She kept her own apartment in the city of New York.

One Sunday, Barbara wrote, accepting an invitation from Gibran, she went to the studio. Gibran was writing a poem; he was at his desk when she arrived. While composing Gibran usually paced the floor and then he would sit down to write a line or two.

“I waited while he repeated his writing and his walking again and again. Then a thought came to me. The next time he walked I went and seated myself at his table and took up his pencil, When he turned he saw me sitting there.

“‘You make the poem and I’ll write it,’ I said.”

After much protest Gibran consented to try it. He was pleased with the experiment.

“‘Well, you and I are two poets working together.’ He paused. Then after a silence, ‘We are friends,’ he said. ‘I want nothing from you, and you want nothing from me. We share life.’”

As they worked together and as she became more acquainted with his manner of thought and his work, she told him of her determination to write a book about him. Gibran was pleased and “it was from that time on that he talked often of his childhood, his mother and family, and some events in his life.”

One day Gibran asked, “Suppose you were compelled to give up — to forget all the words you know except seven — what are the seven words that you would keep?”

“I named only five,” Barbara wrote. “God, Life, Love, Beauty, Earth … and asked Gibran what other words would he select and he answered, ‘The most important words to keep are: You and I … without these two there would need to be no others’ then Gibran selected the seven words: You, I, Give, God, Love, Beauty, Earth.”

“Gibran liked a frugal supper in the studio,” Barbara wrote, “particularly during a period of his life when he was entertained and being feasted. This one evening Gibran said that ‘in the East there is a custom of eating all from one huge vessel. Let us have our soup tonight in one bowl!’ So we did and Gibran humorously drew an imaginary line through the soup and said, ‘this is your half of the soup and this other is my half. See to it that we neither one trespass upon the soup of the other!’ Then laughter and a thorough enjoyment, each of his own half of the soup.”

In another chapter Barbara wrote: “One evening when we were doing the book ‘Sea and Foam,’ I piled cushions on the floor and sat upon them instead of occupying my usual chair. Then I had a strange feeling of a familiarity about the gesture, and I said: ‘I feel as if I’ve sat like this besides you many times — but I really haven’t,’ and Gibran answered, ‘We have done this a thousand years ago, and we shall do it a thousand years hence.’

“And during the writing of the book ‘Jesus, the Son of Man’ the drama of some incident, now and again, was so overwhelming that I felt, and said, ‘It is so real. It seems as if I had been there.’ And his answer came, almost like a cry, ‘You were there! And so was I!’”

It is appropriate, here, to tell that two years after the death of Gibran, Barbara Young and this author met in the city of Cleveland. She asked: “How long would it take to learn the Arabic language?” I explained to her that for the purpose of translating any of Gibran’s works it would take many years to learn the classical version of the language; just to speak Arabic would be a different matter. In any event Arabic is a difficult language.

At that time I was studying for my law degree. I was neither interested in teaching Arabic nor contemplating the writing of a book about Gibran. She also told me that whenever Gibran painted a hand it was hers.

The most famous hand Gibran painted is the one with an eye in its palm. This painting was meant to represent the Phoenician Goddess Tanit. In honor of this Goddess, there are two cities in Lebanon called Eyetanit meaning “Eye of Tanit.”

This pose, the eye nestled in the palm of the hand, appeared in Carthage in North Africa, carried there by Gibran’s ancestors (the Phoenicians). The Phoenicians left one of these carvings of the hand of Tanit in Alabama before the arrival of Columbus.

Did Gibran see one of these hands in Lebanon, was the similarity a coincidence, or were Gibran and Barbara there when the Temples of Tanit were being built in Lebanon and Carthage long before the birth of Christ?

Barbara Young wrote that once when some women came to visit Gibran, they asked why he did not get married. He replied: “Well … you see it is like this. If I had a wife, and if I were painting or making poems, I should simply forget her existence for days at a time. And you know well that no loving woman would put up with such a husband for very long.”

One of the women, not satisfied with the smiling answer, prodded still deeper, “But have you never been in love?” Controlling himself with difficulty, he said, “I will tell you a thing you may not know. The most highly sexed beings upon the planet are the creators, the poets, sculptors, painters, musicians … and so it has been from the beginning. And among them sex is a beautiful and exalted gift. Sex is always beautiful, and it is always shy.”

Barbara Young wrote the following paragraph, which we quote, without comment, leaving it to the reader to determine her place in the life of Gibran:

“It is always wise to be wary of the woman who appears out of nowhere and claims a great man for her own when he is dead. But if there be those who never say, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but who maintain a silence, doing his works, may it not be that these are the hands that have indeed ministered unto him, these the hearts that have perceived the intricacies of his myriad being? And for myself, I do not doubt that through the turbulent years of this man’s life the ageless and universal cry for woman-comfort went out from his great loneliness, and that in the goodness of God, the cry was answered.