On the Second Arab Athletic Games

The Woman's Word

The Second Arab Athletic Games, held in Beirut between October 12 and 27 last, were an important historic event, preceded by enormous preparations that ended in the completion of the Sports City—the grandest national construction work recently erected in Lebanon and, on the testimony of those who know, superior to the finest sports cities in the world.

The competitions in the various athletic arts, contested among nine Arab states, were magnificent spectacles on a high level, and they helped in consequence to strengthen the bonds of understanding and affection among hundreds of Arab athletes—but for certain faults which we wish to point out here purely by way of constructive criticism, in the hope that such faults may not be committed in the future, at an athletic meet or elsewhere.

The organizing committee registered against itself, at the opening ceremony, an inexcusable failure, manifest in that general chaos which accompanied the crowd of invited guests in their "assault" upon the Sports City, and then in their taking of their seats. The sight of the automobiles jostling one another was like the Day of Resurrection! And oh, our shame before the hundreds of official guests and notables who turned back on their heels after the exhausting effort they had spent to arrive, because their places were occupied to the point of suffocation! We ask ourselves: how were the sixty thousand seats and more filled by only half the invited guests? How is it permissible to invite double what the stadium can hold? How was the stadium allowed to be packed several hours before the opening? How did dozens of "nobodies" reach the seats of honor ahead of certain distinguished personalities? And why was a sufficient number of traffic police not posted along the road leading to the Sports City to secure order?

So much for the organizing committee. As for the last fault—in our view the most important among them—it is the restriction of the events of the athletic meet to males, to the exclusion of females—except, that is, for the rhythmic movements and folk dances performed with skill at the opening ceremony by 550 schoolgirls. It is as though the Arab countries, by excluding the female element from the competitions, were recording against themselves their backwardness, social and athletic at once. Some of the states—I do not say all of them—could have presented teams of their girls in certain games at which the Arab woman has excelled, and which no physiological impediment prevents her from practicing.

The Western woman's participation in international athletic meets goes back a quarter of a century. Shall we be content to admit that in this field we are more than a quarter of a century behind them?!

We in Lebanon, and some of our sister Arab states, have organized women's athletic teams for games of agility, speed, and skill, and some of them have already taken part successfully in international athletic competitions. May the responsible authorities study from this moment the question of women's teams taking part in the Olympiad of the Mediterranean Basin states, which will also be held in our Sports City two years hence, to prove that we are not far from the spirit of the age, which makes the two sexes equal.