There are in the
Middle East today two challenging ideas: old and new. The old ideas will
vanish because they are weak and exhausted.
There is in the
Middle East an awakening that defies slumber. This awakening will
conquer because the sun is its leader and the dawn is its army. In the
fields of the Middle East, which have been a large burial ground, stand
the youth of Spring calling the occupants of the sepulchers to rise and
march toward the new frontiers. When the spring sings its hymn the dead
of the winter rise, shed their shrouds and march forward. There is on
the horizon of the Middle East a new awakening; it is growing and
expanding; it is reaching and engulfing all sensitive, intelligent
souls; it is penetrating and gaining the sympathy of noble hearts.
The Middle East,
today, has two masters. One is deciding, ordering, being obeyed; but he
is at the point of death. But the other is silent in his conformity to
law and order, calmly awaiting justice; he is a powerful giant who knows
his own strength, confident in his existence and a believer in his
destiny.
There are today in
the Middle East, two men: one of the past and one of the future. Which
one are you? Come close; let me look at you and let me be assured by
your appearance and conduct if you are one of those coming into the
light or going into the darkness. Come an tell me who and what are you.
Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a
zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the
first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in
a desert. Are you a merchant utilizing the need of society for the
necessities of life, for monopoly and exorbitant profit? Or a sincere,
hard-working and diligent man facilitating the exchange between the
weaver and the farmer? Are you charging a reasonable profit as a
middleman between supply and demand? If you are the first; then you are
a criminal whether you live in a palace or a prison. If you are the
second, then you are a charitable man whether you are thanked or
denounced by the people.
Are you a religious
leader, weaving for your body a gown out of the ignorance of the people,
fashioning a crown out of the simplicity of their heads and pretending
to hate the devil merely to live upon his income? Or are you a devout
and a pious man who sees in the piety of the individual the foundation
for a progressive nation, and who can see through a profound search in
the depth of his own soul a ladder to the eternal soul that directs the
world? If you are the first, then you are a heretic, a disbeliever in
God even if you fast by day and pray by night. If you are the second,
then you are a violet in the garden of truth even though its fragrance
is lost upon the nostrils of humanity or whether its aroma rises into
that rare air where the fragrance of flowers is preserved.
Are you a
newspaperman who sells his idea and his principle in the slave market,
who lives on the misery of people like a buzzard which descends only
upon a decaying carcass? Or are you a teacher on the platform of the
city gathering experience from life and presenting it to the people as
sermons you have learned? If you are the first, then you are a sore and
an ulcer. If you are the second, then you are a balsam and a medicine.
Are you a governor
who denigrates himself before those who appoint him and denigrates those
whom he is to govern, who never raises a hand unless it is to reach into
pockets and who does not take a step unless it is for greed? Or are you
the faithful servant who serves only the welfare of the people? If you
are the first, then you are as a tare in the threshing floor of the
nations; and if the second, then you are a blessing upon its granaries.
Are you a husband
who allows for himself what he disallows for his wife, living in
abandonment with the key of her prison in his boots, gorging himself
with his favorite food while she sits, by herself, before an empty dish?
Or are you a companion taking no action except hand in hand, nor doing
anything unless she gives her thoughts and opinions, and sharing with
her your happiness and success? If you are the first then you are a
remnant of the tribe which, still dressing in the skins of animals,
vanished long before leaving the caves; and if you are the second, then
you are a leader in a nation moving in the dawn toward the light of
justice and wisdom.
Are you a searching
writer full of self-admiration, keeping his head in the valley of a
dusty past, where the ages discarded the remnant of its clothes and
useless ideas? Or are you a dear thinker examining what is good and
useful for society and spending your life in building what is useful and
destroying what is harmful? If you are the first, then you are feeble
and stupid, and if you are the second, then you are bread for the hungry
and water for the thirsty.
Are you a poet, who
plays the tambourine at the doors of emirs, or the one who throws the
flowers during weddings and who walks in processions with a sponge full
of warm water in his mouth, a sponge to be pressed by his tongue and
lips as soon as he reaches the cemetery? Or have you a gift which God
has placed in your hands on which to play heavenly melodies which draw
our hearts toward the beautiful in life? If you are the first, then you
are a juggler who evokes in our soul that which is contrary to what you
intend. If you are the second, then you are love in our hearts and a
vision in our minds.
In the Middle East
there are two processions: One procession is of old people walking bent
backs, supported with bent canes; they are out of breath though their
path is downhill. The other is a procession of young men, running as if
on winged feet, and jubilant as with musical strings in their throats,
surmounting obstacles as if there were magnets drawing them up the
mountainside and magic enchanting their hearts. Which are you and in
which procession do you move? Ask yourself and meditate in the still of
the night, find if you are a slave of yesterday or free for the morrow.
I tell you that the
children of yesteryears are walking in the funeral of the era that they
created for themselves. They are pulling a rotted rope that might break
soon and cause them to drop into a forgotten abyss. I say that they are
living in homes with weak foundations; as the storm blows --and it is
about to blow-- their homes will fall upon their heads and thus become
their tombs. I say that all their thoughts, their sayings, their
quarrels, their compositions, their books and all their work are nothing
but chains dragging them because they are too weak to pull the load.
But the children of
tomorrow are the ones called by life, and they follow it with steady
steps and heads high, they are the dawn of new frontiers, no smoke will
veil their eyes and no jingle of chains will drown their voices. They
are few in number, but the difference is as between a grain of wheat and
a stack of hay. No one knows them but they know each other, they are
like the summits, which can see and hear each other --not like caves,
which cannot hear or see. They are the seed dropped by the hand of God
in the field, breaking through its pod and waving its sapling leaves
before the face of the sun. It shall grow into a mighty tree, its root
in the heart of the earth and its branches high in the sky.
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