O My Sister Salwa...

O Salwa: sister of my soul, companion of my childhood, friend of my youth — is it true that your call now finds no answer, and that I shall hear nothing but the return of its echo?

Only yesterday — moments ago, which in the life of time are nothing — you filled my eyes and my heart and my thoughts; and now I search for you with my wandering, anguished spirit, and hear nothing but the bitter, painful silence.

My eyes wept, the wounds of my heart bled, and my soul withdrew into itself, racked by a heavy desolation and wrapped in the dark mist of everlasting parting.

You were a light that shone in a dark air of the blindness of ignorance and rigidity and the cruelty of traditions — traditions left behind by generations bowed under the weight of their afflictions and their bondage. Your light gleamed and your intelligence sparkled, and you lit strong paths by whose guidance your generation finds its way. You were ambitious, you were brave, and you were generous, giving freely of the good things you had. So you went steadily forward, turning the lights upon young minds, hoping that your countrymen would move toward a good and tranquil life.

You threw yourself, with all the ardor in you, into seeking the good of the Arab homeland, joining the free in the call to deliver its children from the misery of humiliation and submission, and to raise them to lofty heights of exaltation.

You were, Salwa, one of the daughters of the vanguard who bore the hardship of tearing down and tasted the delight of building. How your soul pulsed with vitality and activity! How your great heart made room for burdens and then overflowed with tenderness and love, so that all the dear ones and friends around you were gladdened by that tenderness and that love.

You were like a flower smiling in the dew of the laughing dawn — always you laughed, and your presence was cheerful and winning. Merriment was one of your natural traits, showing from your childhood, so that you were the delight

You were still young when

...and his little one.

Your merriment never left you, your courage never betrayed you, and your hope never failed even in the darkest hours; in the look of your two noble eyes I could see deep meanings of sorrow mingled with faith and hope and expectation. I would see them smiling at you with my eyes while I wept with all my being and my heart. And you accepted your fate with beautiful patience and rare courage.

You were the soul soaring in wide, radiant skies. You loved to add to your merits, to adorn your qualities, and to widen the horizon of your thought. Even now there rings in my ears the tone of your sweet voice — in which there was something of the hymns of the angels — saying: I want to widen my horizon.

How your leaping spirit longed for renewal and growth, how it savored art and music! You never knew idleness or stillness for a single day.

O Salwa! You of the noble heart and the luminous mind: has the light truly gone out, has the surging vitality been stilled, have the beautiful voice and the smiling face gone?

How cruel the fates are when they strike! I watched you on your last day drawing to your end, but I could not believe it — or my heart made me unable to see.

Your passage through this life was brief, like a gleaming dream that sang of the greatness of life and its virtues and soon vanished, leaving behind many impressions and traces, laden and brimming with memories of good things...

Is it true, beloved Salwa, that nothing remains of you but the memory? A sweet and bitter memory to accompany me until my destiny is united with yours?