The Book of Khalid (30 page)

“I am for a reformation by emigration. And quietly, peacefully, this can be done. Nor fire, nor sword bring I: only this I say: Will and do; resolve and act upon your resolution. The emigration of the mind before the revolution of the state, my Brothers. The soul must be free, and the mind, before one has a right to be a member of a free Government, before one can justly enjoy his rights and perform his duties as a subject. But a voting slave, O my Brothers, is the pitifulest spectacle under the sun. And remember that neither the Dastur, nor the Unionists, nor the Press, can give you this spiritual freedom, if you do not awake and emigrate. Come up to the highlands: here is a patrimony for each of you; here are vineyards to cultivate. Leave the thistle-fields and marshes behind; regret nothing. Come out of the superstitions of the sheikhs and ulema; of the barren mazes of the sufis; of the deadly swamps of theolougues and priests: emigrate! Every one of us should be a Niazi in this moral struggle, an Enver in this spiritual revolution. A little willpower, a little heroism, added to those virtues I have named, the solid virtues of our ancestors, and the Orient will no longer be an object of scorn and gain to commercial Europe. We shall then stand on an equal footing with the Europeans. Ay, with the legacy of science which we shall learn to invest, and with our spirituality divested of its cobwebs, and purified, we shall stand even higher than the Americans and Europeans.”—

On the following day Damascus was simmering with excitement—Damascus, the stronghold of the ulema—the learned fanatics—whom Khalid has lightly pinched. But they scarcely felt it; they could not believe it. Now, the gentry of Islam, the sheikhs and ulema, would hear this lack-beard dervish, as he was called. But they disdain to stand
with the rabble in the Midan or congregate with the
Mutafarnejin
(Europeanised) in the public Halls. Nowhere but at the Mosque, therefore, can they hear what this Khalid has to say. This was accordingly decided upon, and, being approved by all parties concerned,—the Mufti, the Vali, the Deputies of the Holy Society and the speaker,—a day was set for the great address at the great Mosque of Omaiyah.

Meanwhile, the blatant Officer, the wheedling Politician, and the lack-beard Dervish, are feasted by the personages and functionaries of Damascus. The Vali, the Mufti, Abdallah Pasha,—he who owns more than two score villages and has more than five thousand braves at his beck and call,—these, and others of less standing, vie with each other in honouring the distinguished visitors. And after the banqueting, while Ahmed Bey retires to a private room with his host to discuss the political situation, Khalid, to escape the torturing curiosity of the bores and quidnuncs of the evening, goes out to the open court, and under an orange tree, around the gurgling fountain, breathes again of quietude and peace. Nay, breathes deeply of the heavy perfume of the white jasmines of his country, while musing of the scarlet salvias of a distant land.

And what if the salvia, as by a miracle, blossoms on the jasmine? What if the former stifles the latter? Indeed, one can escape boredom, but not love. One can flee the quidnuncs of the salon, but not the questioning perplexity of one’s heart. A truce now to ambiguities.

’Tis high time that we give a brief account of what took place after Khalid took leave of Mrs. Gotfry. Many “devilish mischances” have since then conspired against Khalid’s peace of mind. For when they were leaving Beirut, only a few minutes before the train started, Mrs. Gotfry, who was
also going to Damascus, steps into the same carriage, which he and his companions occupied: mischance first. Arriving in Damascus they both stay at the same Hotel: mischance second. At table this time he occupies the seat next to hers, and once, rising simultaneously, their limbs touch: mischance third. And the last and worst, when he retires to his room, he finds that her own is in the same side-hall opposite to his. Now, who could have ordered it thus, of all the earthly powers? And who can say what so many mischances might not produce? True, a thousand thistles do not make a rose; but with destiny this logic does not hold. For every new mischance makes us forget the one preceding; and the last and worst is bound to be the harbinger of good fortune. Yes, every people, we imagine, has its aphorisms on the subject: Distress is the key of relief, says the Arabic proverb; The strait leads to the plain, says the Chinese; The darkest hour is nearest the dawn, says the English.

But we must not make any stipulations with time, or trust in aphorisms. We do not know what Mrs. Gotfry’s ideas are on the subject. Nor can we say how she felt in the face of these strange coincidences. In her religious heart, might there not be some shadow of an ancient superstition, some mystical, instinctive strain, in which the preternatural is resolved? That is a question which neither our Scribe nor his Master will help us to answer. And we, having been faithful so far in the discharge of our editorial duty, can not at this juncture afford to fabricate.

We know, however, that the Priestess of Buhaism and the beardless, long-haired Dervish have many a conversation together: in the train, in the Hotel, in the parks and groves of Damascus, they tap their hearts and minds, and drink of each other’s wine of thought and fancy.

“I first mistook you for a Mohammedan,” she said to him once; and he assured her that she was not mistaken.

“Then, you are not a Christian?”

“I am a Christian, too.”

And he relates of the Buha when he was on trial in Rhodes. “Of what religion are you,” asks the Judge. “I am neither a Camel-driver nor a Carpenter,” replies the Buha, alluding thereby to Mohammad and Christ. “If you ask me the same question,” Khalid continues—“but I see you are uncomfortable.” And he takes up the cushion which had fallen behind the divan, and places it under her arm. He then lights a cigarette and holds it up to her inquiringly. Yes? He, therefore, lights another for himself, and continues. “If you ask me the same question that was asked the Buha, I would not hesitate in saying that I am both a Camel-driver and Carpenter. I might also be a Buhaist in a certain sense. I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it assumes; and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it. Indeed, every religion is good and true, if it serves the high purpose of its founder. And they are false, all of them, when they serve the low purpose of their high priests. Take the lowest of the Arab tribes, for instance, and you will find in their truculent spirit a strain of faith sublime, though it is only evinced at times. The Beduins, rovers and raveners, manslayers and thieves, are in their house of moe-hair the kindest hosts, the noblest and most generous of men. They receive the wayfarer, though he be an enemy, and he eats and drinks and sleeps with them under the same roof, in the assurance of Allah. If a religion makes a savage so good, so kind, it has well served its purpose. As for me, I admire the grand passion in both the Camel-driver and the Carpenter: the barbaric grandeur, the magnanimity and fidelity of the Arab as well
as the sublime spirituality, the divine beauty, of the Nazarene, I deeply reverence. And in one sense, the one is the complement of the other: the two combined are
my
ideal of a Divinity.”

And now we descend from the chariot of the empyrean where we are riding with gods and apostles, and enter into one drawn by mortal coursers. We go out for a drive, and alight from the carriage in the poplar grove, to meander in its shades, along its streams. But digressing from one path into another, we enter unaware the eternal vista of love. There, on a boulder washed by the murmuring current, in the shade of the silver-tufted poplars, Khalid and Mrs. Gotfry sit down for a rest.

“Everything in life must always resolve itself into love,” said Khalid, as he stood on the rock holding out his hand to his friend. “Love is the divine solvent. Love is the splendour of God.”

Mrs. Gotfry paused at the last words. She was startled by this image. Love, the splendour of God? Why, the Bab, the Buha, is the splendour of God. Buha mean splendour. The Buha, therefore, is love. Love is the new religion. It is the old religion, the eternal religion, the only religion. How came he by this, this young Syrian? Would he rival the Buha? Rise above him? They are of kindred races—their ancestors, too, may be mine. Love the splendour of God—God the splendour of Love. Have I been all along fooling myself? Did I not know my own heart?

These, and more such, passed through Mrs. Gotfry’s mind, as shuttles through a loom, while Khalid was helping her up to her seat on the boulder, which is washed by the murmuring current.

“If life were such a rock under our feet,” said he, pressing
his lips upon her hand, “the divine currents around it will melt it, soon or late, into love.”

They light cigarettes. A fresh breeze is blowing from the city. It is following them with the perfume of its gardens. The falling leaves are whispering in the grove to the swaying boughs. The narcissus is nodding to the myrtle across the way. And the bulbuls are pouring their golden splendour of song. Khalid speaks.

“Beauty either detains, repels, or enchants. The first is purely external, linear; the second is an imitation of the first, its artistic artificial ideal, so to speak; and the third”—He is silent. His eyes, gazing into hers, take up the cue.

Mrs. Gotfry turns from him exhausted. She looks into the water.

“See the rose-beds in the stream; see the lovely pebbles dancing around them.”

“I can see everything in your eyes, which are like limpid lakes shaded with weeping-willows. I can even hear bulbuls singing in your brows.—Turn not from me your eyes. They reflect the pearls of your soul and the flowers of your body, even as those crystal waters reflect the pebbles and rose-beds beneath.”

“Did you not say that love is the splendour of God?”

“Yes.”

“Then, why look for it in my eyes?”

“And why look for it in the heart of the heavens, in the depths of the sea—in the infinities of everything that is beautiful and terrible—in the breath of that little flower, in the song of the bulbul, in the whispers of your silken lashes, in—”

“Shut your eyes, Khalid; be more spiritual.”

“With my eyes open I see but one face; with my eyes
closed I see a million faces: they are all yours. And they are loving, and sweet, and kind. But I am content with one, with the carnate symbol of them, with you, and though you be cold and cruel. The divine splendour is here, and here and here—”

“Why, your ardour is exhausting.”

But on their way back to the Hotel, Khalid gives her this from Swedenborg: “ ‘Do you love me’ means ‘do you see the same truth that I see?’ ”

There is no use. Khalid is impossible.

“I’M NOT STARVING FOR PLEASURE,” KHALID once said to Shakib; “nor for the light free love of an exquisite caprice. Those little flowers that bloom and wither in the blush of dawn are for the little butterflies. The love that endures, give me that. And it must be of the deepest divine strain,—as deep and divine as maternal love. Man is of Eternity, not of Time; and love, the highest attribute of man, must be likewise. With me it must endure throughout all worlds and immensities; else I would not raise a finger for it. Pleasure, Shakib, is for the child within us; sexual joy, for the animal; love, for the god. That is why I say when you set your seal to the contract, be sure it is of the kind which all the gods of all the future worlds will raise to their lips in reverence.”

But Khalid’s child-spirit, not to say childishness, is not, as he would have us believe, a thing of the past. Nor are the animal and the god within him always agreed as to what is and what is not a love divine and eternal. In New York, to be sure, he often brushed his wings against those flowerets that “bloom and wither in the blush of dawn.” And he was not a little pleased to find that the dust which gathers on the wings adds a charm to the colouring of life. But how false
and trivial it was, after all. The gold dust and the dust of the road, could they withstand a drop of rain? A love dust-deep, as it were, close to the earth; too mean and pitiful to be carried by the storm over terrible abysses to glorious heights. A love, in a word, without pain, that is to say impure. In Baalbek, on the other hand, he drank deep of the pain, but not of the joy, of love. He and his cousin Najma had just lit in the shrine of Venus the candles of the altar of the Virgin, when a villainous hand that of Jesuitry, issuing from the darkness, clapped over them the snuffer and carried his Happiness off. Here was a love divine, the promised bliss of which was snatched away from him.

And now in Damascus, he feels, for the first time, the exquisite pain and joy of a love which he can not yet fathom; a love, which like the storm, is carrying him over terrible abysses to unknown heights. The bitter sting of a Nay he never felt so keenly before. The sleep-stifling torture and joy of suspense he did not fully experience until now. But if he can not sleep, he will work. He has but a few days to prepare his address. He can not be too careful of what he says, and how he says it. To speak at the great Mosque of Omaiyah is a great privilege. A word uttered there will reach the furthermost parts of the Mohammedan world. Moreover, all the ulema and all the heavy-turbaned fanatics will be there.

But he can not even work. On the table before him is a pile of newspapers from all parts of Syria and Egypt—even from India—and all simmering, as it were, with Khalid’s name, and Khalidism, and Khalid scandals. He is hailed by some, assailed by others; glorified and vilified in tawdry rhyme and ponderous prose by Christians and Mohammedans alike. “Our new Muhdi,” wrote an Egyptian wit (one of those pallid prosers we once met in the hasheesh dens, no
doubt), “our new Muhdi has added to his hareem an American beauty with an Oriental leg.”

What he meant by this only the hasheesh smokers know. “An instrument in the hands of some American speculators, who would build sky-scrapers on the ruins of our mosques,” wrote another. “A lever with which England is undermining Al-Islam,” cried a voice in India. “A base one in the service of some European coalition, who, under the pretext of preaching the spiritualities, is undoing the work of the Revolution. The gibbet is for ordinary traitors; for him the stake,” etc., etc.