The Book of Khalid Part 17

I am to lecture in the Public Hall of one of the Colleges here on the "Moral Revolution." Believe me, I would not utter a word or write a line if I were not impelled to it. And just as soon as some one comes to the front to champion in this land spiritual and moral freedom, I'll go "way back and sit down."

For why should I then give myself the trouble? And the applause of the mult.i.tude, mind you, brings me not a single olive.

Letter XXII

I had made up my mind to go to Cairo, and I was coming up to say farewell to you and mother. For I like not Beirut, where one in winter must go about in top-boots, and in a dust-coat in summer.

I wonder what Rousseau, who called Paris the city of mud, would have said of this? Besides, a city ruled by boatmen is not a city for gentlemen to live in. So, I made up my mind to get out of it, and quickly. But yesterday morning, before I had taken my coffee, some one knocked at my door. I open, and lo, a policeman in shabby uniform, makes inquiry about Khalid. What have I done, I thought, to deserve this visit? And before I had time to imagine the worst, he delivers a card from the Deputy to Syria of the Union and Progress Society of Salonique. I am desired in this to come at my earliest convenience to the Club to meet this gentleman. There, I am received by an Army Officer and a certain Ahmed Bey. And after the coffee and the formalities of civility are over, I am asked to accompany them on a tour to the princ.i.p.al cities of upper Syria--to Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo. The young Army Officer is to speechify in Turkish, I, in Arabic, and Ahmed Bey, who is as oleaginous as a Turk could be, will take up, I think, the collection. Seeing in this a chance to spread the Idea among our people, I accept, and in a fortnight we shall be in Damascus. You must come there, for I am burning to meet and embrace you.

Letter XXV

Whom do you think I met yesterday? Why, nothing gave me greater pleasure ever since I have been here than this: I was crossing the Square on my way to the Club, when some one plucking at my jubbah angrily greets me. I look back, and behold our dear old Im-Hanna, who has just returned from New York. She stood there waving her hand wildly and rating me for not returning her salaam. "You know no one any more, O Khalid," she said plaintively; "I call to you three times and you look not, hear not. No matter, O Khalid." Thereupon, she embraces me as fondly as my mother. "And why," she inquired, "do you wear this black jubbah? Are you now a monk? Were it not for that long hair and that cap of yours, I would not have known you. Let me see, isn't that the cap I bought you in New York?" And she takes it off my head to examine it. "Yes, that's it. How good of you to keep it.

Well, how are you now? Do you cough any more? Are you still crazy about books? I don't think so, for you have rosy cheeks now." And sobbing for joy, she embraces me again and again.

She is neatly dressed, wears a silk fiche, and is as alert as ever. In the afternoon, I visit her at the Hotel, and she asks me to accompany her to the Bank, where she cashes three bills of exchange for three hundred pounds each! I ask her what she is going to do with all this money, and she tells me that she is going to build a little home for her grandson and send him to the College of the Americans here.

"And is there like America in all the world?" she exclaims. "Ah, my heart for America!" And on asking her why she did not remain there: "Fear not; just as soon as I build my house and place my son in the College I am going back to New York. What, O Khalid, will you return with me?" She then takes some gold pieces in her hand, and lowering her voice: "May be you need some money; take, take these." Dear old Im-Hanna, I would not refuse her favour, and I would not accept one such. What was I to do? Coming through the Jewellers' bazaar I hit upon an idea, and with the money she slipped into my pocket, I bought a gold watch in one of the stores and charged her to present it to her grandson.

"Say it is from his brother, your other grandson Khalid." She protests, scolds, and finally takes the watch, saying, "Well, nothing is changed in you: still the same crazy Khalid."

To-morrow she is coming to see my room, and to cook for me a dish of _mojadderah_! Ah, the old days in the cellar!

In the thirtieth Letter, one of considerable length, dated March, is an exceedingly t.i.tillating divagation on the _gulma_ (oustraation of animals), called forth, we are told, "by the rut of the d----d cats in the yard." Poor Khalid can not sleep. One night he jumps out of bed and chases them away with his skillet, saying, "Why don't I make such a row, ye wantons?" They come again the following night, and Khalid on the following morning moves to a Hotel which, by good or ill chance, is adjacent to the lupanars of the city. His window opens on another yard in which other cats, alas!--of the human species this time--are caterwauling, harrowing the soul of him and the night. He makes a second remove, but finds himself disturbed this time by the rut of a certain roebuck within. Nature, O Khalid, will not be cheated, no more than she will be abused, without retaliating soon or late. True, you got out of many ruts heretofore; but this you can not get out of except you go deeper into it. Your anecdotes from Ad-Damiry and your quotations from Montaigne shall not help you. And your allusions to March-cats and March-Khalids are too pitiful to be humorous. Indeed, were not the tang of lubricity in this Letter too strong, we would have given in full the confession it contains.

We now come to the last of this Series, in which Khalid speaks of a certain American lady, a Mrs. Goodfree, or Gotfry, who is a votary of Ebbas Effendi, the Pope of Babism at Heifa. Mrs. Gotfry may not be a Babist in the strict sense of the word; but she is a votary and wors.h.i.+pper of the Bab. To her the personal element in a creed is of more importance than the ism. Hence, her pilgrimage every year to Heifa. She comes with presents and gold; and Ebbas Effendi, who is not impervious to the influence of other G.o.ds than his own, permits her into the sanctuary, where she shares with him the light of divine revelation and returns to the States, as the Priestess of the Cult, to bless and console the Faithful. Khalid was dining with Ahmed Bey at the Grand Hotel--but here is a portion of the Letter.

By a devilish mischance she occupied the seat opposite to mine. And in this trap of Iblis was decoy enough for a poor mouse like me. It is an age since I beheld such an Oriental gem in an American setting; or such a strange Southern beauty in an exotic frame. For one would think her from the South, or further down from Mexico. Nay, of Andalusian, and consequently of Arabian, origin she must be. Her hair and her eyes are of the richest jet; her glance, voluptuous, mysterious; her complexion, neither white nor olive, but partakes of both,--a gauze-like shade of heliotrope, as it were, over a pink and straw surface, if you can imagine that; and her expression, a play between devotion and diabolism--now a question mark to love, now an exclamation to sorrow, and at times a dash between both. By what mysterious medium of romance and adventure did America produce such a beauty, I can not tell. Perhaps she, too, can not. If you saw her, O Shakib, you'd do nothing for months but dedicate odes to her eyes,--to the deep, dark infinity of their luring, devouring beauty,--which seem to drop honey and poison from every arched hair of their fulsome lashes. Withal,--another devilish mischance,--she was dressed in black and wore a white silk ruffle, like myself. And her age? Well, she can not have pa.s.sed her sixth l.u.s.trum. And really, as the Novelist would say in his Novel, she looks ten years younger.... To say we were attracted to each other were presumptuous: but _I was_ taken.... Near her sat a Syrian gentleman of my acquaintance, with whom she was conversing when we entered. That is the lady whose beauty, when she was sitting, I described to you: but when she got up to leave the table,--alas, and _ay me_, and all the other expressions of regret and sorrow. That such a beautiful face should be denied a corresponding beauty of figure. And what is more pitiable about her, she is lame in the right leg. Poor dear Misfortune, I wish it were in my power to add an inch of my limb to hers.

And Khalid goes on limping, drooling, ala.s.sing, to the end. After dinner he is introduced to his "poor dear Misfortune" by his Syrian friend. But being with Ahmed Bey he can not remain this evening. On the following day, however, he is invited to lunch; and on the terrace facing the sea, they pa.s.s the afternoon discussing various subjects.

Mrs. Gotfry is surprised how a Syrian of Khalid's mind can not see the beauties of Babism, or Buhaism, as it is now called, and the lofty spirituality of the Bab. But she forgives him his lack of faith, gives him her card, and invites him to her home, if he ever returns to the United States.

Now, maugre the fact that, in a postscript to this Letter, Khalid closes with these words, "And what have I to do with priests and priestesses?" we can not but harbour a suspicion that his "Union and Progress" tour is bound to have more than a political significance. By ill or good hap those words are beginning to a.s.sume a double meaning; and maugre all efforts to the contrary, the days must soon unfold the twofold tendency and result of the "Union and Progress" ideas of Khalid.

[1] In some parts of Syria, as in Arabia, almost every ill and affection is attributed to the rheums, or called so. Rheumatism, for instance, is explained by the Arab quack as a defluxion of rheums, failing to discharge through the upper orifices, progress downward, and settling in the muscles and joints, produce the affection. And might there not be more truth in that than the diagnosis of him who is a Membre de la Faculte de Medicine de France?--EDITOR.

CHAPTER VI

REVOLUTIONS WITHIN AND WITHOUT

"Even Carlyle can be longwinded and short-sighted on occasions. 'Once in destroying the False,' says he, 'there was a certain inspiration.'

And always there is, to be sure, my Master. For the world is not Europe, and the final decision on Who Is and What Is To Rule, was not delivered by the French Revolution. The Orient, the land of origination and prophecy, must yet solve for itself this eternal problem of the Old and New, the False and True. And whether by Revolutions, Speculations, or Const.i.tutions, ancient Revelation will be purged and restored to its original pristine purity: the superannuated lumber that acc.u.mulated around it during centuries of apathy, fatalism, and sloth, must go: the dust and mould and cobwebs of the Temple will be swept away. Indeed, 'a war must be eternally waged on evils eternally renewed.' The genius of destruction has done its work, you say, O my esteemed Master? and there is nothing more to destroy? The G.o.ds might say this of other worlds than ours. In Europe, as in Asia, there is to be considered and remembered: if this ma.s.s of things we call humanity and civilisation were as healthy as the eternal powers would have them, the healthiest of the race would not be constantly studying and dissecting our social and political ills.

"In a certain sense, we are healthier to-day than the Europeans; but our health is that of the slave and not the master: it is of more benefit to others than it is to ourselves. We are doomed to be the drudges of neurasthenic, psychopathic, egoistic masters, if we do not open our minds to the light of science and truth. 'Every age has its Book,' says the Prophet. But every book, if it aspires to be a guide to life, must contain of the eternal truth what was in the one that preceded it. We can not afford to let aught of this die. Leave the princ.i.p.al original altar in the Temple, and destroy all the others.

Light on that altar the torch of science, which the better mind and cleaner hand of Europe are transmitting to us, and place your foot upon its false and unspeakable divinities. The G.o.ds of wealth, of egoism, of alcohol, of fornication, we must not acknowledge; nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing to-day? Instead of looking up to the pure and lofty souls of Europe for guidance, we welter in the mud with the lowest and most degenerate. We are beginning to know and appreciate English whiskey, but not English freedom; we know the French grisettes, but not the French sages; we guzzle German beer, but of German wisdom we taste not a drop.

"O my Brothers, let us cease rejoicing in the Dastur; for at heart we know no freedom, nor truth, nor order. We elect our representatives to Parliament, but not unlike the Europeans; we borrow from France what the deeper and higher mind of France no longer believes; we imitate England in what England has long since discarded; but our Books of Revelation, which made France and Germany and England what they are, and in which is the divine essence of truth and right and freedom, we do not rightly understand. A thousand falsehoods are cluttered around the truth to conceal it from us. I call you back, O my Brothers, to the good old virtues of our ancestors. Without these the Revolution will miscarry and our Dastur will not be worth a date-stone. Our ancestors,--they never bowed their proud neck to tyranny, whether represented in an autocrat or in a body of autocrats; they never betrayed their friends; they never soiled their fingers with the coin of usury; they never sacrificed their manhood to fas.h.i.+on; they never endangered in the cafes and lupanars their health and reason. The Mosque and the Church, notwithstanding the ignorance and bigotry they foster, are still better than lunatic asylums. And Europe can not have enough of these to-day.

"Continence, purity of heart, fidelity, simplicity, a sense of true manhood, magnanimity of spirit, a healthiness of body and mind,--these are the beautiful ancient virtues. These are the supreme truths of the Books of Revelation: in these consists the lofty spirituality of the Orient. But through what thick, obscene growths we must pa.s.s to-day, through what cactus hedges and thistle-fields we must penetrate, before we rise again to those heights.

"'There can be no Revolution without a Reformation,' says a German philosopher. And truly so. For the fetters which bind us can not be shaken off, before the conscience is emanc.i.p.ated. A political revolution must always be preceded by a spiritual one, that it might have some enduring effect. Otherwise, things will revert to their previous state of rottenness as sure as Allah lives. But mind you, I do not say, Cut down the hedges; mow the thistle-fields; uproot the obscene plants; no: I only ask you to go through them, and out of them, to return no more. Sell your little estate there, if you have one; sell it at any price: give it away and let the dead bury their dead. Cease to work in those th.o.r.n.y fields, and G.o.d and nature will do the rest.

"I am for a reformation by emigration. And quietly, peacefully, this can be done. Nor fire, nor sword bring I: only this I say: Will and do; resolve and act upon your resolution. The emigration of the mind before the revolution of the state, my Brothers. The soul must be free, and the mind, before one has a right to be a member of a free Government, before one can justly enjoy his rights and perform his duties as a subject. But a voting slave, O my Brothers, is the pitifulest spectacle under the sun. And remember that neither the Dastur, nor the Unionists, nor the Press, can give you this spiritual freedom, if you do not awake and emigrate. Come up to the highlands: here is a patrimony for each of you; here are vineyards to cultivate.

Leave the thistle-fields and marshes behind; regret nothing. Come out of the superst.i.tions of the sheikhs and ulema; of the barren mazes of the sufis; of the deadly swamps of theolougues and priests: emigrate!

Every one of us should be a Niazi in this moral struggle, an Enver in this spiritual revolution. A little will-power, a little heroism, added to those virtues I have named, the solid virtues of our ancestors, and the Orient will no longer be an object of scorn and gain to commercial Europe. We shall then stand on an equal footing with the Europeans. Ay, with the legacy of science which we shall learn to invest, and with our spirituality divested of its cobwebs, and purified, we shall stand even higher than the Americans and Europeans."--

On the following day Damascus was simmering with excitement--Damascus, the stronghold of the ulema--the learned fanatics--whom Khalid has lightly pinched. But they scarcely felt it; they could not believe it.

Now, the gentry of Islam, the sheikhs and ulema, would hear this lack-beard dervish, as he was called. But they disdain to stand with the rabble in the Midan or congregate with the _Mutafarnejin_ (Europeanised) in the public Halls. Nowhere but at the Mosque, therefore, can they hear what this Khalid has to say. This was accordingly decided upon, and, being approved by all parties concerned,--the Mufti, the Vali, the Deputies of the Holy Society and the speaker,--a day was set for the great address at the great Mosque of Omaiyah.

Meanwhile, the blatant Officer, the wheedling Politician, and the lack-beard Dervish, are feasted by the personages and functionaries of Damascus. The Vali, the Mufti, Abdallah Pasha,--he who owns more than two score villages and has more than five thousand braves at his beck and call,--these, and others of less standing, vie with each other in honouring the distinguished visitors. And after the banqueting, while Ahmed Bey retires to a private room with his host to discuss the political situation, Khalid, to escape the torturing curiosity of the bores and quidnuncs of the evening, goes out to the open court, and under an orange tree, around the gurgling fountain, breathes again of quietude and peace. Nay, breathes deeply of the heavy perfume of the white jasmines of his country, while musing of the scarlet salvias of a distant land.

And what if the salvia, as by a miracle, blossoms on the jasmine? What if the former stifles the latter? Indeed, one can escape boredom, but not love. One can flee the quidnuncs of the salon, but not the questioning perplexity of one's heart. A truce now to ambiguities.

'Tis high time that we give a brief account of what took place after Khalid took leave of Mrs. Gotfry. Many "devilish mischances" have since then conspired against Khalid's peace of mind. For when they were leaving Beirut, only a few minutes before the train started, Mrs.

Gotfry, who was also going to Damascus, steps into the same carriage, which he and his companions occupied: mischance first. Arriving in Damascus they both stay at the same Hotel: mischance second. At table this time he occupies the seat next to hers, and once, rising simultaneously, their limbs touch: mischance third. And the last and worst, when he retires to his room, he finds that her own is in the same side-hall opposite to his. Now, who could have ordered it thus, of all the earthly powers? And who can say what so many mischances might not produce? True, a thousand thistles do not make a rose; but with destiny this logic does not hold. For every new mischance makes us forget the one preceding; and the last and worst is bound to be the harbinger of good fortune. Yes, every people, we imagine, has its aphorisms on the subject: Distress is the key of relief, says the Arabic proverb; The strait leads to the plain, says the Chinese; The darkest hour is nearest the dawn, says the English.

But we must not make any stipulations with time, or trust in aphorisms. We do not know what Mrs. Gotfry's ideas are on the subject.

Nor can we say how she felt in the face of these strange coincidences.

In her religious heart, might there not be some shadow of an ancient superst.i.tion, some mystical, instinctive strain, in which the preternatural is resolved? That is a question which neither our Scribe nor his Master will help us to answer. And we, having been faithful so far in the discharge of our editorial duty, can not at this juncture afford to fabricate.

We know, however, that the Priestess of Buhaism and the beardless, long-haired Dervish have many a conversation together: in the train, in the Hotel, in the parks and groves of Damascus, they tap their hearts and minds, and drink of each other's wine of thought and fancy.

"I first mistook you for a Mohammedan," she said to him once; and he a.s.sured her that she was not mistaken.

"Then, you are not a Christian?"

"I am a Christian, too."

And he relates of the Buha when he was on trial in Rhodes. "Of what religion are you," asks the Judge. "I am neither a Camel-driver nor a Carpenter," replies the Buha, alluding thereby to Mohammad and Christ. "If you ask me the same question," Khalid continues--"but I see you are uncomfortable." And he takes up the cus.h.i.+on which had fallen behind the divan, and places it under her arm. He then lights a cigarette and holds it up to her inquiringly. Yes? He, therefore, lights another for himself, and continues. "If you ask me the same question that was asked the Buha, I would not hesitate in saying that I am both a Camel-driver and Carpenter. I might also be a Buhaist in a certain sense. I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it a.s.sumes; and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it.

Indeed, every religion is good and true, if it serves the high purpose of its founder. And they are false, all of them, when they serve the low purpose of their high priests. Take the lowest of the Arab tribes, for instance, and you will find in their truculent spirit a strain of faith sublime, though it is only evinced at times.

The Beduins, rovers and raveners, manslayers and thieves, are in their house of moe-hair the kindest hosts, the n.o.blest and most generous of men. They receive the wayfarer, though he be an enemy, and he eats and drinks and sleeps with them under the same root, in the a.s.surance of Allah. If a religion makes a savage so good, so kind, it has well served its purpose. As for me, I admire the grand pa.s.sion in both the Camel-driver and the Carpenter: the barbaric grandeur, the magnanimity and fidelity of the Arab as well as the sublime spirituality, the divine beauty, of the Nazarene, I deeply reverence. And in one sense, the one is the complement of the other: the two combined are _my_ ideal of a Divinity."

And now we descend from the chariot of the empyrean where we are riding with G.o.ds and apostles, and enter into one drawn by mortal coursers. We go out for a drive, and alight from the carriage in the poplar grove, to meander in its shades, along its streams. But digressing from one path into another, we enter unaware the eternal vista of love. There, on a boulder washed by the murmuring current, in the shade of the silver-tufted poplars, Khalid and Mrs. Gotfry sit down for a rest.

"Everything in life must always resolve itself into love," said Khalid, as he stood on the rock holding out his hand to his friend.

"Love is the divine solvent. Love is the splendour of G.o.d."

Mrs. Gotfry paused at the last words. She was startled by this image.

Love, the splendour of G.o.d? Why, the Bab, the Buha, is the splendour of G.o.d. Buha mean splendour. The Buha, therefore, is love. Love is the new religion. It is the old religion, the eternal religion, the only religion. How came he by this, this young Syrian? Would he rival the Buha? Rise above him? They are of kindred races--their ancestors, too, may be mine. Love the splendour of G.o.d--G.o.d the splendour of Love. Have I been all along fooling myself? Did I not know my own heart?

These, and more such, pa.s.sed through Mrs. Gotfry's mind, as shuttles through a loom, while Khalid was helping her up to her seat on the boulder, which is washed by the murmuring current.

"If life were such a rock under our feet," said he, pressing his lips upon her hand, "the divine currents around it will melt it, soon or late, into love."

They light cigarettes. A fresh breeze is blowing from the city. It is following them with the perfume of its gardens. The falling leaves are whispering in the grove to the swaying boughs. The narcissus is nodding to the myrtle across the way. And the bulbuls are pouring their golden splendour of song. Khalid speaks.