Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani (best contemporary novels .txt) 📖
- Author: Ameen Fares Rihani
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But to our subject. Abu-Najma does not look upon it in this light. A decorated and titled son-in-law were a great honour devoutly to be wished. And some days after the first conference, the Padre Farouche comes again, bringing along his Excellency the third-class Medjidi Bey; but Najma, as they enter and salaam, goes out on the terrace roof to weep. The third time the third-class Medjidi Dodo comes alone. And Najma, as soon as she catches a glimpse of him, takes up her earthen jar and hies her to the spring.
“O the hinny! I’ll rope noose her (hang her) to-night,” murmurs the father. But here is his Excellency with his Sultan’s green button in his lapel. Abu-Najma bows low, rubs his hands well, offers a large cushion, brings a masnad (leaning pillow), and blubbers out many unnecessary apologies.
“This honour is great, your Excellency––overlook our shortcomings––our beit (one room house) can not contain our shame––it is not becoming your Excellency’s high rank––overlook––you have condescended to honour us, condescend too to be indulgent.––My daughter? yes, presently. She is gone to church, to mass, but she’ll return soon.”
But Najma is long gone; returns not; and the third-class Dodo will call again to-morrow. Now, Abu-Najma brings out his rope, soaps it well, nooses 179 and suspends it from the rafter in the ceiling. And when his daughter returns from the spring, he takes her by the arm, shows her the rope, and tells her laconically to choose between his Excellency and this. Poor Najma has not the courage to die, and so soon. Her cousin Khalid is in prison, is excommunicated––what can she do? Run away? The Church will follow her––punish her. There’s something satanic in Khalid––the Church said so––the Church knows. Najma rolls these things in her mind, looks at her father beseechingly. Her father points to the noose. Najma falls to weeping. The noose serves well its purpose.
For hereafter, when the Dodo comes decorated, SHE has to offer him the cushion, bring him the masnad, make for him the coffee. And eventually, as the visits accumulate, she goes with him to the dress-maker in Beirut. The bridal gown shall be of the conventional silk this time; for his Excellency is travelled, and knows and reverences the fashion. But why prolong these painful details?
“Allah, in the mysterious working of his Providence,” says Shakib, “preordained it thus: Khalid, having served his turn in prison, Najma begins her own; for a few days after he was set free, she was placed in bonds forged for her by the Jesuits. Now, when Khalid returned from Damascus, he came straightway to me and asked that we go to see Najma and try to prevail upon her, to persuade her to go with him, to run away. They would leave on the night-train to Hama this time, and thence set 180 forth towards Palmyra. I myself did not know what had happened, and so I approved of his plan. But alas! as we were coming down the main Street to Najma’s house, we heard the sound of tomtoms in the distance and the shrill ulluluing of women. We continued apace until we reached the by-way through which we had to pass, and lo, we find it choked by the zeffah (wedding procession) of none but she and the third-class Medjidi....”
But we’ll no more of this! Too tragic, too much like fiction it sounds, that here abruptly we must end this Chapter.
Disappointed, distraught, diseased,––worsted by the Jesuits, excommunicated, crossed in love,––but with an eternal glint of sunshine in his breast to open and light up new paths before him, Khalid, after the fatal episode, makes away from Baalbek. He suddenly disappears. But where he lays his staff, where he spends his months of solitude, neither Shakib nor our old friend the sandomancer can say. Somewhither he still is, indeed; for though he fell in a swoon as he saw Najma on her caparisoned palfrey and the decorated Excellency coming up along side of her, he was revived soon after and persuaded to return home. But on the following morning, our Scribe tells us, coming up to the booth, he finds neither Khalid there, nor any of his few worldly belongings. We, however, have formed a theory of our own, based on certain of his writings in the K. L. MS., about his mysterious levitation; and we believe he is now somewhither whittling arrows for a coming combat. In the Lebanon mountains perhaps. But we must not dog him like the Jesuits. Rather let us reverence the privacy of man, the sacredness of his religious retreat. For no matter where he is in the flesh, we are metaphysically certain of his existence. 182 And instead of filling up this Chapter with the bitter bickerings of life and the wickedness and machination of those in power, let us consecrate it to the divine peace and beauty of Nature. Of a number of Chapters in the Book of Khalid on this subject, we choose the one entitled, My Native Terraces, or Spring in Syria, symbolising the natural succession to Khalid’s Winter of destiny. In it are signal manifestations of the triumph of the soul over the diseases and adversities and sorrows of mortal life. Indeed, here is an example of faith and power and love which we reckon sublime.
“The inhabitants of my terraces and terrace walls,” we translate, “dressed in their Sunday best, are in the doorways lounging or peeping idly through their windows. And why not? It is Spring, and to these delicate, sweet little creatures, Spring is the one Sunday of the year. Have they not hugged the damp, dark earth long enough? Hidden from the wrath of Winter, have they not squatted patiently round the primitive, smokeless fire of the mystic depths? And now, the rain having partly extinguished the inner, hidden flame, they come out to bask in the sun, and drink deeply of the ambrosial air. They come, almost slain with thirst, to the Mother Fountain. They come out to worship at the shrine of the sweet-souled, God-absorbed Rabia of Attar. In their bright, glowing faces what a delectable message from the under world of romance and enchantment! Their lips are red with the kisses of love, in whose alembics, intangible, 183 unseen, the dark and damp of the earth are translated into warmth and colour and shade. Ay, these dear little children, unfolding their soft green scrolls and reading aloud such odes on Modesty and Beauty, are as inspiring as the star-crowned night. And every chink in my terrace walls seems to breathe a message of sweetness and light and love.
“Know you not the anecdote about the enchanting Goddess Rabia, as related by Attar in his Biographies of Sufi Mystics and Saints? Here it is. Rabia was asked if she hated the devil, and she replied, ‘No.’ Asked again why, she said, ‘Being absorbed in love, I have no time to hate.’ Now, all the inhabitants of my terraces and fields seem to echo this sublime sentiment of their Goddess. The air and sunshine, nay, the very rocks are imbued with it. See, how the fissures in the boulders yonder seem to sympathise with the gaps in the terrace walls: the cyclamen leaves in the one are salaaming the cyclamen flowers in the other. O, these terraces would have delighted the heart of the American naturalist Thoreau. He could not have desired stone walls with more gaps in them. But mind you, these are not dark, ugly, hollow, hopeless chinks. Behind every one of them lurks a mystery. Far back in the niches I can see the busts of the poets who wrote the poems which these beautiful wild flowers are reading to me. Yes, the authors are dead, and what I behold now are the flowers of their amours. These are the offspring of their embraces, the crystallised dew of their love. Yes, this one single, simple act of love brings forth an infinite variety of 184 flowers to celebrate the death of the finite outward shape and the eternal essence of life perennial. In complete surrender lies the divineness of things eternal. This is the key-note of the Oriental mystic poets. And I incline to the belief that they of all bards have sung best the song of love. In rambling through the fields with these beautiful children of the terraces, I know not what draws me to Al-Fared, the one erotic-mystic poet of Arabia, whose interminable rhymes have a perennial charm. Perhaps such lines as these,––
‘All that is fair is fairer when she rises,
All that is sweet is sweeter when she is here;
And every form of beauty she surprises
With one brief word she whispers in its ear:
‘Thy wondrous charms, O let them not deceive thee;
They are but borrowed from her for a while;
Thine outward guise and loveliness would grieve thee,
If in thine inmost soul she did not smile.
‘All colours, forms, into each other merging,
Are woven on her Loom of Unity;
For she alone is One in All diverging,
And she alone is absolute and free.’
“Now, I will bring you to a scene most curiously suggestive. Behold that little knot of daisies pressing around the alone anemone beneath the spreading leaves of the colocasia. Here is a rout at the Countess Casiacole’s, and these are the débutantes crowding around the Celebrity of the day. But would they do so if they were sensible of their own worth, if they 185 knew that their idol, flaunting the crimson crown of popularity, had no more, and perhaps less, of the pure essence of life than any of them? But let Celebrity stand there and enjoy her hour; to-morrow the Ploughman will come.
“The sage, with its spikes of greyish blue flowers, its fibrous, velvety leaves, its strong, pungent perfume, which is not squandered or repressed, is the stoic of my native terraces. It responds generously to the personal touch, and serves the Lebanonese, rich and poor alike, with a little luxury. Ay, who of us, wandering on foreign strands, does not remember the warm foot-bath, perfumed with sage leaves, his mother used to give him before going to bed? Our dear mothers!”––And here, Khalid goes in raptures and tears about his sorry experience in Baalbek and the anguish and sorrow of his poor mother. “But while I stand,” he continues, “let me be like the sage, a live-oak among shrubs, indifferent as the oak or pine to the winds and storms. And as the sun is setting, find you no solace in the thought, O Khalid, that some angel herb-gatherer will preserve the perfume in your leaves, to refresh therewith in other worlds your dear poor mother?
“My native terraces are rich with faith and love, luxuriant with the life divine and the wondrous symbols thereof. And the grass here is not cut and trimmed as in the artificial gardens and the cold dull lawns of city folk, whose love for Nature is either an experiment, a sport, a business, or a fad. ‘A 186 dilettantism in Nature is barren and unworthy,’ says Emerson. But of all the lovers of Nature, the children are the least dilettanteish. And every day here I see a proof of this. Behold them wading to their knees in that lusty grass, hunting the classic lotus with which to deck their olive branches
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