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

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 principal 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 282 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 fiché, 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; 283 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 titillating 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 284 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 worshipper 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 gods 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 285 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 passed her sixth lustrum. 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 286 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, alassing, 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 pass 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 assume 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.