The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani (best contemporary novels .txt) 📖

miss a single political meeting in his district. We even see him among the crowd before the corner groggery, cheering one of the political spouters of the day.

And once he accompanies Jerry to the Temple of 64 Atheism to behold its high Priest and hear him chant halleluiah to the Nebular Hypothesis. This is wonderful. How easy it is to dereligionise the human race and banish God from the Universe! But after the High Priest had done this, after he had proven to the satisfaction of every atheist that God is a myth, old Jerry turns around and gives Khalid this warning: “Don’t believe all he says, for I know that atheist well. He is as eloquent as he is insincere.”

And so are all atheists. For at bottom, atheism is either a fad or a trade or a fatuity. And whether the one or the other, it is a sham more pernicious than the worst. To the young mind, it is a shibboleth of cheap culture; to the shrewd and calculating mind, to such orators as Khalid heard, it is a trade most remunerative; and to the scientists, or rather monists, it is the aliment with which they nourish the perversity of their preconceptions. Second-hand Jerry did not say these things to our young philosopher; for had he done so, Khalid, now become edacious, would not have experienced those dyspeptic pangs which almost crushed the soul-fetus in him. For we are told that he is as sedulous in attending these atheistic lectures as he is in flocking with his fellow citizens to hear and cheer the idols of the stump. Once he took Shakib to the Temple of Atheism, but the Poet seems to prefer his Al-Mutanabby. In relating of Khalid’s waywardness he says:

“Ever since we quarrelled about Sibawai, Khalid and I have seldom been together. And he had become so opinionated that I was glad it was so. Even on Sunday 65 I would leave him alone with Im-Hanna, and returning in the evening, I would find him either reading or burning a pamphlet. Once I consented to accompany him to one of the lectures he was so fond of attending. And I was really surprised that one had to pay money for such masquerades of eloquence as were exhibited that night on the platform. Yes, it occurred to me that if one had not a dollar one could not become an atheist. Billah! I was scandalized. For no matter how irreverent one likes to pose, one ought to reverence at least his Maker. I am a Christian by the grace of Allah, and my ancestors are counted among the martyrs of the Church. And thanks to my parents, I have been duly baptized and confirmed. For which I respect them the more, and love them. Now, is it not absurd that I should come here and pay a hard dollar to hear this heretical speechifier insult my parents and my God? Better the ring of Al-Mutanabbi’s scimitars and spears than the clatter of these atheistical bones!”

From which we infer that Shakib was not open to reason on the subject. He would draw his friend away from the verge of the abyss at any cost. “And this,” continues he, “did not require much effort. For Khalid like myself is constitutionally incapable of denying God. We are from the land in which God has always spoken to our ancestors.”

And the argument between the shrewd verse-maker and the foolish philosopher finally hinges on this: namely, that these atheists are not honest investigators, that in their sweeping generalisations, as in their 66 speciosity and hypocrisy, they are commercially perverse. And Khalid is not long in deciding about the matter. He meets with an accident––and accidents have always been his touchstones of success––which saves his soul and seals the fate of atheism.

One evening, returning from a ramble in the Park, he passes by the Hall where his favourite Mountebank was to lecture on the Gospel of Soap. But not having the price of admittance that evening, and being anxious to hear the orator whom he had idolised, Khalid bravely appeals to his generosity in this quaint and touching note: “My pocket,” he wrote, “is empty and my mind is hungry. Might I come to your Table to-night as a beggar?” And the man at the stage door, who carries the note to the orator, returns in a trice, and tells Khalid to lift himself off. Khalid hesitates, misunderstands; and a heavy hand is of a sudden upon him, to say nothing of the heavy boot.

Ay, and that boot decided him. Atheism, bald, bold, niggardly, brutal, pretending withal, Khalid turns from its door never to look again in that direction, Shakib is right. “These people,” he growled, “are not free thinkers, but free stinkards. They do need soap to wash their hearts and souls.”

An idea did not come to Khalid, as it were, by instalments. In his puerperal pains of mind he was subject to such crises, shaken by such downrushes of light, as only the few among mortals experience. (We are quoting our Scribe, remember.) And in certain moments he had more faith in his instincts than 67 in his reason. “Our instincts,” says he, “never lie. They are honest, and though they be sometimes blind.” And here, he seems to have struck the truth. He can be practical too. Honesty in thought, in word, in deed––this he would have as the cornerstone of his truth. Moral rectitude he places above all the cardinal virtues, natural and theological. “Better keep away from the truth, O Khalid,” he writes, “better remain a stranger to it all thy life, if thou must sully it with the slimy fingers of a mercenary juggler.” Now, these brave words, we can not in conscience criticise. But we venture to observe that Khalid must have had in mind that Gospel of Soap and the incident at the stage door.

And in this, we, too, rejoice. We, too, forgetting the dignity of our position, participate of the revelry in the cellar on this occasion. For our editorialship, dear Reader, is neither American nor English. We are not bound, therefore, to maintain in any degree the algidity and indifference of our confrères’ sublime attitude. We rejoice in the spiritual safety of Khalid. We rejoice that he and Shakib are now reconciled. For the reclaimed runagate is now even permitted to draw on the poet’s balance at the banker. Ay, even Khalid can dissimulate when he needs the cash. For with the assistance of second-hand Jerry and the box-office of the atheistical jugglers, he had exhausted his little saving. He would not even go out peddling any more. And when Shakib asks him one morning to shoulder the box and come out, he replies: “I have a little business with it here.” For 68 after having impeached the High Priests of Atheism he seems to have turned upon himself. We translate from the K. L. MS.

“When I was disenchanted with atheism, when I saw somewhat of the meanness and selfishness of its protagonists, I began to doubt in the honesty of men. If these, our supposed teachers, are so vile, so mercenary, so false,––why, welcome Juhannam! But the more I doubted in the honesty of men, the more did I believe that honesty should be the cardinal virtue of the soul. I go so far in this, that an honest thief in my eyes is more worthy of esteem than a canting materialist or a hypocritical free thinker. Still, the voice within me asked if Shakib were honest in his dealings, if I were honest in my peddling? Have I not misrepresented my gewgaws as the atheist misrepresents the truth? ‘This is made in the Holy Land,’––‘This is from the Holy Sepulchre’––these lies, O Khalid, are upon you. And what is the difference between the jewellery you passed off for gold and the arguments of the atheist-preacher? Are they not both instruments of deception, both designed to catch the dollar? Yes, you have been, O Khalid, as mean, as mercenary, as dishonest as those canting infidels.

“And what are you going to do about it? Will you continue, while in the quagmires yourself, to point contemptuously at those standing in the gutter? Will you, in your dishonesty, dare impeach the honesty of men? Are you not going to make a resolution now, either to keep silent or to go out of the quagmires and rise to the mountain-heights? Be pure 69 yourself first, O Khalid; then try to spread this purity around you at any cost.

“Yes; that is why, when Shakib asked me to go out peddling one day, I hesitated and finally refused. For atheism, in whose false dry light I walked a parasang or two, did not only betray itself to me as a sham, but also turned my mind and soul to the sham I had shouldered for years. From the peddling-box, therefore, I turned even as I did from atheism. Praised be Allah, who, in his providential care, seemed to kick me away from the door of its temple. The sham, although effulgent and alluring, was as brief as a summer afternoon.”

As for the peddling-box, our Scribe will tell of its fate in the following Chapter.