The Book of Khalid

by Ameen Rihani

  “And walking together a pace, he points to the dizzy precipice around which I climbed and adds: ‘Thou seest that rock? I hallooed to thee when thou wert creeping around it, but thou didst not hear me. From that same rock a woodman fell last week, and, falling, looked like a potted bird. He must have died before he reached the ground. His bones are scattered among those rocks. Thank thy God and thy mother. Her prayers have saved thee.’

  “My dear mother, how long since I saw thee, how long since I thought of thee. My loving mother, even the rough, rude spirit of a muleteer can see in the unseen the beauty and benevolence of such devotion as thine. The words of this dusky son of the road, coming as through the trumpet of revelation to rebuke me, sink deep in my heart and draw tears from mine eyes. For art thou not ever praying for thy grievous son, and for his salvation? How many beads each night dost thou tell, how many hours dost thou prostrate thyself before the Virgin, sobbing, obsecrating, beating thy breast? And all for one, who until now, ever since he left Baalbek, did not think on thee.—Let me kiss thee, O my Brother, for thy mild rebuke. Let me kiss thee for reminding me of my mother.—No, I can not further with thee; I am waygone; I must sit me a spell beneath this pine—and weep. O Khalid, wretched that thou art, can the primitive soul of this muleteer be better than thine? Can there be a sounder intuitiveness, a healthier sense of love, a grander sympathy, beneath that striped aba, than there is within thy cloak? Wilt thou not beat thy cheeks in ignominy and shame, when a stranger thinks of thy mother, and reverently, ere thou dost? No matter how low in the spiritual circles she might be, no matter how high thou risest, her prayer and her love are always with thee. If she can not rise to thee on the ladder of reason, she can soar on the wings of affection. Yea, I prostrate myself beneath this pine, bury my forehead in its dust, thanking Allah for my mother. Oh, I am waygone, but joyous. The muleteer hath illumined thee, O Khalid.—

  “There, the snow birds are passing by, flitting to the lowland. The sky is overcast; there is a lull in the wind. Hark, I hear the piping of the shepherd and the tinkling bell of the wether. Yonder is his flock; and there sits he on a rock blowing his doleful reed. I am almost slain with thirst. I go to him, and cheerfully does he milk for me. I do not think Rebekah was kinder and sweeter in Abraham’s servant’s eyes than was this wight in mine. ‘Where dost thou sleep?’ I ask, ‘Under this rock,’ he replies. And he shows me into the cave beneath it, which is furnished with a goat-skin, a masnad, and a little altar for the picture of the Virgin. Before this picture is an oil lamp, ever burning, I am told. ‘And this altar,’ quoth the shepherd, ‘was my mother’s. When she died she bequeathed it to me. I carry it with me in the wilderness, and keep the oil burning in her memory.’ Saying which he took to weeping. Even the shepherd, O Khalid, is sent to rebuke thee. I thank him, and resume my march.

  “At eventide, descending from one hilltop to another, I reach a village of no mean size. It occupies a broad deep steep, in which the walnut and poplar relieve the monotony of the mulberries. I hate the mulberry, which is so suggestive of worms; and I hate worms, and though they be of the silk-making kind. I hate them the more, because the Lebanon peasant seems to live for the silk-worms, which he tends and cultivates better than he does his children.

  “When I stood on the top of the steep, the village glittering with a thousand lights lay beneath like a strip of the sidereal sky. It made me feel I was above the clouds, even above the stars. The gabled houses overtopping each other, spreading in clusters and half-circles, form here an aigrette, as it were, on the sylvan head of the mountain, there a necklace on its breast, below a cestus brilliant with an hundred lights. I descend into the village and stop before the first house I reach. The door is wide open; and the little girl who sees me enter runs in fright to tell her mother. Straightway, the woman and her son, a comely and lusty youth, come out in a where-is-the-brigand manner, and, as they see me, stand abashed, amazed. The young man who wore a robe-de-chambre and Turkish slippers worked in gold, returns my salaam courteously and invites me up to the divan. There is a spark of intelligence in his eyes, and an alien affectation in his speech. I foresaw that he had been in America. He does not ask me the conventional questions about my religious persuasion; but after his inquiries of whence and whither, he offers me an Egyptian cigarette, and goes in to order the coffee. It did not occur to him that I was his guest for the night.—

  “Ah me, I no longer know how to recline on a cushion, and a rug under my feet seems like a sheet of ice. But with my dust and mud I seem like Diogenes trampling upon Plato’s pride. I survey the hall, which breathes of rural culture and well-being, and in which is more evidence of what I foresaw. On the wall hung various photographs and oil prints, among which I noticed those of the King and Queen of England, that of Theodore Roosevelt, a framed cartoon by an American artist, an autographed copy of an English Duke’s, and a large photograph of a banquet of one of the political Clubs of New York. On the table were a few Arabic magazines, a post-card album, and a gramophone! Yes, mine host was more than once in the United States. And knowing that I, too, had been there, he is anxious to display somewhat of his broken English. His father, he tells me, speaks English even as good as he does, having been a dragoman for forty years.

  “After supper, he orders me a narghilah, and winds for my entertainment that horrible instrument of torture.” Khalid did not seem to mind it; but he was anxious about the sacred peace of the hills, sleeping in the bosom of night. My Name is Billy Muggins, I Wish I Had a Pal Like You, Tickle Me, Timothy, and such like ragtime horrors come all the way from America to violate the antique grandeur and beauty of the Lebanon hills. That is what worried Khalid. And he excuses himself, saying, “I am waygone from the day’s wayfaring.” The instrument of torture is stopped, therefore, and he is shown into a room where a mattress is spread for him on the floor.

  “In the morning,” he continues, “mine host accompanies me through the populous village, which is noted for its industries. Of all the Lebanon towns, this is, indeed, the busiest; its looms, its potteries, and its bell foundries, are never idle. And the people cultivate little of the silk worm; they are mostly artisans. American cotton they spin, and dye, and weave into substantial cloth; Belgian iron they melt and cast into bells; and from their native soil they dig the clay which they mould into earthenware. The tintinnabulations of the loom can be heard in other parts of the Lebanons; but no where else can the vintner buy a dolium for his vine, or the housewife, a pipkin for her oil, or the priest, a bell for his church. The sound of these foundries’ anvils, translated into a wild, thrilling, far-reaching music, can be heard in every belfry and bell-cote of Syria.

  “We descend to the potteries below, not on the carriage road which serpentines through the village, and which is its only street, but sheer down a steep path, between the noise of the loom and spinning wheel and the stench of the dyeing establishments. And here is the real potter and his clay, not the symbol thereof. And here is the pottery which is illustrated in the Bible. For in the world to-day, if we except the unglazed tinajas of the Pueblo Indians, nothing, above ground at least, can be more ancient and primitive. Such a pitcher, I muse, did Rebekah carry to the well; with such a Jar on her shoulder did Hagar wander in the wilderness; and in such vessels did the widow, by Elijah’s miracle, multiply her jug of oil.

  “The one silk-reeling factory of the village, I did not care to visit; for truly I can not tolerate the smell of asphyxiated larvas and boiling cocoons. ‘But the proprietor,’ quoth mine host, ‘is very honourable, and of a fine wit.’ As honourable as a sweater can be, I thought. No, no; these manufacturers are all of a piece. I know personally one of them, who is a Scrooge, and of the vilest. I watched him one day buying cocoons from the peasants. He does not trust any of his employees at the scales; they do not know how to press their hand over the weights in the pan. Ay, that little pressure of his chubby hand on the weights makes a difference in his favour of more than ten per cent. of what he buys. That little
pressure of his hand is five or six piasters out of the peasant’s pocket, who, with five or six piasters, remember, can satisfy his hunger on bread and olives and pulverised thyme, for five or six days. So, we visit not the cocoon-man, about whom the priest of his private chapel—he prays at home like the Lebanon Amirs of old, this khawaja—tells me many edifying things. Of these, I give out the most curious and least injurious. As the sheikh (squire) of the town, he is generous; as the operator of a silk-reeling factory, he is grasping, niggardly, mean. For, to misgovern well, one must open his purse as often as he forces the purses of others. He was passing by in his carriage this great khawaja, when we were coming out of the pottery. And of a truth, his paunch and double chin and ruddy cheeks seemed to illustrate what the priest told me about his usurious propensities.

  “What a contrast between him and the swarthy, leathery, hungry-looking potters. I can not think that Nature has aught to do with these naked inequalities. I can not believe that, to produce one roseate complexion, she must etiolate a thousand. I can not see how, in drinking from the same gushing spring, and breathing the same mountain air, and basking in the same ardent sun, the khawaja gets a double chin and the peasant a double curse. But his collops and his ruddiness are due to the fact that he misgoverns as well as his Pasha and his Sultan. He battens, even like a Tammany chief, on political jobbery, on extortion, on usury. His tree is better manured, so to speak; manured by the widows and tended by the orphans of his little kingdom. In a word, this great khawaja is what I call a political coprophagist. Hence, his suspicious growth, his lustre and lustiness.

  “But he is not the only example in the village of this superabundance of health; the priests are many more. For I must not fail to mention that, in addition to its potteries and founderies, the town is blessed with a dozen churches. Every family, a sort of tribe, has its church and priests; and consequently, its feuds with all the others. It is a marvel how the people, in the lethal soot and smoke of strife and dissension, can work and produce anything. Farewell, ye swarthy people! Farewell, O village of bells and potteries! Were it not for the khawaja who misgoverns thee, and the priests who sow their iniquity in thee, thou shouldst have been an ideal town. I look back, as I descend into the wadi, and behold, thou art as beautiful in the day as thou art in the night. Thy pink gables under a December sky seem not as garish as they do in summer. And the sylvan slopes, clustered with thy white-stone homes, peeping here through the mulberries, standing there under the walnuts and poplars, rising yonder in a group like a mottled pyramid, this most picturesque slope, whereon thou art ever beating the anvil, turning the wheel, throwing the shuttle, moulding the clay, and weltering withal in the mud of strife and dissension, this beautiful slope seems, nevertheless, from this distance, like an altar raised to Nature. I look not upon thee more; farewell.

  “I descend in the wadi to the River Lykos of the ancients; and crossing the stone-bridge, an hour’s ascent brings me to one of the villages of Kisrawan. On the grey horizon yonder, is the limed bronze Statue of Mary the Virgin, rising on its sable pedestal, and looking, from this distance, like a candle in a bronze candle-stick. That Statue, fifty years hence, the people of the Lebanons will rebaptise as the Statue of Liberty. Masonry, even to-day, raises around it her mace. But whether these sacred mountains will be happier and more prosperous under its régime, I can not say. The Masons and the Patriarch of the Maronites are certainly more certain. Only this I know, that between the devil and the deep sea, Mary the Virgin shall hold her own. For though the name be changed, and the alm-box thrown into the sea, she shall ever be worshipped by the people. The Statue of the Holy Virgin of Liberty it will be called, and the Jesuits and priests can go a-begging. Meanwhile, the Patriarch will issue his allocutions, and the Jesuits, their pamphlets, against rationalism, atheism, masonry, and other supposed enemies of their Blessed Virgin, and point them out as enemies of Abd’ul-Hamid. ’Tis curious how the Sultan of the Ottomans can serve the cause of the Virgin!

  “I visit the Statue for the love of my mother, and mounting to the top of the pedestal, I look up and behold my mother before me. The spectre of her, standing before the monument, looks down upon me, reproachfully, piteously, affectionately. I sit down at the feet of the Virgin Mary and bury my face in my hands and weep. I love what thou lovest, O my mother, but I can see no more what thou seest. For thy love, O my mother, these kisses and tears. For thy love, I stand here like a child, and look up to this inanimate figure as I did when I was an acolyte. My intellect, O my mother, I would drown in my tears, and thy faith I would stifle with my kisses. Only thus is reconciliation possible.

  “Leaving this throne of modern mythology, I cross many wadis, descend and ascend many hills, pass through many villages, until I reach, at Ghina and Masshnaka, the tomb of the mythology of the ancients. At Ghina are ruins and monuments, of which Time has spared enough to engage the interest of archæologists. Let the Pères Jesuit, Bourquenoud and Roz, make boast of their discoveries and scholarship; I can only boast of the fact that the ceremonialisms of worship are the same to-day as they were in the days of my Phœnician ancestors. Which, indeed, speaks well for TH EM. This tablet, representing an armed figure and a bear, commemorates, it is said, the death of Tammuz. And the figure of the weeping woman near it is probably that of Ashtaroth. Other figures there are; but nothing short of the scholarship of Bourquenoud and Roz can unveil their marble mystery.

  “At Masshnaka, overlooking the River Adonis, are ruins of an ancient temple in which can still be seen a few Corinthian columns. This, too, we are told, was consecrated to Tammuz; and in this valley the women of Byblus bemoaned every year the fate of their god. Isis and Osiris, Tammuz and Ashtaroth, Venus and Adonis,—these, I believe, are one and the same. Their myth borrowed from the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Romans, from either of the two. But the Venus of Rome is cheerful, joyous, that of the Phœnicians is sad and sorrowful. Even mythology triumphs in its evolution.

  “Here, where my forebears deliquesced in sensuality, devotion, and grief, where the ardency of the women of Byblus flamed on the altar of Tammuz, on this knoll, whose trees and herbiage are fed perchance with their dust, I build my athafa (little kitchen), Arab-like, and cook my noon-day meal. On the three stones, forming two right angles, I place my skillet, kindle under it a fire, pour into it a little sweet oil, and fry the few eggs I purchased in the village. I abominate the idea of frying eggs in water as the Americans do.* I had as lief fry them in vinegar or syrup, where neither olive oil nor goat-butter is obtainable. But to fry eggs in water? O the barbarity of it! Why not, my friend, take them boiled and drink a little hot water after them? This savours of originality, at least, and is just as insipid, if not more. Withal, they who boil cabbage, and heap it in a plate over a slice of corn-beef, and call it a dish, can break a few boiled eggs in a cup of hot water and call them fried. Be this as it may. The Americans will be solesistically simple even in their kitchen.

  “Now, my skillet of eggs being ready, I draw out of my basket a cake of cheese, a few olives, an onion, and three paper-like loaves, rather leaves, of bread, and fall to. With what relish, I need not say. But let it be recorded here, that under the karob tree, on the bank of the River Adonis, in the shadow of the great wall surrounding the ruins of the temple of Tammuz, I Khalid, in the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Abd’ul-Hamid, gave a banquet to the gods—who, however, were content in being present and applauding the devouring skill of the peptic host and toast-master. Even serene Majesty at Yieldiz would give away, I think, an hundred of its sealed dishes for such a skillet of eggs in such an enchanted scene. But for it, alas! such wild and simple joy is a sealed book. Poor Serene Majesty! Now, having gone through the fruit course—and is not the olive a fruit?—I fill my jug at the River to make my coffee. And here I ask, In what Hotel Cecil or Waldorf or Savoy, or in what Arab tent in the desert, can one get a better cup of coffee than this, which Khalid makes for himself? The gods be praised, before and after. Ay, even in washi
ng my pots and dishes I praise the good gods.

  “And having done this, I light my cigarette, lug my basket on my back, and again set forth. In three hours, on my way to Byblus, I reach a hamlet situated in a deep narrow wadi, closed on all sides by huge mountain walls. The most sequestered, the most dreary place, I have yet seen. Here, though unwilling, the dusk of the December day having set in, I lay down the staff of wayfare. And as I enter the little village, I am greeted by the bleat of sheep and the low of the kine. The first villager I meet is an aged woman, who stands in her door before which is a pomegranate tree, telling her beads. She returns my salaam graciously, and invites me, saying, ‘Be kind to tarry overnight.’ But can one be kinder than such an hostess? Seeing that I laid down my burden, she calls to her daughter to light the seraj (naphtha lamp) and bring some water for the stranger. ‘Methinks thou wouldst wash thy feet,’ quoth she. Indeed, that is as essential and refreshing, after a day’s walk, as washing one’s face. I sit me down, therefore, under the pomegranate, take off my shoes and stockings, and the little girl, a winsome, dark-eyed, quick-witted lass, pours to me from the pitcher. I try to take it from her; but she would not, she said, be deprived of the pleasure of serving the stranger. Having done, I put on my stockings, and, leaving my shoes and basket near the door, enter a beit (one-room house) meagrely but neatly furnished. The usual straw mats are spread on the winter side, behind the door; in the corner is a little linen-covered divan with trimming of beautiful hand-made lace, the work of the little girl; and nearby are a few square cushions on the floor and a crude chair. The seraj, giving out more smoke and smell than light, is placed on a little shelf attached to the central pillar of the beit. Near the door is a bench for the water jars, and in the other corner are the mattresses and quilts, and the earthen tub containing the round leaves of bread. Of these consist the furniture and provision of mine hostess.