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

On our way from a journey to the Cedars, while engaged in the present Work, we passed through a pine forest, in which were some tangled bushes of the clematis. The muleteer stops near one of these and stoops to reach something he had seen therein. No treasure-trove, alas, as he supposed; but merely a book for which he lacerated his hands and which he cursed and handed to us, saying, “This must be the breviary of some monk.”

No, it was an English book, and of American origin, and of a kind quite rare in America. Indeed, here were a find and surprise as agreeable as Khalid’s sweetbrier bush. Henry Thoreau’s Week! What a miracle of chance. Whose this mutilated copy of the Week, we thought? Who in these mountains, having been in America, took more interest in the Dreamer of Walden Woods than in peddling and trading? We walk our mule, looking about in vague, restless surprise, as if seeking in the woods a lost companion, and lo, we reach a monarch pine on which is carved the name of––Khalid! This book, then, must be his; the name on the pine tree is surely his own; we know his hand as well as his turn of mind. But who can say if this be his Kaaba, this his pine-mosque? Might he not only have passed through these glades to other parts? Signs, indeed, are here of his feet and hands, if not of his tent-pegs. And what signifies his stay? No matter how long he might have put up here, it is but a passage, deeply considered: like Thoreau’s passage through Walden woods, like Mohammad’s through the desert. 195

This leisure hour is the nipple of the soul. And fortunate they who are not artificially suckled, who know this hour no matter how brief, who get their nipple at the right time. If they do not, no pabulum ever after, will their indurated tissues assimilate. Do you wonder why the world is full of crusty souls? and why to them this infant hour, this suckling while, is so repugnant? But we must not intrude more of such remarks about mankind. Whether rightly suckled or not, we manage to live; but whether we do so marmot-like or Maronite-like, is not the question here to be considered. To pray for your bread or to burrow in the earth for it, is it not the same with most people? Given a missionary with a Bible in his hip-pocket or a peasant with a load of brushwood on his back and the same gastric coefficient, and you will have in either case a resulting expansion for six feet of coffin ground and a fraction of Allah’s mercy. Our poor missionary, is it worth while to cross the seas for this? Marmot-like or Maronite-like––but soft you know! Here is our peasant with his overshadowing load of brushwood. And there is another, and another. They are carrying fuel to the lime-pit ahead of us yonder. What brow-sweat, what time, what fire, what suffering and patient toil, the lime-washing, or mere liming, of our houses and sepulchres, requires. That cone structure there, that artificial volcano, with its crackling, flaming bowels and its fuliginous, coruscating crater, must our hardy peasants feed continually for twenty days and nights.

But the book and the name on the pine, we would 196 know more of these signs, if possible. And so, we visit the labourers of the kiln. They are yödling, the while they work, and jesting and laughing. The stokers, with flaming, swollen eyes, their tawny complexion waxing a brilliant bronze, their sweat making golden furrows therein, with their pikes and pitchforks busy, are terribly magnificent to behold. Here be men who would destroy Bastilles for you, if it were nominated in the bond. And there is the monk-foreman––the kiln is of the monastery’s estate––reading his breviary while the lime is in making. Indeed, these sodalities of the Lebanons are not what their vows and ascetic theologies would make them. No lean-jowled, hungry-looking devotees, living in exiguity and droning in exinanition their prayers,––not by any means. Their flesh-pots are not a few, and their table is a marvel of ascetism! And why not, if their fat estates––three-quarter of the lands here is held in mortmain by the clergy––can yield anything, from silk cocoons to lime-pits? They will clothe you in silk at least; they will lime-wash your homes and sepulchres, if they cannot lime-wash anything else. Thanks to them so long as they keep some reminiscence of business in their heads to keep the Devil out of it.

The monk-foreman is reading with one eye and watching with the other. “Work,” cries he, “every minute wasted is stolen from the abbey. And whoso steals, look in the pit: its fire is nothing compared with Juhannam.” And the argument serves its purpose. The labourers hurry hither and thither, bringing 197 brushwood near; the first stoker pitches to the second, the second to the third, and he feeds the flaming, smoking, coruscating volcano. “Yallah!” (Keep it up) exclaims the monk-foreman. “Burn the devil’s creed,” cries one. “Burn hell,” cries another. And thus jesting in earnest, mightily working and enduring, they burn the mountains into lime, they make the very rocks yield somewhat.––Strength and blessings, brothers.

After the usual inquiry of whence and whither, his monkship offers the snuff-box. “No? roll you, then, a cigarette,” taking out a plush pouch containing a mixture of the choicest native roots. These, we were told, are grown on the monastery’s estate. We speak of the cocoon products of the season.

“Beshrew the mulberries!” exclaims the monk. “We are turning all our estates into fruit orchards and orangeries. The cultivation of the silk-worm is in itself an abomination. And while its income to-day is not as much as it was ten years ago, the expenditure has risen twofold. America is ruining our agriculture; and soon, I suppose, we have to send to China for labourers. Why, those who do not emigrate demand twice as much to-day for half the work they used to do five years ago; and those who return from America strut about like country gentlemen deploring the barrenness of their native soil.”

And one subject leading to another, for our monk is a glib talker, we come to the cheese-makers, the goatherds. “Even these honest rustics,” says he, “are becoming sophisticated (mafsudin). Their 198 cheese is no longer what it was, nor is their faith. For Civilisation, passing by their huts in some shape or other, whispers in their ears something about cleverness and adulteration. And mistaking the one for the other, they abstract the butter from the milk and leave the verdigris in the utensils. This lust of gain is one of the diseases which come from Europe and America,––it is a plague which even the goatherd cannot escape. Why, do you know, wherever the cheese-monger goes these days ptomaine poison is certain to follow.”

“And why does not the Government interfere?” we ask.

“Because the Government,” replies our monk in a dry, droll air and gesture, “does not eat cheese.”

And the monks, we learned, do not have to buy it. For this, as well as their butter, olive oil, and wine, is made on their own estates, under their own supervision.

“Yes,” he resumes, placing his breviary in his pocket and taking out the snuff-box; “not long ago one who lived in these parts––a young man from Baalbek he was, and he had his booth in the pine forest yonder––bought some cheese from one of these muleteer cheese-mongers, and after he had eaten of it fell sick. It chanced that I was passing by on my way to the abbey, when he was groaning and retching beneath that pine tree. It was the first time I saw that young man, and were I not passing by I know not what would have become of him. I helped him to the abbey, where he was ministered to by our physician, 199 and he remained with us three days. He ate of our cheese and drank of our wine, and seemed to like both very much. And ever since, while he was here, he would come to the abbey with a basket or a tray of his own make––he occupied himself in making wicker-baskets and trays––and ask in exchange some of our cheese and olive oil. He was very intelligent, this fellow; his eyes sometimes were like the mouth of this pit, full of fire and smoke. But he was queer. The clock in him was not wound right––he was always ahead or behind time, always complaining that we monks did not reckon time as he did. Nevertheless, I liked him much, and often would I bring him some of our cookery. But he never accepted anything without giving something in exchange.”

Unmistakable signs.

“And his black turban,” continues the monk, “over his long flowing hair made him look like our hermit.” (Strange coincidence!) “On your way here have you not stopped to visit the hermit? Not far from the abbey, on your right hand coming here, is the Hermitage.”

We remember passing a pretty cottage surrounded by a vineyard in that rocky wilderness; but who would mistake that for a troglodyte’s cave? “And this young man from Baalbek,” we ask, “how did he live in this forest?”

“Yonder,” points the monk, “he cleared and cleaned for himself a little space which he made his workshop. And up in the pines he constructed a 200 platform, which he walled and covered with boughs. And when he was not working or walking, he would be there among the branches, either singing or asleep. I used to envy him that nest in the pines.”

“And did he ever go to church?”

“He attended mass twice in our chapel, on Good Friday and on Easter Sunday, I think.”

“And did he visit the abbey often?”

“Only when he wanted cheese or olive oil.” (Shame, O Khalid!) “But he often repaired to the Hermitage. I went with him once to listen to his conversation with the Hermit. They often disagreed, but never quarrelled. I like that young man in spite of his oddities of thought, which savoured at times of infidelity. But he is honest, believe me; never tells a lie; and in a certain sense he is as pious as our Hermit, I think. Roll another cigarette.”

“Thank you. And the Hermit, what is your opinion of him?”

“Well, h’m––h’m––go visit him. A good man he is, but very simple. And between us, he likes money too much. H’m, h’m, go visit him. If I were not engaged at present, I would accompany you thither.”

We thank our good monk and retrace our steps to the Hermitage, rolling meanwhile in our mind that awful remark about the Hermit’s love of money. Blindness and Plague! even the troglodyte loves and worships thee, thou silver Demiurge! We can not believe it. The grudges of monks against each other often reach darker and more fatal depths. Alas, if 201 the faith of the cheese-monger is become adulterated, what shall we say of the faith of our monkhood? If the salt of the earth––but not to the nunnery nor to the monkery, we go. Rather let us to the Hermitage, Reader, and with an honest heart; in earnest, not in sport.