Amina al-Said Lectures in Kuwait — Then Ibtihaj Kaddoura Plays Host to Her in Beirut!

The house of Miss Ibtihaj Kaddoura has been, and still is, the meeting place of the women of Lebanon in all their differing leanings; the former president of the General Arab Women's Union enjoys an eminent standing in the hearts of the fair sex, great and small.

It is commonly said of Miss Ibtihaj Kaddoura that she lets no opportunity pass without noticing it and profiting by it. And so she did not wish to keep to herself alone Mrs. Amina al-Said, the Egyptian woman of letters and journalist, as she passed through Beirut on her way back from Kuwait, where she had delivered two lectures at the official invitation of its government in its fourth cultural season... Rather, she did the impossible to make sure that Amina al-Said would stay a few days as her guest in Beirut, and hastened to invite the elite of Lebanese womanhood to a tea party at which they would gather round their Egyptian friend and exchange sincere feelings with her... The tea party, on Thursday afternoon, February 6, was a happy occasion for all, at which the conversation rose to a level worthy of the pick of Lebanon's women.

500 veiled women

Amina al-Said launched into talk, with her accustomed fluency and boldness, about the journey from which she had just returned from Kuwait... She admires the young renaissance in the sister Arab country, and is thankful to the government for its great hospitality... and appreciative of the people's eagerness to hear her lectures, despite her inclination, as usual, to strike at worn-out traditions such as the veil and the breakdown they cause in the social machinery... She was frank and bold, even before the five thousand present — among them some 500 veiled women!

I asked Mrs. al-Said: Was there not, in that gathering, a single unveiled lady? She answered: Indeed there was; out of the throngs heaped in black there shone upon me the radiant face of Emira Layla al-Mar'i... she alone was unveiled. And Mrs. Said went on to say:

An official mixed banquet in honor of Amina al-Said

— And on the occasion of my presence in Kuwait, a mixed banquet was held at the guest house, to which the Emir Sheikh Abdullah al-Jaber al-Sabah invited forty men and forty ladies as well. It was a happy precedent, which I credited to His Highness: it showed his open mind, his understanding of the spirit of the age, and his readiness to raise his country up the steps of civilization and progress.

And the greatest proof of the progressive spirit that has now begun to prevail in Kuwait is the generous tolerance the Ministry of Education showed toward the Egyptian lecturer, despite what is known of her liberality in certain of her social views... She will not, for example, consent to don for every country its own dress: what she says in Egypt she says also in Kuwait and in Beirut — and it was on these terms that Amina al-Said came to lecture to the crowds of Kuwait...

For women only!

As a further mark of esteem, a cultural lecture was organized for her which gathered some two thousand ladies and young ladies, lest they miss the great benefit of hearing Amina al-Said in her two principal lectures, whose subjects were: "The Arab Woman between Old and New" and "The Troubles of Youth in Arab Society." We can well imagine the gravity of what a frank, bold woman of letters like Amina al-Said might declare on these two subjects!

Her love for Lebanon

Here our guest closed the talk of Kuwait and let her eyes wander from the window into the radiant spring air... She is in Lebanon — and how great is her love for Lebanon and her admiration of it! Would that she could stay in Lebanon — but not alone! In Egypt she has a husband she loves and longs for, and three children at the start of their opening upon sweet youth: "Engy," the eldest, is 17, a student of agriculture at college, and like her are her two brothers, Ahmad Hazem and Basel, in secondary school — all of them with scientific, agricultural leanings like their father, the agricultural engineer... And Amina al-Said, "the wife and mother," can scarcely believe that she will soon return to the atmosphere of her happy home, carrying her children their presents: American records of the raucous sort!... She assures us, laughing, that she detests this color of music, and that when she expresses her taste to her children they laugh among themselves, hinting to her with the same frankness that this is one of the signs of old age!!...

...And Amina al-Said returns to Egypt, to her family, and to her work at the magazine "Hawwa"

and at "al-Musawwar"... We appreciated this gracious gesture of hers, in yielding to the insistence of our leader Ibtihaj Kaddoura and staying a few days as her guest, to see her Lebanese "dear ones" — as she put it. As for summering with her family in our hills, the writer gave no promise of that, for their coming depends on circumstances... political ones, of course!