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: