Mrs. Najla Saab
Mrs. Laure Tabet
• The Russian woman is serious, and equal to the man in everything.
• Education is compulsory and free.
• Social life is nearly nonexistent.
• Every Russian citizen is keen on going to the theater.
• The people of the Soviet Union are of very high character, but gloom prevails among them. And they are directed in what they do, not free to choose.
I set down this introduction... with before me this store I gathered from my interview with the two energetic ladies, Mrs. Laure Tabet and Mrs. Najla Saab... They have lately returned from their visit to Russia, where they were invited to
represent Lebanon at one of the women's conferences there...
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I spoke... directing the question to them both... as they sat facing me... Mrs. Laure, president of the League of Women's Organizations... with
her serene beauty, which, however far time carries it on, refuses to do anything but grow in sweetness and luster... and Mrs. Najla, with her endearing dark complexion, and a face on whose pages one is pleased to read the verses of struggle and striving on all manner of fronts...
In the past... to speak of Russia... was in the nature of a crime!
But today... after Russia has opened herself to the world... after she has abandoned her austere isolation... after she has come to believe in the law of give and take... after she has undertaken to send artistic troupes and cultural missions to the rest of the countries of the world... and after people have been able to pass beyond the Iron Curtain, to penetrate to what lies behind it, exploring, inquiring, criticizing... after all this, to speak of Russia has become in the nature of a virtue... for no reason but that it is speech about a part of the world that remained for a long stretch of time unknown, obscure, mysterious... people knowing nothing
of it, and it knowing nothing of what went on in the world around it.
Who would have believed, some years back, that the Lebanese woman could pass over the barriers... and pierce the fortresses... to reach Russia??...
Who would have believed that Russia herself would hold conferences on her own soil, and invite people to visit her, to discuss with them all manner of human and world affairs, and show them