On her journey to Australia, Burma, India, and elsewhere...
On the dancing flying carpet the imagination of our forefathers, and our forefathers' forefathers, used to soar... to accompany Ibn Battuta and the teller of the Thousand and One Nights to the far edges of the East and its strange and wondrous distances.
Today, however, that yearning imagination no longer holds those reins stretched out across distances and lands. We live in an age in which the inventing mind has satisfied the appetite of that limited imagination — it is the energetic front-runner in bringing its creations into being.
Do you know where our ambassador in Moscow, Mr. Abdullah al-Najjar, and his wife spent their diplomatic leave? In my saying 'God rest Ibn Battuta' lies part of the answer!
They made a series of visits to Australia, then to the islands of Malaya and the Philippines, then to Thailand, Burma, India, and Pakistan. And today, in Lebanon, Mrs. Najjar talks to me about the journey of the recent past.
What astonished our lady in Australia, after an absence lasting eighteen years, was an immense building activity creeping swiftly through every corner of that continent, borne on the shoulders of men and women alike. And no wonder — the country brims with wealth that never runs dry; and so everything there is on the increase, so much so that the population, which was 7
million twenty years ago, has now become about 11 million.
In Melbourne the two visitors attended most of the Olympic festivities, and the opening ceremony was of the utmost splendor and order. The conversation turned to our consul there, Mr. Youssef Shadid, and his lady wife... they are, to put it briefly, the central jewel in the necklace of our Lebanese community.
In young Indonesia our ambassador and his lady wife met with such warmth of welcome from the government as left in their hearts a treasured keepsake from a country that bears us Arabs every affection. And talk of the Indonesians' sympathy for the Arab renaissance, as Mrs. Najjar says, is truly delightful — and it runs long.
Bandung, meeting place of the Asian and African nations, was the travelers' first place of pilgrimage, and what arrested her there was the natural beauty that generously clothes its plateaus and slopes. Hail to a country whose beauty is tended by the gentleness of its people and their fine hospitality!
From Indonesia the two travelers moved on to Burma... where the Buddhist temples rise on high...
In one of the squares stands a Buddhist temple whose loftiness challenges the
At the reception of President Nehru: Mr. Abdullah al-Najjar and President Nehru, and between them the ambassador of Iraq to India, Mr. Radi, then the ambassador of the Saudi Kingdom