Woman (from the introduction to the lecture)
In woman is the Creator's rare jewel. And in woman is a fertile world that occupies man, who wears himself out over mighty means to attain an inhuman perfection!...
It stands written in the register of time that woman gladdens... that she sustains... that she uplifts... but she remains a worldly world within a worldly world...
There are no demigods in a world where a woman lives... rather, perhaps, there are giants whom a prayer inspires and a support arouses... and whose powers a faithful love
Nur Salman lecturing...
sends soaring.
Yes — God created woman and so adorned life... and He opened to her the heart of the world... that she might be; and so she exists — to know and to give.
Do you not see woman in every great legend? In every leap of a soul? In every flash of genius? In every persistence of hope? And then, do you not see her too behind a revolt of despair, and through the wilting of a soul?
Man... in her world is a visitor... awaited... She loves him and takes pride in him and helps him and sacrifices for his sake, but she is unable to find the key to her own soul, from its farthest end to its farthest end, so as to give it to him!
And she is the most generous of givers, the sweetest in tenderness, and the readiest of all to find sacrifice sweet...
In woman's reliance... lies the secret of life's positive force... She will never compete with man — she is his mother and his sister and his wife... and love does not compete... She is a spacious shade that draws and does not overwhelm!
And this woman... do you not see her? Beautiful in her glances? In her pampered frivolity? In her generous impulsiveness? In
...Eight types — eight portraits of woman, drawn for us by Nur Salman in her lecture "Women," given at the invitation of the Thurayya Circle on the evening of June 1 last.
In "Women," the rising Nur has planted her foot firmly in the meadows of literature... From this day on she is an accredited woman of letters, with her own luxuriant color, her pulsing images, and her choice, expressive words — all of it elegant, and all of it Nur's own! And therein lies her literary worth! We publish the portraits of her "women" in installments, taking care to give her introduction first...
her artlessness? Beautiful in her frank adornment, beautiful in her open-hearted old age?
Maha
Maha came to know the most about everything the moment the president handed her a paper ringed with a red ribbon. It is another identity card,
and she wishes her pocket could hold it, so that she might carry it with her everywhere.
In Maha's head a thousand and one ideas are dancing, and her imagination leaps with her from one wide field to a wider one. She wishes from the bottom of her heart that her ambition might forget traditions in whose forbidding sting there is a rebellious pain.
Maha is in revolt against the picture of femininity among us, and she describes it with a sarcasm driven on by exasperation. It lies, as she says, in the downcast eye... the dull modesty... the drowsing feeling... and the timid... heart!
And she never stops wishing she were a young man, so that she could throw off the curtain of caution that wraps her... and speak... and speak... and speak, without her speech being branded impudence or wounding boldness. And in a rebellious defiance Maha would cry: I wish I could make love-talk whenever love-talk pleases me, without shame being fastened to my love-talk!
Poor indeed... is he whose passing days no woman has shaded... nor the phantom... of a woman!!
And I fill my heart with a love I