Rumana, religious congregations, nuns at Reyfoun, sentimental and beautiful, green eyes Beirut

Lebanon Art, virtual art gallery

Rumana

Religious congregations of every stamp have houses in Lebanon, and one of these is the French Holy Family. All these congregations have been a vital factor in the advance of learning, culture, progress and development, so much so that most of the students with us at school were of different nationalities, Jordanians, Syrians, and Iraqis or from countries of Lebanese immigration in Africa or elsewhere.

When speaking of Lebanon and calling it a beacon in this Middle East, one said nothing less than the truth. One must add that in Lebanon there are also native congregations parallel to the western ones such as the Holy Family and the Dominicans, for example the Maronite Holy Family. But what a strange idea to talk of the French or Lebanese or, let us say, Indian Holy Family! Can one attribute nationality to the Celestial Holy Family? Or to Mary Immaculate, to Jesus our Creator, to Saint Joseph the carpenter so chaste and pure? Certainly one may when it is a matter of appealing for protection or taking them as an example, but to name them after their country of origin, certainly not! The real Holy Family, that of the Gospel, is a symbol evoking union, love, sacrifice, ideals, work, prayer and fidelity.

Registering in one of these schools supposes acceptance of the rules of their foundation and respect for their laws, way of life, conception, timetables, programs and everything else. For their part such establishments could respect the particularity of each student. For example, Muslim students said their prayers and were respected, and the same went for the Protestants. Nobody infringed on their belief, faith and religious ideology. All the students were submitted to the same discipline, order and studies without discrimination.

It is said that summer and winter cannot exist together under the same roof. But we formed one family and were true friends and comrades conforming to the same culture, one which respected moral ideals.

The school of the French Holy Family was right in the center of Jounieh, just a hundred yards from the beach, surrounded by palm trees and giant sycamores. A verdant nature with extensive woodland stretched from the shore to the top of the mountain where the monument of Our Lady of Harissa still dominates the landscape. There were no school buses. One went to school on foot, a pleasant walk! For the day pupils living near the school there was no problem, while the foreigners or those from abroad could be boarders. The parents of these boarders came once every two or three weeks to see the children, with the exception of those living in Africa or America, who would come every year or two, happy to see their children in good hands.

In this school at Jounieh there was a young Spanish nun of exceptional beauty and friendliness. She pronounced s and j with a Castilian accent, a nun from the peninsula adorned by Velasquez. Murillo, el Greco, Ribera and other artists of fame. It was impossible for her to be indifferent to the Fine Arts, so in fact she was a passionate lover of drawing and painting and had a studio in the school in which she taught her many pupils.

I had come across her at several exhibitions, and she had drawn my attention. I could only admire her serene beauty, her gaiety and her captivating liveliness. Then one day she came to one of my own shows accompanied by a small group of girls, quite obviously her pupils. So we came to make each other’s acquaintance and as I lived in Jounieh not far from their school, we arranged to exchange visits. The nun was filled with enthusiasm on learning that I had been in Spain, Madrid to be precise, and that I spoke her language fluently. Her pupils, aged between thirteen and sixteen, listened to our conversation in silence. One of them stood out by her remarkable presence; she could not pass unnoticed and she seemed to exercise a certain leadership. I felt that she was rather a favorite of the sister and when we exchanged some sentences in Castilian she looked at us with an air of surprise and curiosity.

The good sister had to obey the rule of her order and the demands of her community, early rising, liturgical office, Mass, and so on; and in addition to her religious duties and scholastic activities she had her art studio, all of which meant that her time was fully taken up.

But one day the sister appeared with a group of pupils who were taking lessons in painting, most often as a hobby like piano or ballet, a luxury for appearance’s sake.

Formerly girls in Lebanon married young, any time after about seventeen, which meant that many did not go on with university studies for family reasons. I remember well that in 1964-1965 at the School of Fine Arts not even ten per cent of the students were young ladies, which of course is no longer the case. At present more than seventy per cent of the students belong to the fair sex and the number of young men went down during the fighting (1975-1990), as was the case in all sectors, teaching, banking, medicine, insurance and so on. We live now in an era when women have an ever greater role.

Around Sister Florencia there were always new faces. Several times I went to visit her in her boarding school. I corrected the work of the pupils and of their teacher Sister Florencia as well, all in a happy and intimate atmosphere.

So among her pupils there was this young girl quite outstanding, with warm and elegant beauty: a well-built brunette with green eyes, much charm, well-formed breast, full hips and long black hair. In a word, she was agreeable to look at. Her smile charmed with elegant movement and as a young beauty she was spoilt, perfumed, fashionably dressed and adorned. She had a life of ease, with every luxury.

Her fellow pupils were friendly towards her, with a mingling of pity and admiration. She was the favorite of Sister Felicia or Florencia (for she bore two names), who recommended her to me and asked me to help her, for she had a lot of talent and was studious. She was probably the only one of the girls who looked forward to an artistic career.

She was called Rumana; I felt sympathy for her and was her friend. She was a boarder in summer and winter, that is to say all the year round. In summer she spent the vacation with the nuns at Reyfoun, up in the mountains. In order to receive me there she needed the authorization of the Superior. We painted the trees in a park near the convent. I touched up her work and helped her for free; for her part she loved my children and often gave them precious presents.

Once Rumana had her baccalaureate, she registered at the American University to study Business Administration. We would arrange to meet at my sister’s in Beirut for sessions of work. But to come back for a moment to her schooldays, the pupils there circulated stories about her, more precisely about her not knowing her father. Either her father and mother were really divorced or the rumors were no more than gossip. However, everybody liked Rumana and liked to be in her company.

In point of fact up to this time Rumana had really not known her father. It was her charming and courageous mother, holding an important position in Kuwait, quite rich and very generous, who devoted her whole life and existence to making her little Rumana happy.

Sometimes Rumana lunched with us and warm friendship, intimacy and a relation between us developed. I never asked her any questions about her mother, her father or her maternal uncles, all Lebanese and living not far away. It was rather she herself who made the conversation, telling me what she was thinking of doing. I learnt about her states of mind, worries, ambitions, desires, decisions and determination. She had one great idea, at any cost to find her lost father and to get to know him. She absolutely refused to be considered simply a biological child, especially as her mother had told her the whole story of her love relationship with her father. They had loved each other sincerely, madly and passionately, yet suddenly her father had disappeared without leaving any trace. Had he gone to France or some other part of Europe?

Rumana’s mother, whom I came to know later, was a wonderful woman, gracious, kind-hearted, sentimental and also beautiful. She had no news about the father, although she possessed all his personal details and evidence of his identity. Once the child was born, a little girl as radiant as the down, the mother, having a strong personality, struggled and faced the situation with courage, until one day she obtained a good position in an important company in the Emirates, a position with a promising future.

As for the little girl, she was registered in the boarding school, which took charge of her. She was very well treated and was the subject of the particular attention of the sisters and teachers. The fact was that her mother plied the school authorities with gifts; money meant nothing to her, so she spent liberally to help her little one and to ensure for her all she needed, particularly love and tenderness.

She occasionally came to Lebanon to be close to Rumana or took her to her home to pass short vacations with her. What more could one ask of a mother? She made every sacrifice for her little daughter. Rumana spent her childhood in boarding schools and convents, always among nuns. Her private life really started only when she moved to the American University of Beirut.

Being ambitious, she wished to impose herself and to give expression to everything that she had in her being, everything that gnawed at her heart. She spoke to me often about her mother, who filled her life. She was able to create a work of art, to compose, give structure and build. She knew how to manipulate the colors and harmonize them, having assimilated well the grammar of picture-making and profiting from the lessons I had given her. She boldly took on landscapes, perspectives, still life, flower compositions and portraits. She was on the right road and had already executed dozens of thoroughly competent works. She continued to be a student, always learning and researching and acquiring knowledge. Experience and painting absorbed her and were her passion.

She often came at weekends to Jounieh or to our summer home up in the mountains, showing me what she had done or painting and drawing in my studio. I presented her to my friends Onsi and Wehbeh, so she was integrated into our universe, coming to me also in Beirut at my sister’s to show me her work and thus being spared the journey between Jounieh and the capital.

At the weekend she slept with us at Faraya, taking advantage of the panoramic views, the picturesque little spots and all the luminous natural beauty for her paintings. However, there was one idea that obsessed her, and that was to find her father. She often traveled to France, going from one side to the other, taking her father’s details for identification. Simply looking at her beautiful eyes, I caught hold of her expression and then I knew what she wanted to express by her sad smile; she revealed a complete identity like the standard waving over the vanguard behind which a whole army is deployed.

At the AUB she had many friends, acquaintances and sympathizers, for she was one who aroused affection and could not leave people indifferent. She was generous and had a warm heart. One could refuse her nothing; one granted her whatever she demanded. She told me that she was looking for her father and that soon she would find him. This was although he was a father who had done nothing for her and who in a certain way had crushed the feeling of the wonderful person who was her mother.

One day it was decided to organize an exhibition of her works at the Carlton Hotel, where there was a large hall set aside for artistic activities. The show was a great success and was widely reported in the press and other media, with photos of Rumana on page one of the newspapers and reviews. She was very happy and set to work with redoubled energy. We met once a week, but always she was obsessed by this one desire to learn all the truth about her father and to meet him.

She often traveled by air and this was no problem for her; all she wanted was to attain her end. Finally one day she told me that she had just come back from Rome in Italy and that she had at last been able to meet, see and know her father. I tried to imagine what this confrontation had been like with one so absent from the other’s life and what the reactions had been on the two sides.

The father had married again and had a family with children of almost her age. Could he ever have imagined that one day that his daughter, an elegant young lady, would come up to him in a friendly way? Had he known that he had left behind in Lebanon this little girl and an unhappy mother? That had been more than twenty years ago. What had passed between them? Had he thrown himself on his knees to ask pardon? Had they hugged each other? Had they wept? Had he expressed any admiration to Rumana as he looked upon her fine stance and the features they had in common? After twenty years of oblivion, what regrets, excuses and remorse had he expressed?

I know that he suggested to Rumana that she should stay with them in the family and that he was ready to return to shed tears of sorrow at the feet of his Lebanese fairy, his sweetheart. He was already fairly old. Rumana rejected any such ideas. “You’ll remain with your family, wife and children,” she had said, “and you shall forget my mother once and for all.”
A separation of nearly a quarter of a century! After that one is quite changed and the past can never return.

Rumana spent several days in Rome with her half-brothers and -sisters, her stepmother and her father in a friendly family atmosphere. After all, it was her father’s name that she bore, she felt no resentment and pardon is true heroism. She had turned a new page in her life. Was la Fontaine not presented at a reception with his own son whom he had never seen before, as if it were perfectly normal?

However, Rumana insisted to me that I, her dear master and friend, was closer to her than her biological father; further she would do everything possible to help her mother, who had loved her so much.

Rumana would ‘phone us up and come to visit us, often accompanied by her friend Rafi. One day she told me that she hoped to create patterns for jewelry, an interesting domain that intrigued her, and the precious gifts she brought were always chosen at the jeweler’s. This was a familiar world to her and I encouraged her interest. With her studies at AUB over, she took up an important position as secretary to one of the most influential ambassadors in Beirut, and held this post until 1973 or early 1974. She visited us less and less often and when she did so it was with friends.

Several times she confessed to me that she wished to resign and leave Lebanon for Kuwait, to be close to her mother. I advised her against leaving such a good position that was so well paid. She would never be able to find another job like it, but she repeated to me that she could not tell everything, but in the documents that had long been passing through her hands there was a forecast of the approaching setting ablaze and destruction of Lebanon. She said vaguely that the country would explode and although she could not be precise, being held to diplomatic secrecy, she felt that disaster was coming.

She finally traveled to Kuwait with her excellent CV and personal abilities. There she was straight away taken on by a major oil company and was better paid than in Lebanon. She sent me postcards and contacted us when she passed through Lebanon, telling me that she was going to gain experience in Europe to help her in the field of jewelry. She had already conceived necklaces and bracelets, all signed and prominently displayed in the jewelers’ shop windows. But she continued to warn me that Lebanon was to undergo fire, flame and destruction in a murderous war.

Early in 1975 I was contacted by a former teacher who had been with the Marist Brothers, asking me to take him to a certain “Dr.” Dahéch, whom I knew quite well and was even a friend. He was known to be a practitioner of spiritism, a field that left me quite indifferent. I went to my friend’s without appointment, but the door was opened to me and I was announced in. The matter was one of urgency, it appeared. The next day I arrived at Dr. Dahéch’s place in rue Kantari and presented myself, again without appointment. I had scarcely been announced when the inner door was opened and I was conducted into the main reception room. I had not questioned my elementary school teacher of forty years before, and all that he had told me was that it was some important personal business.

Finally the Doctor came in, greeting us warmly. Before I could present my friend, he turned to him and took him into his library, asking him to pick out a book, open it at a certain page and take out the paper he would find there. My friend followed him and took out the paper, which the Doctor said he was to read out loud: “On such-and-such a day Mr. Joseph Matar and his friend will come to see me about ...”

The hair on the head of my former teacher stood up and turned white, and he was visibly taken aback and at a loss. He conversed with the Doctor, and they agreed to deal with my friend’s affair, “a spiritual one”, on another day. Myself I did not believe in all this “spiritism” business and the world of so-called spirits, but in short this was not the question. This was my last visit to the famous doctor. The house had been turned upside down, the books packed in wooden boxes, the carpets rolled up, and parcels strewn about, all signs of immediate removal and departure.

When I asked, “What is this all about, Doctor,” he answered, “Lebanon is about to blow up, with terrible destruction, massacres, fighting and acts of terrorism. I cannot stay here, and I want to save this rich collection, my fortune, and am leaving for the USA for ever. I am not coming back, for these calamities will last a long time and nobody will be spared.”

Already the statesman Raymond Eddeh, Christian leader and friend of mine, was speaking of Lebanon “becoming another Cyprus”. I thought about what Rumana had long been telling me. My old schoolmaster sat next to me, lost in thought and in another world. I later learned that he saw Dr. Daléch again, this time taking his daughter with him, to discuss some personal problem. In point of fact Lebanon was ravaged by war for some twenty years, between 1975 and 1992, a war that was murderous, stupid and criminal, with the country a field of experiment for the hypocritical countries of the West.

In 1981 I received from the Ministry of Culture in Kuwait (the Higher Council for Culture) to give an exhibition and a couple of talks, thanks to a friend I had met in the Luxemburg Garden in Paris, who was coming back to the Old World from America. He was an engineer and economist from Harvard traveling to Kuwait to take up an appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Economics there. As I was sauntering across the Luxemburg Garden I saw that there was somebody seated on a bench who was reading a Lebanese newspaper. I sat down beside him as he had greeted me, and he said to me, “I saw you at the Foyer Libanais in the ULM street.” He told me that he had studied engineering to please his father and then made a career in economics, a subject he loved. His name was Antoine and he was from Koura. We met several times later and a friendship grew up between us, he promising to visit me in Lebanon.

On his way to Kuwait, he dropped in on us in Jounieh and spent a day with us, proposing that I should put on an exhibition in Kuwait. Several weeks passed and then I received an invitation from the Minister of Education for a trip in first class that would be sponsored by the Council and provided free of charge with invitations to be distributed. This was in May 1981.

I got ready for the trip, filling my notebook with the details about my friends in Kuwait, including those of Ruhana. She for her part considered this exhibition as if it were her own, and she and her mother and their friends came in considerable numbers to the opening. She sold me several of her works and in order to honor me she and her mother arranged a dinner worthy of the Arabian Nights, with great pomp and generous abundance. The sight of the table covered with all-the-year-round fruit alone was worthy of wonder in this desert city where there were neither fruit trees, nor orchards nor vegetable gardens, all the choicest and freshest comestibles being brought by air from all corners of the globe. The whole cream of society was there in order to please Rumana, who presented me as her teacher. It was an unforgettable evening indeed.

I met Rumana and her mother several times and encouraged the former to take up her artistic activities again. Later the general situation deteriorated and I saw Rumana less and less frequently despite the certain spiritual relationship between us. She was in fact the godmother of my daughter Marina. I suppose she must have left Kuwait after all the troubles and gone to France or Italy to realize her ambitions of creating jewelry and finery. I do know that she had opened a shop where her work was displayed. So goodbye to the painting and to Sister Florencia who left Lebanon once and for all and returned to Spain in 1990! I also learnt that the mother had returned to Lebanon and had taken up retirement in a corner of her native mountainside.

Once I was invited to a reception given by Lady Cockraine Sursock in Ashrafieh, where I was accompanied by Marina. “Look,” she said to me as we left, “there is Rumana next to you!”
“Who?” I stared at the individual. Yes, it was Ruhana still with the same smile and the green eyes. Her face had not changed but one could see age leaving its mark. She gave me her details, telephone number and address, inviting me to drop in on her. She had a shop in an up-market quarter of Beirut in fulfillment of her dreams.

That is all there is to say. Did she marry? Did she have children? Who was her husband, what love did she know? Of all that I know nothing. I am not a curious person and do not ask questions that might awake nostalgia for times past. No news is good news. But there remains a sunlight page which is one of the most luminous of my life.