My Sweetest Memories of Salwa

Mrs. Laure Tabet, president of the League of Women's Organizations, wrote:

Firmness in gentleness, a strong personality in womanliness, learning in modesty. Such was Salwa Mahmasani Moumina, the friend we have lost. As I write these words I feel a deep sorrow for one whom I respected and who returned my respect, whom I trusted and who returned my trust, whose friendship I gave and who proved the true friend.

She gave proof of her devotion the day she was asked to deliver an address at the oratorical festival held in May 1957, when I stood as a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies. She agreed, and came to the gathering with a smile lighting her face, and stood to deliver a splendid speech describing woman's role in life and its importance, in sound style, in expressive, measured phrases, and with eloquent delivery. All Salwa's speeches were of this high level, and all her articles. Yet that speech I prize in a special way, and I shall never forget her devotion as long as I live, for she wrote it despite her illness — whose secret she kept as it tore at her inward parts, and which she knew would snap the bough of her life. She did not let it weaken her friendship, but met it with the resignation of a believer, the courage of an intelligent woman, and a sweet smile that never left her lips. She tried every means of science to find a cure; yet with her learning and intelligence she understood that none of these means would succeed. She did not despair, and she did not complain; she armed herself with strength and patience, and in this — as in all her life — she was a model of all that is good and noble.

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Ustad Wasif Baroudi says:

Salwa Mahmasani Moumina, God rest her, was a woman with a feeling for woman's mission in life!..

I still remember a conversation with her — the loss makes it the more wonderful, and makes us the more grieved and sorrowful:

I happened upon her one day when the movement of candidacies for the elections was at its height, and there was talk of woman's duty amid that surging flood. I said to her in all sincerity: Why does Mrs. Salwa not stand as a candidate herself? She smiled, and answered me with her well-known composure: What matters is not that woman stand for election while she is still at the beginning of the age of emancipation and awareness... What matters more is that she work, with whatever sway she holds over feeling and thought, to plant firmly the principles of election, and to repair what the past has spoiled; thus we prove the soundness of our renaissance, we women, and perform, in practice, the duty of educating man, for the progress of society!.. That is our task before any other attempt!..

She was tactful, God rest her: she said "what the past has spoiled," and did not say "what man has spoiled"!.. though that was indeed what she meant!.. And I said to myself: she is truly a "woman," and we need her like among women... It is not enough to search for the man among men; we must also take care to search for the woman among women!.. For womanliness is the twin of manliness... Happy the nation that finds the man in its men, and the woman in its women!.. And Mrs. Salwa Mahmasani Moumina was, in our Lebanese Arab society, a woman worthy of trust; and that is why her loss is a loss that stirs pain in every soul!..

...opinions and beliefs; you went ahead of your time, you broke away from the strait-laced mentality, and you believed in reform and renewal.

Salwa took up the profession of teaching, giving the young nourishment from her spirit, knowledge from her learning, and from her conduct a good example for the girls of the future; she was the best of teachers in faithfulness, the loftiest of them in manner, the most fragrant of them in repute.

And she turned to public life, battling in the wide social field, performing woman's mission toward her sister woman with heart and ardor, extending a helping hand to most of the charitable associations, working with hand, pen, and tongue — writer, orator, and benefactress.

She was my colleague at the congress of the Social Studies Seminar in Egypt, and I found her the best of friends, offering her views with a force and a suppleness that made me love and respect her.

Dr. Zaki al-Naqqash, director of the Makassed Islamic College in Beirut, says:

The Makassed Islamic College in Beirut feels the blow of the painful calamity that has befallen us in the death of the gifted writer, the late Salwa al-Mahmasani Moumina.

We measure the gravity of the loss in her, and feel the greatness of the void she has left in our circles. She never shrank, God rest her, from coming to our club whenever occasion offered, or whenever she received from us an invitation to take part in serving the noble enterprise of the Islamic Maqasid — with the refined letters that distinguished her, the exact knowledge with which she was equipped, and the wide experience she had gained in educational and social affairs.

How often she spoke to the young men of the Arab Society, and to the youths of the Parliamentary Forum at our college, as the virtuous educator, the gifted woman of letters, and the Arab woman who believed in her nation's history, the reality of its nationhood, and the future of its homelands.

Whatever we may forget, we shall not forget her splendid part in the days when she joined certain men and women of letters in giving opinion and judgment in the composition and oratory competitions we were accustomed to hold among the pupils of the upper classes and those of the middle classes.

How often she excelled in her delivery, struck the very heart of truth in her analyses, and won the admiration of those present by her fine logic and the soundness of her taste.

Mrs. Heneni Tarcha, president of the Lebanese Women's League:

Whenever I think of the dear departed Salwa, tears choke me; her memory is precious to my heart as one complete and indivisible whole. She was, God rest her, one of the devoted companions of the struggle, and latterly my deputy in the League

I received the shock of your death with nothing to prepare me for it; my heart ached, I grieved, and life lost its savor for me.

And I learned that you had wilted and withered in a slow dying, and left our perishing abode in the prime of life and the flower of youth.

Thus did the sun of your life sink below the horizon; but your lofty spirit and your high principles remain shining in the sky of immortality.

You, Salwa, are a spiritual compound of inspired feeling and composed calm, together with rare wit and sincerity. Nothing was ever known of you but frankness and truthfulness. Your spirit expressed a nature ruled by moral feeling; you were given a great human readiness, one that proclaims, before the shows of material power, the rights of conscience and of human dignity, in unceasing struggle. You shared in bettering woman's condition, drawing strength from that spiritual inspiration compounded of the love of goodness, truth, and beauty.

You grew up in a noble, free house; you read all manner of books and magazines, and you discussed diverse

my wing, without which I cannot take flight.

I always knew her as the soldier ever ready. Never did I come to her with a request or a proposal but she hastened to answer my request with faithfulness, devotion, and ardor. And with what deliberation, maturity, and largeness of heart she handled matters! In stormy meetings, where debate rages hot, Salwa never once raised her voice, nor lost her nerve as most of us do; she remained that "perfect lady," composed of spirit, sacrificing her health, her rest, and her time for the cause of woman and the public good.

The loss the Lebanese Women's League has suffered in Salwa is a loss beyond repair; she has left in my heart, and in the heart of every member without exception, a void... and a lump in the throat.

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The word of the champion of woman, Ustad George Baz:

I learned of the literary gift of the two Mahmasani sisters together, at one and the same time. It was, I think, when I compiled the book "The Breezes" for our woman of letters Salma Sayegh, when I brought out my book "A Laurel Wreath" for the head of woman. I believe I presented her with a copy of it; I had been reading some of their writings in the press, and hearing of their letters from some of our women writers.

They both wrote to me in thanks, in a manner that gave proof of the Mahmasani women's literary gift.

So I came to respect the signatures of Widad and Salwa — a letter of literature that held a place in my heart.

From that time it pleased me to follow eagerly what the two budding women of letters penned.

Then Widad became absorbed in her family, while Salwa went on with her journalistic composition, her addresses at celebrations, and her radio talks.

Even after she had worn herself out in her Aziziyya school, and her health had begun its decline — not yet fully clear to her — I would see her saturate her subjects with study and research, and fill out what was weak in them with deduction.

Long of breath, ample of thought, clear of expression; her concern was the good of man and the general benefit.

How often I profited from her — as I do from her like among our Lebanese and Arab women of letters. And no wonder that one as helpless as I should profit from the letters of a daughter of a house distinguished by its

four sons and five daughters:

Two judges. A physician. A pharmacist. Five schoolmistresses. A doctor of law, professor in the universities. The president of the Pharmacists' Syndicate. Directresses of five institutes of learning.

I can only bow in reverence before the noble mother, one of the pioneers among our educated women of the nineteenth century.