Barbara Young was with Gibran at the hospital when he passed away. Soon afterward she packed the precious paintings and effects left in the studio where Gibran had lived for eighteen years, and sent them to his home town of Bcherri in Lebanon.
During her speaking tours Barbara exhibited more than sixty paintings of Gibran’s work. What became of this collection or any unfinished work, papers or letters she may have had depends on the generosity of those who bought, received or inherited these objects. Until they come forward, there will never be a complete biography of Gibran, particularly that part dealing with Barbara Young.
How close a relationship existed during these seven years can be answered, in part, by excerpts from Barbara’s own writing.
Barbara never lived with Gibran. She kept her own apartment in the city of New York.
One Sunday, Barbara wrote, accepting an invitation from Gibran, she went to the studio. Gibran was writing a poem; he was at his desk when she arrived. While composing Gibran usually paced the floor and then he would sit down to write a line or two.
“I waited while he repeated his writing and his walking again and again. Then a thought came to me. The next time he walked I went and seated myself at his table and took up his pencil, When he turned he saw me sitting there.
“‘You make the poem and I’ll write it,’ I said.”
After much protest Gibran consented to try it. He was pleased with the experiment.
“‘Well, you and I are two poets working together.’ He paused. Then after a silence, ‘We are friends,’ he said. ‘I want nothing from you, and you want nothing from me. We share life.’”
As they worked together and as she became more acquainted with his manner of thought and his work, she told him of her determination to write a book about him. Gibran was pleased and “it was from that time on that he talked often of his childhood, his mother and family, and some events in his life.”
One day Gibran asked, “Suppose you were compelled to give up — to forget all the words you know except seven — what are the seven words that you would keep?”
“I named only five,” Barbara wrote. “God, Life, Love, Beauty, Earth … and asked Gibran what other words would he select and he answered, ‘The most important words to keep are: You and I … without these two there would need to be no others’ then Gibran selected the seven words: You, I, Give, God, Love, Beauty, Earth.”
“Gibran liked a frugal supper in the studio,” Barbara wrote, “particularly during a period of his life when he was entertained and being feasted. This one evening Gibran said that ‘in the East there is a custom of eating all from one huge vessel. Let us have our soup tonight in one bowl!’ So we did and Gibran humorously drew an imaginary line through the soup and said, ‘this is your half of the soup and this other is my half. See to it that we neither one trespass upon the soup of the other!’ Then laughter and a thorough enjoyment, each of his own half of the soup.”
In another chapter Barbara wrote: “One evening when we were doing the book ‘Sea and Foam,’ I piled cushions on the floor and sat upon them instead of occupying my usual chair. Then I had a strange feeling of a familiarity about the gesture, and I said: ‘I feel as if I’ve sat like this besides you many times — but I really haven’t,’ and Gibran answered, ‘We have done this a thousand years ago, and we shall do it a thousand years hence.’
“And during the writing of the book ‘Jesus, the Son of Man’ the drama of some incident, now and again, was so overwhelming that I felt, and said, ‘It is so real. It seems as if I had been there.’ And his answer came, almost like a cry, ‘You were there! And so was I!’”
It is appropriate, here, to tell that two years after the death of Gibran, Barbara Young and this author met in the city of Cleveland. She asked: “How long would it take to learn the Arabic language?” I explained to her that for the purpose of translating any of Gibran’s works it would take many years to learn the classical version of the language; just to speak Arabic would be a different matter. In any event Arabic is a difficult language.
At that time I was studying for my law degree. I was neither interested in teaching Arabic nor contemplating the writing of a book about Gibran. She also told me that whenever Gibran painted a hand it was hers.
The most famous hand Gibran painted is the one with an eye in its palm. This painting was meant to represent the Phoenician Goddess Tanit. In honor of this Goddess, there are two cities in Lebanon called Eyetanit meaning “Eye of Tanit.”
This pose, the eye nestled in the palm of the hand, appeared in Carthage in North Africa, carried there by Gibran’s ancestors (the Phoenicians). The Phoenicians left one of these carvings of the hand of Tanit in Alabama before the arrival of Columbus.
Did Gibran see one of these hands in Lebanon, was the similarity a coincidence, or were Gibran and Barbara there when the Temples of Tanit were being built in Lebanon and Carthage long before the birth of Christ?
Barbara Young wrote that once when some women came to visit Gibran, they asked why he did not get married. He replied: “Well … you see it is like this. If I had a wife, and if I were painting or making poems, I should simply forget her existence for days at a time. And you know well that no loving woman would put up with such a husband for very long.”
One of the women, not satisfied with the smiling answer, prodded still deeper, “But have you never been in love?” Controlling himself with difficulty, he said, “I will tell you a thing you may not know. The most highly sexed beings upon the planet are the creators, the poets, sculptors, painters, musicians … and so it has been from the beginning. And among them sex is a beautiful and exalted gift. Sex is always beautiful, and it is always shy.”
Barbara Young wrote the following paragraph, which we quote, without comment, leaving it to the reader to determine her place in the life of Gibran:
“It is always wise to be wary of the woman who appears out of nowhere and claims a great man for her own when he is dead. But if there be those who never say, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but who maintain a silence, doing his works, may it not be that these are the hands that have indeed ministered unto him, these the hearts that have perceived the intricacies of his myriad being? And for myself, I do not doubt that through the turbulent years of this man’s life the ageless and universal cry for woman-comfort went out from his great loneliness, and that in the goodness of God, the cry was answered. To conclude otherwise would be the essence of stupidity.”
Mariana
Mariana, being a young sister of Gibran, was not consulted about her family’s migration.
She was not asked whether her brother should be sent to Lebanon and Europe. However, when tragedy struck, and her mother, her sister and brother Peter, who was the breadwinner, died of tuberculosis within two years, Mariana found herself alone with her brother Kahlil, whose literary work was awakening the Arab world and upsetting the Ottoman Empire. Mariana realized that literary greatness and money do not often meet until, and if, late in life. Gibran’s education was in Arabic; thus his articles and books were not bringing in sufficient cash to furnish the necessities of life.
Mariana refused to let her brother alter his plans or to take a job which would interfere with his literary and art career. She sewed and knit to keep a home for herself and for her brother. She encouraged him to paint until he had a collection ready for showing. Mariana did not have the money to pay for the display of his works, but Gibran managed to borrow twenty dollars from a Lebanese woman, who lived in Boston then, and is still living now, in Lebanon, and considers Gibran’s note her greatest possession.
The investment in Gibran’s education paid dividends, not only to the literary world but in money as well. The estimate of the royalties from Gibran’s books is over a million and a half dollars. These royalties are sent to his home town, Bcherri. However, he left to his sister, Mariana (Mary), who still lives in Boston, sufficient money for her to retire with security for the rest of her life. She was on very good terms with Barbara
Young, who dedicated the book The Man From Lebanon to her.
May Ziadeh
May Ziadeh was Gibran’s love on paper only; he never saw her. May was a Lebanese girl, whose family had moved to Egypt. An only child, she was educated in the Middle East and later went to Europe to study; later she wrote articles in her father’s magazine and in other French and Arabic publications. Her parents’ home was a meeting place for most of the prominent literary men in Egypt. Gibran’s articles, appearing at this time, in many papers and magazines, were often a topic of discussion.
May, admiring Gibran’s articles, decided to write to him. Fearing that he might disregard her letters as simply those from another admirer, she wrote, in the beginning, an introduction of herself. She explained that she wrote articles and books, and that much of her work appeared under the nom de plume, Isis Cubia. Then she proceeded to tell him the great effect his writing was having upon the Egyptian community.
Gibran was prompt in his answer. He wrote admiring her courage and thanking her for working toward the liberation of women in the Middle East. He told her that he was mailing her, in a separate package, a copy of his new book, The Broken Wings. And he tried to explain how he came to give it that title:
“I inherited from my mother ninety percent of my character and my disposition. This does not mean that I inherited her beauty and her humility, or her big heart. I recall that she told me once, when I was twenty years old, that it would have been much better for me and the people had I become a monk in one of the monasteries.”
“I said, ‘It is true except that I took you as a mother before I came into this world.’”
“She replied, ‘If you had not come, you would have remained an angel.’”
“I answered, ‘I am still an angel.’”
“She smiled and asked, ‘But where are your wings?’”
“I placed her arms on my shoulders and then said, ‘These are my wings.’”
“She responded, ‘But they are broken.’”
Gibran added in his letter: “My mother, since passed beyond the blue horizon, but her words, ‘the broken wings’ remained with me and I used them for the title of the novel I am sending to you. I appreciate your personal opinion.”
May sent her opinion, admiring the book, but sharply disagreeing with Gibran, because in the story he condoned a married woman meeting with her former lover.
“Regardless of how innocent it was,” May wrote, “it is a betrayal of the husband, it is a betrayal of the name she carries and it is a betrayal of society.”
In the meantime, the intelligentsia of Egypt were planning to honor a Lebanese poet and Gibran was to be one of the speakers. Unable to attend, mainly because he didn’t have the money, Gibran sent an article “The Poet of Baalbek”1 to be read at the affair. The toastmaster, knowing about the correspondence between Gibran and May, asked her to read the article.
Even though it was May’s first attempt at public speaking, her reading earned an ovation. Thus, she had auctioned her heart to Gibran. They corresponded until his death. May’s letters were not all of love, for she criticized his writing frequently and prodded him to write on certain subjects.
Once May wrote:
“The new Turkish governor arrived in Lebanon, and as usual, he began removing people from their jobs. He is following in the footsteps of his predecessors. The Lebanese people are prostrating themselves before his feet. When are we going to have among us men of courage? When are the Lebanese going to shake off the dust of insult? Why don’t you write on this subject? The people respect your ideas, Gibran. Remind them they are men and men should not humble themselves.”
Writing on the subject Gibran said:
“Woe to the nation that receives her conquerors beating the drums. Woe to the nation that hates oppression in her sleep and accepts it in her awakening. Woe to the nation that raises her voice only behind a coffin and prides itself only in the cemetery. Woe to a nation that does not revolt until her neck is placed on the scaffold.”
Gibran wrote and asked May to come to the United States. She refused because she was a woman and custom did not permit her; she asked him to come to Egypt. Part of Gibran’s letter said; “What can I say about my economic condition?”
“A year or two ago I had some peace and quiet. But now the quietness has turned into tumult and peace into struggle. The people are demanding my days and nights. I am overwhelmed by their demands. Every once in a while I leave this great city to elude the people and to escape from myself. The American public is mighty. It never wearies or gets tired, is never exhausted, never sleeps and never dreams. If it dislikes you it destroys you with neglect and if it likes you it destroys you with its affection and demand.”
“The day may yet come when I can escape to the Middle East. If it were not for this cage, whose bars I have wrought with my own hands — I would have taken the first ship going East. What man would desert a building whose stones he had hewn and polished his entire life even though it had become a prison?”
In one of her letters May wrote:
“I do not know what I am doing but I know that I love you. I fear love. I expect too much of love, and I fear that I never will receive all my expectations.…How dare I write this to you.…? However, I thank God I am writing it and not saying it. If you were present I would have vanished after such a statement and disappeared until you had forgotten what I said.”
“I blame myself for taking even this much liberty. Nevertheless, right or wrong, my heart is with you and the best thing it can do is to hover over you and guard you with compassion.”
May’s heart needed to hover only for a short time because Gibran’s health was failing. He wrote:
“You know, May, every time I think of departing, that is, in death, I enjoy my thoughts and am contented to leave.”
Gibran departed in 1931 at the age of forty-seven after nearly nineteen years of his love affair, on paper, with May Ziadeh.
Salma Karamy
Gibran was eighteen “when love opened his eyes by its magic rays and Salma was the first woman” to do it.
Gibran wrote a novel in Arabic about his first love. No other author could have narrated the events better than Gibran. However, biographers and Gibran’s neighbors insist that Gibran’s first girl was called Hala Eldaher and that the events of the story took place in Bcherri instead of Beirut.
Gibran intended to buy the monastery of Mar Sarkis where Salma once met him. This monastery was actually carved in a cliff for a safe refuge. To enter it in the old days required either a rope or a ladder. Mariana, Gibran’s sister, bought it. A footpath was built later for the convenience of visitors who now bow humbly before the resting place of Gibran, who had wished to retire there in life but reached his refuge only in death.
Among his last letters exists evidence of Gibran’s desire “to go to the Middle East, to Lebanon, to Bcherri, to Mar Sarkis, that hermitage carved in the rock and overlooking the most astonishing sight the eye could ever see of the whole valley.” Gibran was longing for the “new life in the heart of nature; among the golden fields of wheat, the green meadows, the flocks of sheep being led to pasture, the roaring falls and the rising mist reflecting in the rays of the sun.”
Salma is presented to the reader in The Broken Wings, Gibran’s own love story which has been on the best-seller list in Arabic for more than forty years.
1. Baalbek was the hometown of the poet being honored.
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Kahlil Gibran, Mirrors of the Soul
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