Amina al-Said among the crowds of Kuwaitis before the start of the lecture
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!
Had this picture been reported to me, I would not have believed it:
In a main street of the city of Beirut, the service taxi stopped at the policeman's signal. A man was crossing the street when a car passed close by him, its front all but touching the tip of his shoe — but it did not... The man's shouting rose high, and he began heaping every kind of abuse on the driver; then he went around to the driver's side and slapped him on his left cheek — and the poor man turned the other cheek to him... The qabaday did this, and went calmly on his way... while the policeman looked on without batting an eyelid...