The Mother Behind Every Upward Movement: Heroism, Like Love, Is a Universal Spirit

When al-Khansa lost her brother Sakhr — she is a poetess well known in the history of ancient Arabic literature — her nerves gave way, and she burst out in grief for the dear departed. Indeed, we find that she vowed herself thereafter to that grief, and put on the mourning garb of the bereaved, refusing all consolation for the loss of one who was to her "like a mountain with a fire at its summit"!

This was al-Khansa before Islam — that is, before the Arab, man and woman alike, had a higher ideal, a good creed, and a human message. But when al-Khansa embraced Islam, and was set free from the servitudes of the pagan Jahiliyya, and her thought, her mind, and her heart were liberated — she found in her bosom four young men who were an ornament among men. Those were the sons of al-Khansa, who volunteered for the struggle in the cause of that message, in the cause of God — and they were slain as martyrs, among those who fell martyred at the battle of "Badr." Do you know what al-Khansa said when the news of them reached her? She said, without weeping or wailing: "Praise be to God, who has honored me by their death; and I hope that He will gather me with them in the resting place of His mercy!"

This spirit that shines forth in "the Mother" at the fall of her sons — this spirit that al-Khansa lacked before, at the fall of her brother — is the spirit that many men and many women among us lack; it is the spirit we lost long ago, and with it we lost many of the foundations of a proud and noble life.

What, then, happened in al-Khansa's soul, that she was transformed from a "woman" into a "Mother," from a weak female into a heroic messenger? In this very question its answer is contained. Al-Khansa was created anew from the moment she was steeped in the spirit of heroism.

In ancient history, as in modern, there are many examples known to those acquainted with that spirit. Among them the example of King Albert of Belgium — in the First World War — when the Germans summoned him to surrender, or else they would sweep over his country entirely. The hero-king's answer — weak as he was, with his small army, before the mighty German armies — was an answer brimming with heroism, for it came as the answer of a king who believed in his people's and his country's right to freedom and to life. He said to them: "You shall not pass... except over my body!"

Heroism has many colors and forms

This heroism in war has its counterparts, heroisms in the other spheres of life. The scholar who dedicates himself to learning; the discoverer who devotes his life to research, widening the horizons of human knowledge; the mother who wears herself away to present the homeland with worthy sons and daughters; the teacher who melts away to light the path of learners; the writer who wastes away to guide his readers, women and men — all of these, and many others besides, are heroes deserving the nation's thanks and history's glorification. For heroism, like love, is a universal spirit: it presides over work well done, over sincere effort, over disinterested striving, just as love presides over every dealing among people, whether individuals or groups. And there is nothing in the world a human being can do that is nobler, greater, or more enduring than a heroic deed steeped in love, as perfume steeps the splendid flower.

The face of heroism

And do not suppose that heroism is the preserve of the great... Rather, when it comes from others than they, it appears greater and grander still. Otherwise, what merit has the sea, if it favors the dry land with the gift of rain clouds and the dew of dawn? Or the sun, if it favors it in turn by being the one that warms the water and the air, raising the vapor and stirring the wind?

Heroism, then, is not the preserve of the great, though they are worthier than others to give the good example and the righteous model. Every one of us can be a hero — or a heroine — whenever he wills it, or she wills it. Sacrifice alone is the measure by which deeds are measured: whatever deed is done in the cause of good, its doer is a hero.

Sacrifice of what the individual can give: he who sacrifices his five piasters, in faith, is a hero, like him who sacrifices thousands. And he who sacrifices an hour of his day for the general good, seeking nothing but the good itself, is a hero like him who sacrifices his life for his homeland, or for his people, or for God.

Of old, the widow's mite was counted more precious than... the rich man's dinar; for her sacrifice of that penny, despite her desperate need of it, is a heroism equal to the heroism of one who sacrifices hundreds of coins — dear to him, in any case, as they are.

And the scholars of society and morals tell us: the needle, if the "seamstress" gives it away in charity — it being her tool of work and of livelihood — equals the almsgiving of the well-to-do in their thousands of liras!

Let us not say, then: what have we to do with sacrifice, we who are not equal to it... we are small, or we are poor, or we are weak. For the very little of our sacrifices equals the much, in kind; and when it is gathered together, it comes to equal the very much in quantity as well. Fire was, and still is, kindled from the smallest of sparks — exactly like the rivers and the seas: they were formed, and are formed still, from drops of rain.

How shall we revive the spirit of heroism

And now you are asking yourselves, no doubt, how we are to revive that spirit in our souls, after we have shunned it for so long a time — a time, perhaps, equal to the age of decadence through which our nation passed. Nay, why should I not speak the whole truth, naked and entire: that spirit forsook us from the day woman among us came down from the throne of the "Mother" who fashions men, to the low estate of the "female" who bears children!

I say this, and I beg your pardon, ladies, for the bitterness and pain it holds. For I believe that the Mother is behind every upward movement in the nation, and that she is likewise behind every downward movement. This is a truth that admits no doubt and bears no dispute. Napoleon — who knew woman the female, as other profligates know her — said: "Look for the woman!" And he struck the very heart of the truth, knowing and unknowing. For woman is truly behind every evil, and she is likewise behind every good!

Above all in young nations, and at the beginnings of renaissances! For she is, in any case, the mother who rears; and she is, in the stages that follow, the final guide.

Otherwise, tell me: what great man had no great woman behind him? And what successful man did not have a woman as the spur of his success? Nay, what man made himself ready for work and for success in it, and then failed, without a woman standing behind his failure in most cases?

The cheerfulness, the ease, and the graciousness that mark successful men go back to the serene and contented life their wives provide for them.

And never in my life have I known a man savage in temper, scowling of face, and harsh in his dealings, but that behind it all stood a savage, ill-tempered woman!

Hence the saying of the great Arab Messenger: "Seek good from the comely of face!" For he saw, hundreds of years before the modern psychologists, that goodliness of nature frees a human being from the complexes of inferiority and of conceit, and that goodliness of nature is part of the provision of man — and of woman — on the road of good, beset as it is by hardships and thorns. And no human being can be of good nature unless his mother is of good nature, and his wife of good nature. Woman, then, is behind every good, as she is behind every beauty!

And this weak creature is the one who has made the heroes of every nation and every age; and she is the one able, in our nation, to restore to it the spirit of heroism it lost from the day woman disowned the virtues of the heroic Mother!

And then came this decline, which the successive generations found sweet to the taste, like one licking his own blood from a file.

So woman among us became, through a long stretch of time, a chattel among the chattels of the house, whose ignorance and dullness men boasted of — just as some would-be cultivated women today boast of their ignorance of the life of the home, and of all that belongs to this little world in which the great world is enfolded, and on whose pattern it is always shaped!

Then the darkness lifted... and woman came forth from the great shadow — the shadow of ignorance and dullness — into the places of light. And we took it as a good omen: she would repay the nation, within years, for what it had missed through generations. For the age is the age of the atom, not the age of science alone. And it is my conviction that the first steps — despite the setbacks that have befallen the renaissance, setbacks traceable to the raging struggle between woman and reaction on the one hand, and between her and her own self, which has not yet freed itself from the residue of the past nor succeeded in creating a distinct personality — these steps must be followed by further steps, to settle the renaissance upon sound foundations and to aim at definite ends. Otherwise, what profit is there in woman's seeking learning as man sought it — before her — and then amassing diplomas and boasting of titles?

Woman has a message in life, whose first lines nature has traced for her, and whose details the reality of our nation traces for her anew each day. And so it is with man's message! This does not mean that we hold woman and man unequal. No! Woman and man are, for me, equal in rights and in duties; but they are distinct in the message each of them performs. And they are two messages, each completing the other, as each half completes its other half.

The chief thing woman has missed so far, as she prepares herself by learning to carry out her message, is to take care to remain a "Mother" who raises men — not to become a "man" among the semblances of men.

And the loftiest thing to which the "Mother" can aspire, as she carries out that message, is to make of her sons and daughters men who are truly men, heroes who are truly heroes.

For salvation — the salvation of our nation — lies in the hands of the mothers today, as Paradise has always lain beneath the feet of the mothers!