My Mother, the Widow with Seven Children

She was born in the middle of the twentieth century, where I know not, except that it was in some country of Latin America. As a baby she came to Lebanon with her father and mother to settle in their home village of Zouk.

The Neffah family, originally from Zouk, spread more or less everywhere between the capital Beirut and Beit Shebab. There they were master craftsman skilled in casting bells for the churches. Her father, Youssef, my maternal grandfather that is to say, who passed on to me his own name, was of a dominating character, a district leader, ready for a fight, dynamic, with bristling mustache lovingly cared for, greatly respected, a man for difficult or seemingly impossible missions. The mother, my grandmother, was of an angelic nature, kind, ready to help, and pious – in fact several of her sisters became nuns. But fate wished the couple to be in perpetual disagreement and the result was that the little daughter lived like an orphan.

She learnt to read and to write in the school of the Lazarist Sisters of Mercy in Zouk, as did the other children of her age. She learnt also to pray and to venerate the Holy Virgin, who was her companion throughout her life.

She made her own dolls and toys. Her father, severe and self-centered though he was and despite his many preoccupations and activities as a leader, loved her very much. As the Holy Virgin was to St. Ann, so was she to her mother, before whom she knelt to learn how to read, how to sew, how to knit, and how to make candies, particularly marzipan, this specialty of Zouk, molding the almond paste with her little hands and fingers, modeling flowers, birds and various other little figures.

She was called Eugénie. She was by no means tall, but was rather a little white doll, charming and gentle, beloved by her neighbors and relatives. It was at Zouk that she grew up under the care and protection of her mother, while her father came to see her from time to time.

Jesus also was born a little babe and then grew up, he who was the Creator Almighty.

With her slate carried under her arm, Eugénie went to school, did her homework and studied her lessons. She who was to be my mother was fond of study, Once home from school, I suppose she would help her mother Saydeh (Lady, meaning the Virgin Mary), picking up the broom, sweeping the verandahs, watering the flowers in their pots, helping her mother with the cooking, or playing with other girls of her age.

Zouk is a typical village, one with many convents and churches, and is a great center for master weavers, with many looms in its shops and houses. Zouk is specially famous for its renowned fine silk fabric. There was also fine embroidery and needlework as the Lazarist Sisters taught these and similar skills.

The students were also productive workers, gaining a living by the deftness of their fingers. In the village there was also a khan for the raising of silk, while marzipan was made in every house, an activity exclusive to Zouk.

Being a native of Zouk meant that one was familiar with all these crafts. Zouk is on a group of picturesque hills liberally planted with almond trees and also fig trees, olive trees and vines, making it in spring a fairyland of blossom. There are also trees of Seville orange, a kind once found in the wild with bitter fruit, having strong resistance to drought and the various parasites, and bearing flowers that are picked and then distilled to obtain the flower water used in sweet pastries and candies on account of its agreeable perfume.

Cactus grows on its own as does the myrtle tree. Here the inhabitants were good to each other, helpful, hospitable, generous and open-hearted.

Zouk overlooks the Bay of Jounieh. It faces Bkerki and Harissa on one side and Beirut and the Metn on the other. It is a dream of a place, and there Eugénie would run and play with her dolls and her little friends, or go with them to pick wild thyme and gather twigs for baking the local bread. Sometimes they drew water from the well or turned towards a nearby fountain, Ain el-Zouk, Ain El-Bassile, or the Spring of Hrash or of Antoura, in order to fill a small jar. In Zouk itself there were several small springs of pure drinking water.

Tarred roads did not exist yet and most in use were the pathways and short cuts. In fact people did not move about much as they do now. Some would pass a whole lifetime without ever seeing Beirut, a few hours’ walk away. It was in this wholesome and unspoilt environment that Eugénie grew up under the affection lavished upon her by her mother. She grew up little by little into a young girl well formed, pretty, warm-hearted and a firm believer, fasting every Saturday in honor of the Virgin and offering her many little sacrifices.

One day there passed an entrepreneur, athletic, of strong build, and active, who rested neither by day nor by night. Though still young, he had suffered the loss of his young bride Isabelle. Capable and clever, he was much in demand by nearly all the religious communities, schools and convents, for he was both correct and good. For him lies did not exist, for he was straight, exact, devout and courageous. Though he knew not a word of French, he set up a work site on the premises of the French nuns.

The Mother Directress esteemed and respected him greatly. Knowing that he was a widower, she suggested a second marriage to him, with a wonderful young girl, modest, pure, beautiful and obedient, kind and withall capable, like Sarah, Ann and Elizabeth. She would make an ideal mother and a loyal spouse, ready to raise a family.

Here she was, Eugénie, only daughter of a good family, modest and hard-working. What offer could be better for the little girl of Zouk? For Toufic was madly in love with Eugénie and would be a good husband and a good father, everything for this little maiden he adored. Yes, he adored her and Eugénie returned his adoration. They lived an intimate and sacred love.

She was his doll, his pearl, his plaything. When she was between her bridegroom’s strong arms and his tender heart, Eugénie was in paradise. It was an adventure in a dream world, a fairyland of marvels.

Then before long the Good Lord blessed them with a large family, five beautiful daughters and two sons, both intelligent, particularly the elder one; the other was myself.

Two boys and five girls, quite a family to present to the world!

Eugénie then involved herself in the work of the father, her dear husband. She lent him a hand in everything, creating around him a really pleasant atmosphere where with his active and dynamic temperament he could relax. In this way Toufic, the little baker’s boy who had never been to school, this self-taught fellow who could pierce all secrets, Toufic with his flourishing business, ended up with a small fortune, pieces of land, and finally two three-storey buildings. He had large workshops to serve many building sites.

Saydeh, the mother of Eugénie, lived with the couple and helped with the education of the children. But in life Providence shall we say or chance has a say in human affairs. Now her good fortune ran out for Eugénie. One day, her adorable husband on coming in from the rain caught a simple pneumonia and his doctor, the most eminent one in Jounieh during the nineteen-thirties, diagnosed appendicitis!

What appalling ignorance! He prescribed baths of ice for Toufiq in order to reduce the inflammation. His condition got worse and he was taken to hospital, but too late! It must be remembered that antibiotics did not exist in those days.

I was barely a year old when my father passed away, so I have no memory of this worthy man. But all those who knew him said that his death was a great loss, for he was always most helpful, generous, friendly and kind-hearted, with many friends.

We are told that for its time his funeral was exceptional, spectacular, attended by a great crowd in tears. The whole district was in mourning and his burial was a religious event, for the dearest son of Jounieh had gone to God.

Now Eugénie, a widow at only twenty-six or -seven, having lost her loved one, her mainstay, her hero, her dear husband Toufic, found herself again all alone to face the difficulties of life, with seven children depending on her.

She was still beautiful, was Eugénie, and many felt for her and even desired her. She would have been able to take up the threads of life again and live in comfort without serious worry.

But no! she chose the difficult way. She was a person of principle, idealist in her manner of thinking and acting and for her to love anyone other than Toufic would have been an act of treason. She wore black for the rest of her life. Toufic filled her whole being, her whole existence. Every day she wept for him, ever mourning for him, and the anniversary of his trespass was a time of sobbing and lamentation. She attended the Mass and then betook herself to his tomb, where she almost took leave of her senses, choking with grief. On her finger she wore two wedding rings, her own and that of Toufic, the one man she had ever loved and was now gone from this world.

“You may be grateful, you may love me and help me, but never like Toufic, whose love was like that of no other and who adored me.” God, the Holy Virgin and all the saints, Toufic had found them in the purity of the beautiful soul of Eugénie.

Every Tuesday throughout the year she fasted in honor of Saint Anthony that he might keep watch and guard over Tony, her elder son, and every Wednesday she fasted in honor of Saint Joseph so that this holy patron might protect and guide her other son, Joseph.

To the latter boy she said, “I pray and ask of God to give you the power to transform all that you touch into gold and that everything that passes between your skilful hands may become precious like gold.”

On Thursdays she fasted in honor of the Blessed Sacrament, so firm was her faith and so close her union with God. On Fridays she also fasted, in honor of Christ crucified on Good Friday for the salvation of mankind. On Saturdays she fasted in honor of the Virgin Mary and abstained from sugar and fruit. As for Sundays and Mondays I know not to whom her fasting and sacrifice were dedicated. She attended Mass and received Holy Communion nearly every day.

Sin was something unknown to her. She worked in silence, for others, for all her family, despite the asthma that troubled her and her heart that was tired. She did sewing and repair work, she rented out rooms for pupils studying in the school of the Brothers, she sold the produce of her garden, oranges, myrtle and vegetables, and when the worst came to the worst she sold off a building.

Her children grew up, the daughters were due to be married, the problems multiplied, yet Eugénie always found a way to resolve every difficulty. There were first communions, the children’s studies, their education, care for their health, birthdays to celebrate, and liquid cash to be borrowed for urgent needs, surgical operations, accidents and the unforeseen, with interest to be paid.

She wanted us to spend our summers up in the mountain. Her only capital was her sewing machine, so we took to barter; Eugénie sewed, did repairs, and tailored the clothes of the village people, in exchange for which they brought us milk products, eggs, fruit, vegetables and so on. She herself ate nothing before seeing all the family served, making every sacrifice for our happiness.

It was with her breviary that she passed her time, her book of prayer, and she would sit praying with her faced turned toward Harissa and Our Lady of Lebanon. In this breviary she had photographs of us all, and every prayer she said would be offered for one of our number. Eugénie was an ideal mother, ideal and true. A mother is always a mother, at the age of eighty as at fifty.

The feelings of a mother have nothing to do with her age. Her feelings are not to be measured by counting her years. A mother is a tigress when she is standing up for her children. A mother is a flame which burns in order to give light to others. A mother is one who has no thought for herself but only for the service of her little ones. A mother is one who puts up with the ingratitude of her children and continues to love them. A mother is one who pardons whatever the wrong. A mother is the Paradise which opens to all believers.

She is the water that slakes the thirst of the parched, the sacred fire that overwhelms us and makes us shed tears. She is the one who comes to the rescue in times of difficulty.

How many tales, how many allegories, how many legends have been told about a mother and about the Virgin Mary, Mother too of our Savior.

A mother is the one who waits in the darkness and the muse who sings in our unconscious. She is abundance, she is fertility. She is an image of Nature, giving and not taking. The people, this is she. As for the man, he too often is like the drone bee.

Existence is a mother. From the height of his cross, the Savior called to his mother, recalling to her that we are all her children! In Paradise she is enthroned with the Trinity. How many authors and poets there are who have written with beauty of mother, a subject always present, a quarry inexhaustible. She carries the child in her breast, a part of her very self, she suckles, cares for, educates it all her life long.

Eugénie, the little girl of Zouk, loved and favored, Eugénie growing and waking up to the world, pious and attentive, Eugénie the bride, loved and adored. Then Eugénie the young widow bearing all the responsibilities, who had to deal with her situation all alone to overcome all difficulties and face everything that stood in the way of her family, of her children seven.

The children grew up, each one following his or her own way. Some of the daughters got married. The third, Isabelle, the most cultivated and instructed of the sisters, went out to work, becoming the first to support the courageous widow her mother. She found suitable employment in a ministry as a secretary typist – computers were unknown in those days – and gave her mother all possible help.

Indeed Isabelle spent everything she earned to improve the home, purchasing a carpet for the sitting room or other household goods, clothes for her brothers and sisters, and the various needs of the family.

So it was that Eugénie had at last someone beside her to help ensure the happiness of the home. Next it was Tony who went out to work. He earned money which also lightened the burden of household expenses, then the fourth child did as much, and finally I myself. Soon Eugénie was no longer burdened with financial worries; everything that I gained, though modest at first, was at her disposal.

But Eugénie was now worn and tired after twenty years of widowhood; aged forty-five, she looked like a woman of sixty. The memory of Toufic was always with her and she remained ever faithful to him as in a love story. At forty-five she continued to lay flowers on his tomb and wept as though he had left the world that very day.

With her rosary ever in her hand, she began her day with Holy Mass in one of the neighboring churches, of the Brothers or of the Sisters, and always she fasted. The Church called on the faithful to fast during Lent, but she fasted all her life long, and all her life she abstained from meat and even from fruit and delicacies.

Soon another preoccupation arose as all her attention became centered on her grandchildren. Her grandchildren were as close as could be to her heart. Does not the saying go, “None more dear to the heart than one’s children save the children of one’s children”? And what of the right of matriarchate?

Eugénie cared for each of the little ones, thinking of their birthdays and feast-days, concerned about their schooling and their health. I find this only natural, for the cinema, night-clubs, pleasures all were no part of her world. The church was her favorite resort. As for myself, the last unmarried one in the family, I stayed beside her, sleeping in the same room. I administered her medicines, the pills red, blue, white or pink, all known to her by their color. At my least movement, sound or deep breath she gave a little cough just to show that she was there and awake and watching over me if ever I should need some service.

It pained me to see her tired. She loved to work and to prepare sweet pastries to offer to our friends. If I returned home late at night, I would find her dozing in a chair awaiting me. She was anxious about me whenever I left the house, for I was as a part of her own self. She took care of my clothes and of my food and warmly welcomed my friends.

“Take care of your brother; when I die, be always at his side, do not leave him alone. Continue to love each other as I have always loved you all.” She had heart trouble and knew that any moment might be her last. She told me that nobody on this earth had loved her as had Toufic, my father, and she knew that children are often ungrateful. She loved all her grandchildren, but what made her most happy was to see one of them grow up who was also named Toufic, after his grandfather, and it was thanks to her that his life was once saved.

He was barely a year old, when they were staying in a village in the Beqaa. Noticing that the child had a high fever, which was getting worse, she stopped a car and insisted on their leaving for Jounieh that very night and during the night they arrived. The little one was screaming with pain without stopping. All the hours of darkness I carried him in my arms and from the first light of dawn he was treated with antibiotics, after which he calmed down. For Eugénie, the recovery of little Toufic was the return of the old Toufic to her home. The name Toufic means good luck, and she could not bear to have the child called Toto.

But now the sweet little Eugénie showed early signs of age. Her beautiful face was deeply wrinkled, but her eyes remained always full of light revealing their purity.

In 1961 I had to go to Madrid to study there at the University School of Fine Arts. My mother was keenly interested in the works that I did and was very fond of Omar, Onsi and his wife, and also Rashid Wehbe and Georges Corm, who would occasionally visit us. She liked to see me join with Rashid Wehbe in painting the portraits of young ladies in our sitting-room, for I had a long list of them waiting for their turn. Rashid did a portrait of my mother, when she was bedridden, ill and tired, but all the same Richard did a fine painting of her.

It was 1961 when I took the plane for Madrid and I was due to return in 1963. My mother gave me advice and told me to take care of myself. I wrote to he and she wrote to me. She was alone once again despite all my nephews and nieces around her. She was the keeper of my house and of my previous works, ones which I was to consign to the flames after my return from Europe. I caught sight of her then waiting on the quay with my brother Tony.

Home once again but with activity on a very different level. Showings, works, new relationships, the press, interviews, and any number of persons passing through the house, bishops, journalists, poets and clients. All this amused her, with the receptions and diners. For these she prepared the menus, for she was an excellent cook, not a cordon bleu but a cordon d’amour. Everything she prepared she did so with her whole heart and with love, particularly those dishes which demanded deft fingers, such as turnovers and little kibbeh balls.

She was proud of me, for with my dynamism I brought movement into her life. She who was so generous was now quite gay, opening up when receiving my friends or surrounded by my nephews.

Finally, one fine morning of the month of May, a Saturday, I decided to get married. On leaving the school at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon I asked her to go with me to Harissa, to the friary of the Franciscan Fathers, where some 25 years earlier I had slept in the church following a vow she had made to Saint Anthony (passing also other nights in other churches). We were I suppose seven at the marriage ceremony, which was blessed by a priest friend of mine. Those present were Tony and Isabelle as witnesses, the father and mother of Andrée, my mother, my bride, and needless to say myself, for I had to be there, of course!

Eugénie could hardly believe her eyes – what on earth could her son have had in mind? Was this the way of doing things? Were not some days needed in order to get ready? That was what she said to one of my friends. But to cut things short, she was well pleased and she got on well with Andrée my wife, for she was an only daughter like herself, also of good family, and she too was a dressmaker, only in her case qualified, having obtained her diploma at the Haute Couture de Paris, while Eugénie was self-taught, although just as skilled.

But the time came when her fatigue became obvious; this was in the years 1968-69, when her health was used up despite her being well cared for and not being left alone. There was Andrée, myself, and soon the father of Andrée, who after his being left a widower came to live with us, and then soon Marina, whom we called Little Eugénie on account of her strong resemblance to her grandmother, then Madonna and then the twins William and Jean-Pierre.

Eugénie was most happy when she was sitting in front of the door with the two little boys on her lap. The house was full of people like a beehive, and time never lay heavy on our hands for the place was almost like a battlefield. Sometimes my mother would complain to me that she felt useless, being no longer active and able to help and put out by her asthma and her tired liver and heart.

“Just rest there, dear Mother, we want nothing more from you, you tired yourself out all your life, there are plenty of us in the house…” In addition to a servant staff we had one or two young ladies to see to the children and the house. What is more, the house, like other homes had already come to be, was by now well equipped with labor-saving devices.

Dear little Eugénie, from a little village nestling in the Zouk mountain, had grown old before her time. The idea of Paradise, and of meeting with Christ and the Virgin Mary and of seeing again Toufic in heaven, had never left her. Now all her children were married and she had seen their little ones and taken them to her heart. She asked nothing of this passing world, thinking only of that eternal Paradise promised by her Lord.

She was always there waiting for me in front of the door, or at least she left it ajar so she could see me coming. Then one beautiful morning in spring, when blossom on the trees and the warm glow of Lebanon brought earth close to heaven, I heard Andrée running to me to say that that my mother was motionless and had ceased to breathe. For myself, I was immediately concerned with the four children.

In my mother’s room already my brother Tony was by her bedside with some of the neighbors. Eugénie lay as if asleep, having troubled nobody when she rendered up her soul, just as she would have wished. She had served us all during all those years and had never asked for any help in return. It was a sad April day in that very same month and on that very same day when my father had died. For us, to help one another is a sacred duty. Everybody, neighbors, sisters, nieces, all came running.

A most splendid funeral was given her. All Jounieh mourned Eugénie, she who had attended every requiem in that town – “I attend in the name of Toufic,” she always said. Bishops there were, and priests, notables, friends, relatives and pupils.

A human chain stretched from our house to the church. In her a whole generation had passed away, one that mourned for Eugénie, for itself if the truth be told, for the old traditions and customs, for the goodness of heart which disappeared with her. All were in tears. Some there were who said, “This poor woman saw nothing of life, having married so young and sacrificing herself all the time for her family … She never saw the evil side of life…” and so on.

The formalities surrounding her death and the days of mourning had passed. Once again we were back at work, with sometimes a Mass or a prayer for our departed loved ones, and a visit to the family vault to lay down some flowers. Eugénie who passed away thirty-five years ago lives on in our hearts and minds, above all in mine for I was her last companion, her favorite who had the joy of having her living with us during her final years.

Joseph Matar
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Translated from French: K. J. Mortimer