I have known Dr. Buthayna Sha'ban as a university professor, diplomat, minister and adviser to the Syrian president. But before being this or that, she is a dear friend whom I consider to be a one-member Arab women's organization, although her political fame overshadows all her other activities. I was in Beirut during the holidays, and I chose to spend a day in Damascus to meet with Buthayna (and after her, with Dr. Ramadan Shallah and Dr. Khaled Mashaal). Near the end of my stay in Beirut, I also met with another dear friend and co-contributor in science and intellectual conferences, Mrs. Bahia Hariri. Dr. Buthayna Sha'ban has a firsthand encyclopaedic and academic knowledge of Arab women's intellectual activities, both in the past and at present. She presented me with two books that she authored, and which were entitled: “With the Right and with the Left: Arab Women Speak Out about Themselves”, and “Discovered Voices: Arab [female] Novelists between 1989 and 2000”. Both books in fact reflect her Westernized education and culture, as the author studied and worked in some of the most prestigious American universities. As such, when she talks about May Ziade, she compares her to the English writer Virginia Woolf; she considers that while the first was the victim of extreme awareness of the rights of Arab women to the extent at which she was accused of insanity, the second was the victim of a similar awareness of the rights of Western women until she committed suicide. Also, Ziade had a literary salon while Virginia Woolf came to be known through the Bloomsbury Group. When Sha'ban then speaks about the novel written by Zeinab Mohammed “Secrets of an Egyptian Maid”), she compares it to the novel written by Samuel Richardson “Pamela and Clarissa”, with the difference being that the reader learns about Fekria, the main character of Zeinab Mohammed's novel, from her lover Wasfi who is talking about her to his friend Khayri. In the English language novel meanwhile, the writer is a man who discusses the morality of the young women of his time and age. Furthermore, I was personally pleased to read Buthayna Sha'ban's review of “The Wild Woman”, which was written by the Egyptian writer and journalist Amina Sa'id. Sa'id was one of the pillars of “Dar al-Hilal”, and was the editor in chief of “Al-Mousawwer” [the illustrator]. I read her works as I read the works of Dr. Aʾisha Abd al-Rahaman, (known as Bint al-Shati [Beach Girl]), which motivated me to take up reading as a teenager. There is no room to debate Buthayna in what regards her information, as it is all documented. Moreover, I found a lecture that she gave in 2006 at the University of Damascus about the role of Arab women in the contemporary era, and in which she mentioned that prior to the First World War, there were 25 Arab magazines active in the field of the emancipation of women, and that the Lebanese activist Zeinab Fawwaz al-Amliya wrote to the women of America in protest of a decision taken by a feminist conference there, which proclaims that women's rightful place is the home and their role should focus on raising their children. If I am to condense the time that has elapsed until today, I would say that the best Arab achievement in the last two generations was the education of women, especially in the Gulf, until we arrived to the day when we saw women heading the universities of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the Gulf University, which is something that we are yet to see in Egypt or Lebanon or Syria. But despite this education, and despite the trend of female excellence over men in the exams, and the strength of the arguments advanced by Buthayna, I find that Arab women still lack many rights, and that they are far from enjoying full equality. Meanwhile, I find that the Arab men, in many countries albeit not all of them, only bully Arab women because they failed to rise up to the other men in the rest of the world. If there is one thing in common between Buthayna Sha'ban and Bahia Hariri, it would the national Arab commitment. I had met Bahia through her brother Rafik, rest in peace, and our relationship became closer through our work in the Arab Thought Foundation, of which she is one of the trustees, and is in its Board of Directors as I am. We had both participated in many conferences from Morocco to the Gulf, passing through Cairo and Beirut. Mrs. Bahia Hariri plays a key role in the Hariri Foundation for Human Development, with her focus being on education. She is also the founder of Al-Taef Forum, a cultural, political and dialogue forum. When I visited her in her office that overlooks the Riad al-Solh Square, I learned that she is currently planning a new project for which she assembled a high-calibre work team. However, I will not reveal any details pending her official announcement. All the above does not preclude her interest in the affairs of her hometown Sidon, which she represents in the Parliament. When her son Ahmad Mustafa Hariri married in last autumn, there was also a mass wedding ceremony taking place in the Rafik Hariri stadium (about 60 weddings for young men and women from the area, including Palestinians). On March 14, 2005, before the tomb of Rafik Hariri, and while the wound had not yet healed, Bahia Hariri gave a speech and said: “We will not say goodbye Syria, or thank you Syria, but we will say until we meet again with our sister Syria, because brothers do not become distant and do not blame each other. They instead grow together, rise together and help each other...we will be at Syria's side as I was always on its side, and we will stand together until its lands are liberated, and until its sovereignty over the occupied Golan is restored”. The Syrians and all the Arabs still remember these words spoken by Bahia Hariri, who in the part of her speech prior to the above had spoken about the Arabs' primary cause, the Palestinian cause, and this people's right of return and right to establish its state with its capital Jerusalem. She pledged that the Lebanese people will continue to support their Palestinian brothers, having both shed blood and will continue to do so until victory. I am proud of the achievements of Sha'ban and Bahia Hariri, and I am proud that they are both among my friends. [email protected]
