He once wrote: “I am indebted for all that I call ‘I’ to women ever since I was an infant. Women opened the windows of my eyes and the doors of my spirit. Had it not been for the woman-mother, the woman-sister and the woman-friend, I would have been sleeping among those who disturb the serenity of the world with their snores.”

There were many women in Gibran’s life, his biographers agree.

Gibran’s mother was especially important in his life because of circumstances which directed her own life. After she married, she and her husband migrated to Brazil, where he took sick and died, leaving her with her infant son, Peter. The mother returned with her son to the home of her father, Stephen Rahmy, a Maronite priest.

The man who was to become Gibran’s father, heard her singing one day in her father’s garden, fell in love with her and soon they were married.

Kahlil Gibran was born December 6, 1883, followed by two sisters, Mariana and Sultana. Their mother taught them music, Arabic and French. As they grew older a tutor was brought into the home to teach them English.

Later they were sent to city schools. They were often taken to church, where their grandfather, a capable priest, served Mass and preached.

In the Maronite church, in certain ceremonies, the whole congregation participates, chanting in Syriac, the language Christ spoke. The effect of the Maronite ceremonies remained with Gibran the rest of his life, a letter he wrote in later years acknowledged his debt to the church.

The religious bent of Gibran’s mother, her beautiful voice in church and the religious atmosphere of the family molded Gibran’s character. This effect is apparent in Gibran’s book, Jesus, the Son of Man.

As Gibran reached the age of twelve, his half-brother, Peter, reached the age of eighteen.

Peter was thus ready to go out on his own and, like all the Lebanese (Phoenicians) who have used the seas as their highways for thousands of years, set his heart on America.

Gibran’s mother, unwilling to have her children separate, brought Peter, Kahlil and the two girls to Boston. Kahlil’s father protested, for he owned large properties, collected taxes for the government, and in season did business as a cattle dealer. However, the fables from America — that the streets were paved with gold and the prospect of immediate riches — overwhelmed Peter, and he decided to bring the family to America, Kahlil’s blond, blue-eyed father remaining in Lebanon.

Some of Gibran’s biographers did not know that a cattle dealer in the Middle East is actually a sheep dealer, because sheep are imported to Lebanon, from Syria, from Iraq and sometimes even from Turkey. Actually, transporting sheep from Turkey without benefit of trucks, with few rail facilities, with little feed and water, is harder and more speculative than cattle droving in the United States. Kahlil’s biographers, in their confusion, wrote that his father was a shepherd.

In Boston, Peter opened a grocery store, the other children being sent to school. At the age of fourteen Kahlil decided to go back to Lebanon to complete his education in Arabic. His mother, realizing the talent and ambition of her son, consented to have him return to Beirut to enter the College of Al Kikmat.

Gibran remained in the college five years, spending the summers near the cedars and traveling with his father through the Middle East. After his five years were over, Gibran visited Greece, Italy and Spain on his way to Paris to study art (1901-1903).

Gibran was called back to the States because his younger sister, Sultana, had died and his mother was very sick. His mother remained bedridden nearly fifteen months before she died. During this time his half-brother Peter also died. It was the greatest shock in Gibran’s life. The family was very close and its members had made great sacrifice to educate him. Mariana miraculously survived the tuberculosis which decimated Kahlil’s family. Gibran’s feelings toward his mother are more eloquently expressed by his own words from The Broken Wings:

“Mother is everything in this life; she is consolation in time of sorrowing and hope in time of grieving and power in moments of weakness. She is the fountainhead of compassion, forbearance and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a bosom upon which he can rest his head, the hand that blesses, and eyes which watch over him.”

Micheline

One biographer has stated that Gibran met, in Boston, a beautiful and vivacious girl named Emilie Michel, nicknamed Micheline. He also stated that Micheline followed Gibran to Paris, that she asked him to marry her and when he refused she left Gibran’s apartment and vanished forever. Some biographers accepted this story; others did not mention the girl by name. Offered as proof by some who mentioned Micheline were two items: first, that Gibran had painted her before he left for Paris; second, the dedication of one of his books to Micheline.

I made a special effort to determine the existence of this beautiful girl. I visited the Museum of Gibran in Lebanon, where I asked the curator to direct me to the painting Micheline. Pointing to one of the paintings on the wall he said, “This is what is considered to be the painting of Micheline.”

This painting has no identifying marks whatsoever.