In the 1920s and 1930s, the writer Mai Ziadeh ran the best-known literary discussion group in the Arab world. “Salon Mai,” as it was known to her coterie of authors and artists, was an important part of Cairo's cultural flowering. Its members propagated a new outlook on life, and one that would replace the conservative legacy of the orient with the forward-looking ideas of the modern world. Regular members of Ziadeh's circle included the Islamic reformist scholar Mustafa Abdel-Razeq, the feminist Hoda Shaarawi, novelist and critic Taha Hussein, essayist and historian Abbas Mahmoud Al-Aqqad, Al-Ahram editor Antoun Gemayel, the poet and satirist Ibrahim Abdel-Qader Al-Mazni, and the poet and translator Khalil Motran. Fanaticism was already rearing its head in the world, both in the region and outside of it, but Ziadeh rose above the fray, focusing on the spiritual, rather than on any particular religion, and on a message of love and peace. A literary writer of no small accomplishment herself, she was a prolific writer and essayist who tackled not only literary issues but also questions of equality, progress and spiritual wellbeing. She also took an interest in wider Arab affairs and social issues. Mohamed Abdel-Ghani, in his 1964 biography of May Ziadeh, May, Adibat Al-Sharq wal-Uruba (Mai: An Arab and Eastern Female Literary Figure), discusses the life and work of this extraordinary woman. One of her main characteristics, he says, was her scorn for bigotry and linear thinking. When she lost her father and one of her best friends, the poet Gibran Khalil Gibran, in quick succession, Ziadeh suffered from depression and was briefly admitted to a mental health institution. But she managed to get over the crisis with the help of her close circle of friends and admirers and remained a central figure in Arab literature until her death in 1941. Ziadeh was born in Palestine, the daughter of a Maronite father and an Orthodox mother, and educated in Nazareth. She had a religious upbringing but had no patience for religious bigots. According to one of her friends, Abbas Al-Aqqad, she enjoyed reading essays on comparative religion but steered away from nihilistic doctrines. In her writings, she paid tribute to Islam and Judaism with the same passion she devoted to Christianity and Sufism. She once wrote: “The Bible makes heads bow in respect, Christ being such an icon of forgiveness and mercy. Then again, the words of the Quran ring out with exhilaration into the hearts of everyone familiar with the life of the Arab prophet.” If one were to designate a faith for Ziadeh, one would have to say that she was a humanist who valued human endeavour, Eastern as well as Western, secular as well as religious. She was as at ease with the Abrahamic religions as she was with Buddhism, and she saw no conflict between creeds, only between good and evil. In his forward to her book, Bayna Al-Madd wal-Gazr (Between Ebb and Tide), the Egyptian writer Salama Moussa said that Ziadeh had a young person's enthusiasm for freedom from restraint. In her admiration for Sufism, she was a believer in bonds that transcend stereotypes and prejudice, he said. She particularly liked some lines by one of her friends, the poet Gibran: Creeds, aspects of the one quest Like the sun's rays, travel far, But remain united at the source.
