Khalid

“ Your field of poppies and daisies, O Khalid, is miraculously transformed into a pit of furious grey spectres and howling red spirits. And still you wait in the tribune until the storm subside? Fool, fool! Art now in a civilised assembly? Hast thou no eyes to see, no ears to hear?
“Reactionist! Infidel! Innovator! Wahhabi! Slay him! Kill him!”––Are these likely to subside the while thou wait? By the tomb of St. John there, get thee down, and quickly. Bravo, Shakib!––He rushes to the tribune, drags him down by the jubbah, and, with the help of another friend, hustles him out of the Mosque. ”

“ And while the many-ruffled sky-blue dress is being made, Khalid, inspired by Najma’s remarks on his hair, rhapsodises on flounces and ruffles. Of this striking piece of fantasy, in which are scintillations of the great Truth, we note the following:
“What can you do without your flounces? How can you live without your ruffles? Ay, how can you, without them, think, speak, or work? How can you eat, drink, walk, sleep, pray, worship, moralise, sentimentalise, or love, without them? Are you not ruffled and flounced when you first see the light, ruffled and flounced when you last see the darkness? ”

“ Reader, we thank you for your anxiety about Khalid’s health. And we would fain show you the Magic Carpet which he carries in the lock-box of his push-cart. But see for yourself, here be neither Magic Carpet, nor Magic Ring. Only his papers, a few towels, a blanket, some underwear, and his coffee utensils, are here. For Khalid could forego his mojadderah, but never his coffee, the Arab that he is. But an Arab on the wayfare, if he finds himself at night far from the camp, will dig him a ditch in the sands and lie there to sleep under the living stars. ”

“ But for the sake of this beard Sheikh Khalid, do not speak at the Mosque to-day. I know the people of this City: they are ignorant, obtuse, fanatical, 313 blind. ‘God hath sealed up their hearts and their hearing.’ They will not hear thee; they can not understand thee. I know them better than thou: I have lived amongst them for forty years. And what talk have we wasted. They will not hear; they can not see. It’s a dog’s tail, Sheikh Khalid. And what Allah hath twisted, man can not straighten. ”

“ And one day, seeing a Mohammedan spreading his rug to pray, he begins to kneel and kiss the ground in imitation of him. He even went into the tent and brought Khalid’s jubbah to spread it on the sand likewise for that purpose. So sensitive to outside impressions is this child that he quickly responds to the least suggestion and with the least effort. Early in the morning, when the chill of night is still on the sands, he toddles into Khalid’s tent cooing and warbling his joy. A walking jasmine flower, a singing ray of sunshine, Khalid calls him. ”

“ Think you a Tammany Boss is like your atheists and attorneys and women of the studio, at whom you could vent your ire without let or hindrance? These harmless humans have no constables at their command. But his Shamrag Majesty––O wretched Khalid, must we bring one of his myrmidons to your cellar to prove to you that, even in this Tammany Land, you can not with immunity give free and honest expression to your thoughts? Now, were you not summoned to the Shamrag’s presence to answer for the crime of lèse-majesté? And were you not, for your audacity, left to brood ten days and nights in gaol? ”

“ The cultured, too, and the wise, are counted among thy slaves. Even the righteous surrender themselves to thee and are willing to undergo that hideous transformation. O Success, what an infernal litany thy votaries and high-priests are chanting to thee.... Thou ruthless Gorgon, what crimes thou art committing, and what crimes are being committed in thy name!”
From which it is evident that Khalid does not wish for success. Khalid is satisfied if he can maintain his hold on the few spare feet he has in the cellar, and continue to replenish his little store of lentils and olive oil. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ While we recommend, therefore, the prudence of the oleaginous Ahmed, we can not with justice condemn the perversity of our fretful Khalid. For he who makes loud boast of spiritual freedom, is, nevertheless, a slave of the Idea. And slavery in some shape or shade will clutch at the heart of the most powerful and most developed of mortals. Poor Khalid! if Truth commands thee to destroy the memorandum of Ahmed Bey, Wisdom suggests that thou destroy, too, thine address. And Wisdom in the person of Sheikh Taleb now knocks at thy door. ”

“ Im-Hanna is cooking the last dish of mojadderah; and Khalid, with some vague dream in his eyes, and a vaguer, far-looming hope in his heart, 133 is sitting on his trunk wondering at the variety of things Shakib is cramming into his. For our Scribe, we must not fail to remind the Reader, is contemplating great things of State, is nourishing a great political ambition. He will, therefore, bethink him of those in power at home. ”

“ And Khalid, though his push-cart had developed to a stationary fruit stand,––and perhaps for this very reason,––is now desirous of leaving America anon. He is afraid of success overtaking him. Moreover, the Bronx Park has awakened in him his long dormant love of Nature. For while warming himself on the flames of knowledge in the cellar, or rioting with the Bassarides of Bohemia, or canvassing and speechifying for Tammany, he little thought of what he had deserted in his native country. ”

“ One day he passes by a second-hand book-shop, which is in the financial hive of the city, hard by a church and within a stone’s throw from the Stock Exchange. The owner, a shabby venerable, standing there, pipe in mouth, between piles of pamphlets and little pyramids of books, attracts Khalid. He too occupies a cellar. And withal he resembles the Prophet in the picture which was burned with Tom Paine’s Age of Reason. Nothing in the face at least is amiss. ”

“ They drank the wine of the Jesuits, repeated, to the mellow strains of the lute, the song of the bulbuls, intoned the verses of Al-Mutanabbi, and, wrapping themselves in their rugs, fell asleep. But in the morning they were rudely jostled from their dreams by a spurt from the hose of the sailors washing the deck. Complaining not, they straggle down to their bunks to change their clothes. And Khalid, as he is doing this, implores Shakib not to mention to him any more that New-World paradise. ”

“ We are tired of wings that are really nothing but horns, misshaped and misplaced.
Look at our French-swearing, whiskey-drinking Tataric angels of the Dastur! Indeed, we rejoice that our poor little Devil is now beyond the reach of their dripping steel and rickety second-hand gibbets. And yet, not very far; for if the British Government consent or blink, Khalid and many real reactionists whom Cairo harbours, would have to seek an asylum elsewhere. ”

“ Howbeit, we can not conceive of how the affinity of the mind and soul with the senses, and the harmony between these and nature, are possible, if not exteriorised in that very superman whom Khalid so much dreads, and on whom he often casts a lingering glance of admiration. So there you are. We must either rise to a higher consciousness on the ruins of a lower one, of no-consciousness, rather, or go on seeming and simulating, aspiring, perspiring, and suffering, until our turn comes. Death denies no one. Meanwhile, Khalid’s rhapsodies on his way back to the city, we shall heed and try to echo. ”

“ Even at Al-Hayat Najib is become popular. Khalid often comes here carrying him on his back. And how ready is the child to salaam everybody, and with both hands, as he stands on the veranda steps. “Surely,” says Khalid, “there is a deeper understanding between man and child than between man and man. ”

“ For these and other reasons, Khalid separates himself from his Semite fellow peddlers, and makes this time a bigger move than the first.
Ay, even to the Bronx, where often in former days, shouldering the peddling-box, he tramped, will he now push his orange-cart and his hopes. There, between City and Country, nearer to Nature, and not far from the traffic of life, he fares better both in health and purse. It is much to his liking, this upper end of the City. Here the atmosphere is more peaceful and soothing, and the police are more agreeable. ”

“ Will it ever heal? Khalid takes shelter in one of the shops; a cameleer rates the boys and chases them away. The stoning was repeated the following day, and the cause of it, Shakib tells us, is patent. For when it became known in Baalbek that Khalid, the excommunicated one, is living in the Hotel, and with an American woman! the old prejudices against him were aroused, the old enemies were astirring. ”

“ Ay, Khalid henceforth shall cease to scour the horizon for that vague something of his dreams; he has become far-sighted enough by the process to see the necessity of pursuing in America something more spiritual than peddling crosses and scapulars. Especially in this America, where the alphabet is spread broadcast, and free of charge. ”

“ After Abu Bekr and 'Omar, the most prominent figure in the early days of Islam is without doubt that of Khalid son of Al-Welid. More to him than to any other is it due that the Faith so rapidly recovered its standing, and thereafter spread with such marvellous rapidity. A dashing soldier, brave even to rashness, his courage was tempered by a cool and ready judgment. ”

“ As Khalid came within sight of al-Yamâmah, he met a group of the banu-Ḥanîfah among whom was Mujjâʿah ibn-Murârah ibn-Sulmi. [10] He killed them and spared Mujjâʿah whom he carried off in chains. Khâlid put up his camp one mile from al-Yamâmah. Banu-Ḥanîfah came out to him, and among them were ar-Rajjâl and Muḥakkim ibn-aṭ-Ṭufail ibn-Subaiʿ, nicknamed the Muḳakkim al-Yamâmah. Khâlid, seeing something glittering among them, turned to his men and said, "Know ye Moslems that Allah has spared you the trouble of your enemy. Do ye not see how they have drawn the swords one against the other? ”

“ And to some extent, every one, a poet be he or a cobbler, enjoys such a license. I told Khalid that the logical and most effective course to pursue, in view of his rigorous morality, would be to pour a gallon of kerosene over his own head and fire himself out of existence. For the instruments of deception and debasement are not in the peddling-box, but rather in his heart. ”

“ And is not loafing a necessary prelude to the travail? Khalid, of course, felt the necessity of this, not knowing the why and wherefor. And from the vast world of paper-bound souls, for he relished but pamphlets at the start––they do not make much smoke in the fire, he would say––from that vast world he could command the greatest of the great to help him support the loafing while. ”

“ Quoth Khalid, “The fellow is so foul of favour and withal so rank of odour, so sordid and beastly that no woman would take him at a gift.” And she answered, “We will buy him a slave-girl.” So it befel, for the accomplishing of what Allah Almighty had decreed, that on the same day Ja’afar and Ala al-Din, the Governor Khalid and his son went down to the market and behold, they saw in the hands of a broker, a beautiful girl lovely-faced and of perfect shape, and the Wazir said to him, “O broker, ask her owner if he will take a thousand dinars for her.” ”

“ For he would as lief be a victim of success, he assures us, as to forego his mojadderah. And still having this, which he considers a luxury, he is willing to turn his hand at anything, if he can but preserve inviolate the integrity of his soul and the freedom of his mind. 78 These are a few of the pet terms of Khalid. And in as much as he can continue to repeat them to himself, he is supremely content. He can be a menial, if while cringing before his superiors, he were permitted to chew on his pet illusions. A few days before he burned his peddling-box, he had read Epictetus. ”

“ Now, the horizon of the Enchantress is unobstructed. Khalid is there alone; and her free love can freely pass on from him to another. And such messages they exchange! Such evaporations of the insipidities of free love! Khalid again takes up with Shakib, from whom he does not conceal anything. The epistles are read by both, and sometimes replied to by both! And she, in an effort to seem Oriental, calls 89 the Dervish, “My Syrian Rose,” “My Desert Flower,” “My Beduin Boy,” et cetera, always closing her message with either a strip of Syrian sky or a camel load of the narcissus. ”

“ Once he sees her, the huris are no more.
Now Shakib, who is more faithful in his narration than we first thought––who speaks of Khalid as he is, extenuating nothing––gives us access to a letter which he received from the Bronx a month before their departure from New York. In these Letters of Khalid, which our Scribe happily preserved, we feel somewhat relieved of the dogmatism, fantastic, mystical, 127 severe, which we often meet with in the K. L. MS. In his Letters, our Syrian peddler and seer is a plain blunt man unbosoming himself to his friend. ”

“ But Khalid is modest only in the things that pertain to the outward self. He wrote of other Romances and other Tragedies. And when his Genius is not dancing the dance of the seven veils, she is either flirting with the 7 monks of the Lebanon hills or setting fire to something in New York. But this is not altogether satisfactory to the present Editor, who, unlike the Author of the Khedivial Library MS., must keep the reader in mind. ’Tis very well to endeavour to unfold a few of the mysteries of one’s palingenesis, but why conceal from us his origin? ”