bags!

All I know today is that we are at war. And that I shall prove my existence in the battle of resistance and survival.

It makes me happy that I loved before I hated, and that I hate and love at one and the same time.

I hate "Eden the butcher" and Eden's country.

And I love the man I met on the road of life, who gave me a new taste of it — and I love my country.

I hate the colonizers, wherever they may be, and I love death in the cause of my war, and of my immortality.