Umm Samir is a wheel that spins and turns, and the rooms of the house ring with her! If she sits, there is in her very sitting a readiness that heralds standing up anew, moving anew!

She chats with her neighbor from the window of her room while her mind is on the milkman who is late, the bread man come to settle accounts, and the scatterbrained maid's return from the market; on her mind too is the children's food... and Abu Samir's shirt tossed carelessly over the side of the chair... and then the dish on the treacherous fire! As for her neighbor, she sees before her nothing but a courteous, smiling face, returning kindness for kindness and compliment for compliment!

Her head is a tangle of worries in which the operations of arithmetic race along — subtraction, addition, division... The perpetual balancing of income against outlay has wearied her, and she is perplexed by the fluctuations of prices, which suit her one moment and defy her purse the next!

Umm Samir's evening is her familiar joy... for everyone comes to her after the day's work... so she kisses this one and coddles that one with a rich pastry... and carries to that dapper one a towel perfumed by the day's sun!

All this, and Umm Samir still reproaches her own nimbleness... she wishes she could enlist all alone in the house for toil and fatigue.

Boredom does not enter her day. It is weaker than her heavy work, and it is the last thing to enter her crowded mind. Let others have the pause on the balcony... the reclining hour beside the radio, the long conversation with the mirror, and the regular visits to the dressmaker and the hairdresser!

Inspiring is the sight of her in her kitchen... she tends the dish with her eye and follows the heat of the water by its hiss upon the fire, and with her hand she arranges and cuts and sifts, raises up and sets down!

Umm Samir's companion in the slow-moving evenings is a pair of knitting needles with which she readies herself for the spells of cold! The sweater's yarn is thick and strong, to drive off the cold and to lengthen its life, so that the younger may wear it after the elder!

Umm Samir is the last to put out the light in the house, her eyelids weighed down by a sweet fatigue and a tranquil surrender!

The Conclusion...

And so... my life is accompanied by images of women about whom my curiosity hovers and to whom both my eyes open wide, discerning what I see and what I may not see, what I know and what I do not know, what I have and what I have not. And there remains upon the horizon of my imagination the image of a woman who took from my mother her heart, from my teacher her guidance, from my friend her intimate face, and from my grandmother her knowing talk...

In her childhood she was a doll that hearts pursued, while she clasped in her two rosy arms another doll for which she would accept no substitute. And she walked with her years from cradle to cradle, her being opening upon them, and she would run to her mother every night to tell her eagerly... and ask her: How?... When?... And why?

Youth received that secure ear of wheat into a wide world. In it, as she had been told, were the sickles, the temptations, and the encroaching desires; and in it "No!!"... came oftener than "Yes!" None of this made her laugh — rather it made her weep at times... a hushed weeping with which her soul grew up. And one day that soul was weaned from the limpness of dependence, that it might have its own color and its own measure.

Yesterday she was her mother's child... and today she has become her sister, returning to her the threatened tenderness of yesterday as grateful understanding and faithful companionship.

Not everything around her is... comfortable or welcome... but she has walked a temperate path, keeping pace with the road of her world, indulging its absurdities and forgiving the stubbornness of some of its traditions... for a forgiving love binds her to it. She does not rebel every time her hopes are met by a refusal here and a denial there. Nor does she surrender to retreating despair... as though she knows that in the pockets of the days are quickening surges of progress and renewal, and in them the clearing of the skies for her insurgent being!

Her yearning toward leadership is great. She polishes, she refines, she changes the lens. As for her learning, it was never once her lofty throne. It is the adornment of her womanhood and the servant of her mission in life.

She knows that her heart must never be emptied of its abundance of love and tenderness. She knows too that the key to her goodness is a compassionate motherhood that sacrificed itself within her... and her heart danced for it as soon as heedless childhood left her and youth breathed into her the fragrance of blossoming!

Motherhood endowed her with sacrifice... and taught her not to put out her lamp, not to close her palms... and not to flee the field for fear of a disfiguring fatigue or an exhausting vigil!