I do still remember the shivering of the pen between your beautiful fingers, when you were asked to sign an official document… What stopped me then was your great wonderful persistence and determination to refuse the finger print, as if you were declaring aloud your rejection of illiteracy, that illiteracy which dyed the fate of an uneducated society. 
That day, mom the joy mixed together with the deep sorrow, sparkled in your innocent eyes. Your lips whispered with letters you never knew. You never realized that when your eyes met with those speechless letters that those letters were just a shortcut for your existence. 
With a trembling filled with fortitude you completed drawing the letters. When you had finished, the childhood shyness was clearly shown upon your cheeks ... As if I am able to see you at your first years at school carrying a cloth wallet that embraces pens, sheets and small bread rolls colored with urban thyme decorated by your mom’s compassionate hand. 
Mom I do remember when I heard you once blaming your father with loving in indignation and righteous reproach telling me: “They used to teach boys rather than girls under the excuse of feeling afraid on them! The girl would write a letter to her beloved if she ever learned how to write!” And what a fear default it was! It brings us back to Mecca desert, to the cemetery of femininity, to a day when femininity was a disgrace and shame and just a source of filthy sorrow.
It’s a great contradiction between a time bragging with console forcing the mind to bow in front of the stone idol and that of a time being victorious for the pen. But where are you between this and that?! 


It’s ought for my heart to be torn with sorrow when I see you passing through lines of words not attracted to poems, or when you turn pages without realizing the purposes. 

Oh! You most beautiful victim at the time of stupidity. Are we going to copy our weakness in order to give birth to a 1000 copy from your grief?! Or are we going to hold with salvation hands an enlightenment torch passing through the caves of silence. 
When are we going to realize that the only value is for human and that he’s the center of universe?! And that the only holly industry is the brain one. 
Oh my female mother! From the illiteracy pain which accompanied you for many years and which with distress you are going to hold it till the end, I call upon the alive conscience, those who care for their generations and countries … Free your minds from the clutches of tradition… 
And know that knowledge is an air which every woman has the right to breath. 

cheikh mohamad kanso
writer lebanese
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