American University.
Beirut, Syria
September 10, 1935Dear Miss Turner,
Here I am again using you as an audience. Whenever I feel like recording an observation or have the impulse to say something clearly to myself so that I'll pay attention to it, I find myself writing you. Also the fact that whatever your comment may be, expressed or not, it will be acceptable, enters in. You know the need of a good listener, and perhaps my selfishness will be understood. A month ago or less I wrote you high flown plans, and meant what I said.
Today two things happened. In the flurry of accepting new students several things stand out. Five Syrians of good family are entering. Before this only an occasional misfit came our way. And the class is large, 23 accepted, of which we may have 18 or 19 arrive, including a daughter of one of the university faculty, a Jewess, not much in herself, but significant to the public. Before now 15 was our largest admission group. Of these 23, 3 are being sent by the British Government of Cyprus, at their expense, to return to their government hospitals after graduation and there are British government hospitals who train nurses in Palestine, Cyprus, and Egypt. That I consider significant.
The second thing that happened was a conversation with an Iraquian Jewess one of our students who went home for her summer holiday to Basra after one year here & ran a clinic with half a dozen doctors for the summer. Was given the funds to organize it, agreed to it only if they would let her send patients on her sayso to the hospital & did a grand job. If dysentery patients came on Tuesday - eye day - she called the hospital & they sent an ambulance "Otherwise" she said "they would have waited till Sunday & died in the meantime" She used her head. She said "Miss Lyman, when I had to do things with no equipment, I kept thinking of things you said" I don't know what she means except that in one way or another her teaching carried over.
And the question that these two things brings up is of course "Is it a call?" I'm old enough not to balk at the connotation of the words & to recognize their meaning.
I'm inclined to think it is. Really, this job is suited to me. I can teach. It is a gift from my fathers. Preparation has been right. I really don't think anyone else could pick up the threads without considerable jolt to the system. At least I would be horribly jealous at the thought of any one else walking in my tracks. I am fond of the girls & they are going to accomplish things as they go back to their spots.
The question of foreign service, of the sense of taking my efforts away from the home territory isn't significant. I don't believe in foreign missions. But good nursing where there has been none, is better than a little more good nursing where there already is quite a lot.
As for the ultimate significance of preserving the racial weaklings to a world that doesn't want them, I havn't answered that question. As far as I can go is the conviction that a smooth bed is easier to lie on than a wrinkled one and a sympathetic insight has social value to the people it reaches.
Beside which, an understanding of the human frame is a comfort to a routine-ridden handmaiden of medicine.
It is hot.
My trip back was uneventful.
This letter takes no note of the world turmoil. Conversation turns on what luxuries we would like to keep in case Mediterranean shipping becomes hampered. Daily news is so limited. We are conscious of wishing the curtain would go up and let us see what is waiting to happen.
The ghastliness of shipping boys into the tropics - on 1 liter of water per day - (sent from Sudan) stays with me. Cholera, dysentery, malaria, everything will combine to make it Hell. And that says nothing about the minority.
Have you read Vincent Sheean's Personal History. The chapter on Palestine is excellent.
I must stop. I hope the year goes well.
Love
KatyGreek 1
Cyprian (Turkish) 2 (one a Moslem)
Russian 3 (Christian)
Egyptian 1
Bulgarian 2
Syrian 5
Iraqian 2
Armenian 4
Swiss 1
Jewish 1
Persian 1
How's this line-up.