Khaled F. Marion Crawford (best romance novels of all time .TXT) 📖

the song and the words soothed him, but before she had reached the end, she stopped suddenly.

“Why do you not finish it?” he asked.

“If you have told me truth,” she answered, “this is no time for singing and music. But if not, why should I labour to amuse you, as though I were a slave? I will call one of the women who has a sweet voice and a good memory. She will sing you a kasid which will last till morning.”

“You are wrong,” said Khaled. “There is no reason in what you say.”

But he reflected upon her nature, while he spoke.

“Surely,” he thought, “there is nothing in the world so contradictory as a woman. I ask of her a song and she is silent. I bid her rest, supposing her to be weary, and she sings to me. If I tell her that I hate her she will perhaps answer that she loves me. Min Allah! Let us see.”

“You inspire hatred in me,” he said aloud, after a few moments.

At this Zehowah was very much astonished, and she again let the barbat fall from her knees.

“You wished me to believe that you loved me, and this not long since,” she answered.

“It may be so. I did not know you then.”

He looked towards the door as though he would say nothing further. Zehowah sighed, not understanding him yet being wounded in that sensitive tissue of the heart which divides the outer desert of pride from the inner garden of love, belonging to neither but separating the two as a veil. And when there is a rent in that veil, pride looks on love and scoffs bitterly, and love looks on pride and weeps tears of fire.

“I am sorry that you hate me,” she said, but the words were bitter in her mouth as a draught from a spring into which the enemy have cast wormwood, that none may drink of it.

“Allah is great!” thought Khaled. “This is already an advantage.”

Then Zehowah took up the barbat and began to sing a careless song not like any which Khaled had ever heard. This is the song⁠—

“The fisherman of Oman tied the halter under his arms,
The sky was as blue as the sea in winter.
The fisherman dived into the deep waters
As a ray of light shoots through a sapphire of price.
The sea was as blue as the sky, for it was winter.
Among the rocks below the water it was dark and cold
Though the sky above was as blue as a fine sapphire.
The fisherman saw a rough shell lying there in the dark between two crabs,
‘In that shell there must be a large pearl,’ he said.
But when he would have taken it the crabs ran together and fastened upon his hand.
His heart was bursting in his ribs for lack of breath
And he thought of the sky above, as blue as the sea in winter.
So he pulled the halter and was taken half-fainting into the boat.
The crabs held his hand but he struck them off,
And his heart beat merrily as he breathed the wind
Blowing over the sea as blue as the sky in winter.
‘There are no pearls in this ocean,’ he said to his companions,
‘But there are crabs if anyone cares to dive.’
One of them saw the shell caught between the legs of the crabs,
He opened it and found a pearl of the value of a kingdom.
‘The pearl is mine, but you may eat the crabs,’ he said to the fisherman,
‘Since you say there are no pearls in this ocean,
Which is as blue as the sky in winter.’
Then the fisherman smote him and tried to take the pearl,
But as they strove it fell into the deep water and sank,
Where the sea was as blue as the sky in winter.
‘I will drown you with a heavy weight,’ said the fisherman, ‘for you have robbed me of my fortune.’
‘I have not robbed you, O brother, for the pearl is again where you found it,
In the sea which is as blue as the sky in winter.’
Then the fisherman dived again many times in vain
Till the drums of his ears were broken and his heart was dissolved for lack of breath.
But the pearl is still there, at the bottom of the sea,
And the sea is as blue as the sky in winter.
This is the kasid of the fisherman of Oman
Which Zehowah Bint ul Mahomed el Hamid
Has made and sung for her lord, Khaled the Sultan.
May Allah send him long life and many such hearts
As the one which fell into the ocean
When the sky was as blue as the sea in winter.”

“This is a new song,” said Khaled, when she had finished.

“Is it? I made it many months ago,” Zehowah answered. “Does it please you?”

“It is not very melodious, nor do I think there is much truth in the matter of it. But I thank you, for it has served to pass the time.”

Zehowah laughed a little scornfully.

“I daresay you would prefer the song of a Persian nightingale,” she said. “Nevertheless my song is full of truth, though you cannot see it. There are many who seek for things of great value and do not know when they have found them because a crab has bitten their hands.”

“Verily,” thought Khaled, “this is indeed the spirit of contradiction.”

But he was silent for a time, not wishing that she should think him easily moved. In the meantime Zehowah played softly upon the little instrument and Khaled watched her, wondering whether she were not playing upon the strings of his heart, for her own pleasure, as skilfully as her fingers ran upon the chords of the barbat. Many words rose to his lips then, and he wished that he also had the science of music that he might sing sweetly to her. Then he laughed aloud at his own imagination, which was indeed that of a foolish youth.

“The lion roaring for a sweetmeat,” he thought, “and the sword-hand aching to