Clouds...

The freedom you women are chasing is nothing but illusion and fantasy!

My interlocutor threw out these words and turned in his seat with a nervous movement. Then he passed his hand over his upper lip like a man trying to twirl an imaginary mustache of which the barber's razor had left nothing.

When he got no answer from me, he went on:

He who has grown used to slavery remains a slave, and finds bliss in slavery even if he lives in an air of freedom. Like that fish which a glass barrier kept from reaching the other half of the water vessel. Every time it passed the barrier it drew away, for fear of colliding with it. At last the barrier was lifted, and still the fish, whenever it passed the spot, drew away in fear and made no attempt to cross.

I sensed in my interlocutor's face some news he could not keep to himself; he needed to unburden it. So I asked him: And what has driven you to this philosophizing?

He straightened in his seat and said:

I have spent no small part of my life defending woman, calling on man to do her justice — not because I believe, as some zealots do, that woman harbors great latent powers, but because I incline to championing right against wrong. I defend woman when man wrongs her, exploiting her or tyrannizing over her. And I defend man likewise when woman burdens him with her demands and lives as a parasite upon him.

In our neighborhood lives Jamil Abdallah, known for the coarseness of his character and the ugliness of his face... as if those who named him Jamil had set out to mock him. Not a day passes without our hearing his shouting and his curses. People have put his ferocity down to a chronic stomach ailment that struck him when he was young. And though they loathe him in secret, they are not sparing of courtesies toward him, because he is rich. It is this wealth of his that enabled him to obtain a beautiful wife some twenty years younger than himself... This wife has endured from him what a man condemned to hard labor endures. He flies into a rage at the slightest cause, and sometimes at no cause at all, and falls to cursing and yelling. I will not tell you of his stinginess and cruelty; you have no doubt seen samples of this miserliness that borders on madness, which makes its owner guard a single piaster as he guards his own life — nay, more.

This man had a daughter named Nahla, who resembled her mother exactly in charm and beauty. But from childhood she was more inclined to freedom and less docile than her mother. She spent several years of her girlhood with an aunt of hers in Beirut, where her eyes opened upon a world other than the world of the village, and there she received some learning and some modern ideas. From the time of her return home, suitors hovered about her, drawn by her fair complexion and her blue eyes. Her father coveted marrying her to the richest of them, and despite his wealth he refused to spend a single piaster on what they call a dowry or a trousseau. He takes care to reserve his money and his property for his male children.

One day there came to ask for the girl's hand a middle-aged widower of great wealth, who resembled her father in many respects. Her father saw in him the son-in-law he had been seeking. And I began to wonder: would the girl submit to the father, and history repeat itself?

The girl resisted as long as she could. A violent struggle broke out between her and her father, and lasted for some time. The mother all the while kept silent, offering no opinion and not daring to intervene. Then one day someone came along who persuaded the girl to accept, because "as long as her father was set on his resolve, no new suitor would come her way. And since Amin Barhoum was rich, she would live with him like a queen. Her life at home had grown hard, what with her father's anger and obstinacy. And it was high time she became mistress of a house, with servants hastening about her and watching over her comfort, wearing whatever clothes and jewels she desired."

• Freedom is a relative thing, and cannot be attained in full. There is no doubt that the woman of today is freer than the woman of yesterday.

• Striving with failure is better than standing still. And the struggle for liberation, even if it ends in disappointment, is better than contentment with humiliation and the crushing of the self.

• Revolt is the sign of life and the road to freedom.

Nahla Abdallah was wedded to Amin Barhoum in a grand celebration, and passed a few months with him in contentment and harmony. Then before long discord crept in between them. She complained of loneliness and boredom, and multiplied her visits to her aunt and her acquaintances in Beirut. He is intensely jealous and quick to suspect, wanting her never to leave the village or the house except in his company. She loves amusement and going about; he prefers keeping to the house. She is quick-tempered, and so is he. But he tries to humor her for fear of gossip, while she grows ever more defiant and stubborn... An aversion to her husband had grown up in her soul which she could not overcome. At last she told him to his face: "She had been married to him against her will. The deceivers had deceived her. Her marriage was a grievous mistake, and she must rid herself of it by divorce and separation..."

And the go-betweens who had worked for the marriage came back — came back to mediate, to mend the breach and settle the dispute. They took to urging her to follow the example of her mother, who had remained faithful to her husband and obedient to him despite the differences of age and temperament between them. She had endured from him what Nahla had never endured from her husband. Was it not a disgrace for her to behave this way? And how could she get a divorce, and where would she go, when her own family disapproved of her conduct?

The mediators' attempts to bring the couple together were repeated; they would succeed for a while, and then the quarreling would return worse than before. So matters stood between them for several years, neither one yielding to the other. It happened one day that he threatened to kill her, and she fled, and her father brought her back by force. Once she attempted suicide, and her mother had to stay with her for a time, watching over her for fear she might attempt it again.

All the while people talked endlessly of this marriage and passed its news from mouth to mouth, as is their way. One would lay the blame on the husband, another on the wife, setting the mother against the daughter and repeating: "Even a living rose can bring forth a monkey." "God save us from the girls of today. Look at the difference between the mother and her daughter!"

One day she fled her husband's house, intending never to return. She began moving from her aunt's house to the house of a friend of hers, seeking a position or some work. The old zeal stirred in me, and I vowed to myself to help her win free. I in my turn began going from one friend to another, from office to shop. After attempts and efforts I succeeded in placing her in one of Beirut's banks, where she took up light work at an acceptable salary. And I felt the pleasure of the fighter who has done a humane deed.

I saw her some time later in Beirut; her body had grown thin and her face had changed. She passed me by as though she had not seen me — or perhaps she did it on purpose. When I asked after her, I was told she had wearied of this state of things and had come to hate work; she wished to return to her husband by any means whatever. And I learned lately that the go-betweens — God keep them! — had succeeded in persuading him to take her back; the storm has subsided and the struggle is over.

* * *

After a pause to rest, my interlocutor said:

And now, what do you think of this woman? Would it not have been better for her to keep silent as her mother kept silent,

instead of rising in her failed revolt and coming back to her husband in defeat? She is incapable of freeing herself, incapable of living on her own. Better for her to accept the husband, even if he does not satisfy her pride, and to be content with little rather than attempt the impossible.

I said: I prefer the daughter to the mother, because she strove and failed. Striving with failure is better than standing still. And the struggle for liberation, even if it ends in disappointment, is better than contentment with humiliation and the crushing of the self. Revolt is the sign of life and the road to freedom.

He cried: And what freedom do you mean? Is the woman of today any freer than the woman of yesterday? She merely passes from the slavery of the home to the slavery of work in a factory or an office or a school... And what difference is there between one slavery and another?

I said: The family used to force her to marry whom they chose; today she marries whom she chooses.

He said, curling his lip: Sheer fantasy!... Do you believe that the woman of today is any luckier than her grandmother in reaching the young man of her dreams? Do you not see that she usually accepts the first suitor who asks, for fear no other will come?... In the old days the husband gave the wife a bride-price, or presented her with money as a wedding gift; today it is she who buys him with her money, or tempts him with her position or her monthly salary... and I do not know which of the two ways is worse!... The woman of yesterday did the work of the house. The woman of today works in the house and outside the house — that is, her work has been doubled, and I do not know which of the two conditions is the more enticing... Woman's work changes like the fashions. Yesterday we let our mustaches grow, and today we go to extremes in shaving them off, according to the prevailing style... Yesterday the husband thought it a scandal to have his wife work outside the house; today he encourages her to work... yet none of this has lessened her slavery one bit...

He stopped speaking, wanting to rest. And when he got no answer from me, he made to leave, supposing he had silenced me. But I was not convinced; rather I said with warmth, motioning him to listen:

You are mistaken... Freedom is a relative thing, and cannot be attained in full. There is no doubt that the woman of today is freer than the woman of yesterday. In work she is still a beginner, awkward and confused, and that is why she frets and complains of exhaustion or of tyranny. But once the worker's condition improves and woman grows used to working outside the home, she will come to find in it pleasure and solace — quite apart from its being the means of her economic liberation, for it frees her from the family's favors and the husband's dominion... That girl whose story you told me — had she been used to work beforehand, she would have found no hardship in it, nor wished to return to a husband to whom no bond ties her.

And there we both stopped talking. My interlocutor stopped because he had wearied of the argument and wanted to go. And I stopped because I sank into reflection, and began asking myself: Can freedom be an illusion, as he claims?... Do we shake off one set of chains only to fall into another?... No. That is not the freedom we seek... Work has not yet liberated woman. And the road to freedom is thorny and hard... The problems of society are complicated, exceedingly complicated. It is idle to hope they will be solved easily, or in a short space of time.