The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani (non fiction books to read .TXT) 📕
In the grill-room of the Mena House we meet the poet Shakib, who was then drawing his inspiration from a glass of whiskey and soda. Nay, he was drowning his sorrows therein, for his Master, alas! has mysteriously disappeared.
"I have not seen him for ten days," said the Poet; "and I know not where he is.--If I did? Ah, my friend, you would not then see me here. Indeed, I should be with him, and though he be in the trap of the Young Turks." And some real tears flowed down the cheeks of the Poet, as he spoke.
The Mena House, a charming little Branch of Civilisation at the gate of the desert, stands, like man himself, in the shadow of two terrible immensities, the Sphinx and the Pyramid, the Origin and the End. And in the grill-room, over a glass of whiskey and soda, we presume to solve in few words the eternal mystery. But that is not what we came for. And to avoid the bewildering depths into which we were led, we suggested a stroll on the sands. Here the Poet waxed more eloquent, an
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And here we must interpose a little of our skepticism, if but to gratify an habitual craving in us. We do not doubt that Khalid’s self-sufficiency is remarkable; that his courage––on paper––is quite above the common; that the grit and stay he shows are wonderful; that his lofty aspirations, so indomitable in their onwardness, are great: but we only ask, having thus fortified his soul, how is he to fortify his stomach? He is going to work, to be a menial, to earn a living by honest means? Ah, Khalid, Khalid! Did you not often bestow a furtive glance on some one else’s checkbook? Did you not even exercise therein your skill in calculation? If the bank, where Shakib deposits his little saving, failed, would you be so indomitable, so dogged in your resolution? Would you not soften a trifle, loosen a whit, if only for the sake of your blood-circulation? 79
Indeed, Shakib has become a patron to Khalid. Shakib the poet, who himself should have a patron, is always ready to share his last dollar with his loving, though cantankerous friend. And this, in spite of all the disagreeable features of a friendship which in the Syrian Colony was become proverbial. But Khalid now takes up the newspapers and scans the Want Columns for hours. The result being a clerkship in a lawyer’s office. Nay, an apprenticeship; for the legal profession, it seems, had for a while engaged his serious thoughts.
And this of all the professions is the one on which he would graft his scion of lofty morality? Surely, there be plenty of fuel for a conflagration in a lawyer’s office. Such rows of half-calf tomes, such piles of legal documents, all designed to combat dishonesty and fraud, “and all immersed in them, and nourished and maintained by them.” In what a sorry condition will your Morality issue out of these bogs! A lawyer’s clerk, we are informed, can not maintain his hold on his clerkship, if he does not learn to blink. That is why Khalid is not long in serving papers, copying summonses, and searching title-deeds. In this lawyer’s office he develops traits altogether foreign to his nature. He even becomes a quidnunc, prying now and then into the personal affairs of his superiors. Ay, and he dares once to suggest to his employer a new method of dealing with the criminals among his clients. Withal, Khalid is slow, slower than the law itself. If he goes out to serve a summons he does not return for a day. If he is sent to search title-deeds, he does not show up 80 in the office for a week. And often he would lose himself in the Park surrounding the Register’s Office, pondering on his theory of immanent morality. He would sit down on one of those benches, which are the anchors of loafers of another type, his batch of papers beside him, and watch the mad crowds coming and going, running, as it were, between two fires. These puckered people are the living, moving chambers of sleeping souls.
Khalid was always glad to come to this Register’s Office. For though the searching of title-deeds be a mortal process, the loafing margin of the working hour could be extended imperceptibly, and without hazarding his or his employer’s interest. The following piece of speculative fantasy and insight must have been thought out when he should have been searching title-deeds.
“This Register’s Office,” it is written in the K. L. MS., “is the very bulwark of Society. It is the foundation on which the Trust Companies, the Courts, and the Prisons are reared. Your codes are blind without the miraculous torches which this Office can light. Your judges can not propound the ‘laur’––I beg your pardon, the law––without the aid of these musty, smelling, dilapidated tomes. Ay, these are the very constables of the realm, and without them there can be no realm, no legislators, and no judges. Strong, club-bearing constables, these Liebers, standing on the boundary lines, keeping peace between brothers and neighbours.
“Here, in these Liebers is an authority which never 81 fails, never dies––an authority which willy-nilly we obey and in which we place unbounded trust. In any one of these Registers is a potentiality which can always worst the quibbles and quiddities of lawyers and ward off the miserable technicalities of the law. Any of them, when called upon, can go into court and dictate to the litigants and the attorneys, the jury and the judge. They are the deceased witnesses come to life. And without them, the judges are helpless, the marshals and sheriffs too. Ay, and what without them would be the state of our real-estate interests? Abolish your constabulary force, and your police force, and with these muniments of power, these dumb but far-seeing agents of authority and intelligence, you could still maintain peace and order. But burn you this Register’s Office, and before the last Lieber turn to ashes, ere the last flame of the conflagration die out, you will have to call forth, not only your fire squads, but your police force and even your soldiery, to extinguish other fires different in nature, but more devouring––and as many of them as there are boundary lines in the land.”
And we now come to the gist of the matter.
“What wealth of moral truth,” he continues, “do we find in these greasy, musty pages. When one deeds a piece of property, he deeds with it something more valuable, more enduring. He deeds with it an undying human intelligence which goes down to posterity, saying, Respect my will; believe in me; and convey this respect and this belief to your offspring. Ay, the immortal soul breathes in a deed as in a great book. And the implicit trust we place in a musty parchment, is the mystic outcome of the blind faith, or rather the far-seeing faith which our ancestors had in the morality 82 and intelligence of coming generations. For what avails their deeds if they are not respected?... We are indebted to our forbears, therefore, not for the miserable piece of property they bequeath us, but for the confidence and trust, the faith and hope they had in our innate or immanent morality and intelligence. The will of the dead is law for the living.”
Are we then to look upon Khalid as having come out of that Office with soiled fingers only? Or has the young philosopher abated in his clerkship the intensity of his moral views? Has he not assisted his employer in the legal game of quieting titles? Has he not acquired a little of the delusive plausibilities of lawyers? Shakib throws no light on these questions. We only know that the clerkship or rather apprenticeship was only held for a season. Indeed, Khalid must have recoiled from the practice. Or in his recklessness, not to say obtrusion, he must have been outrageous enough to express in the office of the honourable attorney, or in the neighbourhood thereof, his views about pettifogging and such like, that the said honourable attorney was under the painful necessity of asking him to stay home. Nay, the young Syrian was discharged. Or to put it in a term adequate to the manner in which this was done, he was “fired.” Now, Khalid betakes him back to his cellar, and thrumming his lute-strings, lights up the oppressive gloom with Arabic song and music.
A monastery in Mt. Lebanon, a sort of Bedlam, where the exorcising monks beat the devil out of one’s head with clouted shoes.––Editor.
And the doctors here practise in the name of science what the exorcising monks practise in the name of religion. The poor devil, or patient, in either case is done to death.––Editor.
From the house of law the dervish Khalid wends his way to that of science, and from the house of science he passes on to that of metaphysics. His staff in hand, his wallet hung on his shoulder, his silver cigarette case in his pocket, patient, confident, content, he makes his way from one place to another. Unlike his brother dervishes, he is clean and proud of it, too. He knocks at this or that door, makes his wish known to the servant or the mistress, takes the crumbs given him, and not infrequently gives his prod to the dogs. In the vestibule of one of the houses of spiritism, he tarries a spell and parleys with the servant. The Mistress, a fair-looking, fair-spoken dame of seven lustrums or more, issues suddenly from her studio, in a curiously designed black velvet dressing-gown; she is drawn to the door by the accent of the foreigner’s speech and the peculiar cadence of his voice. They meet: and magnetic currents from his dark eyes and her eyes of blue, flow and fuse. They speak: and the lady asks the stranger if he would not serve instead of begging. And he protests, “I am a Dervish at the door of Allah.” “And I am a Spirit in Allah’s house,” she rejoins. They enter: and the parley in the vestibule is followed by a tête-à-tête in the parlour 84 and another in the dining-room. They agree: and the stranger is made a member of the Spiritual Household, which now consists of her and him, the Medium and the Dervish.
Now, this fair-spoken dame, who dotes on the occult and exotic, delights in the aroma of Khalid’s cigarettes and Khalid’s fancy. And that he might feel at ease, she begins by assuring him that they have met and communed many times ere now, that they have been friends under a preceding and long vanished embodiment. Which vagary Khalid seems to countenance by referring to the infinite power of Allah, in the compass of which nothing is impossible. And with these mystical circumlocutions of ceremony, they plunge into an intimacy which is bordered by the metaphysical on one side, and the physical on the other. For though the Medium is at the threshold of her climacteric, Khalid afterwards tells Shakib that there be something in her eyes and limbs which always seem to be waxing young. And of a truth, the American woman, of all others, knows best how to preserve her beauty from the ravages of sorrow and the years. That is why, we presume, in calling him, “child,” she does not permit him to call her, “mother.” Indeed, the Medium and the Dervish often jest, and somewhiles mix the frivolous with the mysterious.
We would still follow our Scribe here, were it not that his pruriency often reaches the edge. He speaks of “the liaison” with all the rude simplicity and frankness of the Arabian Nights. And though, as the Mohammedans say, “To the pure everything is pure,” and 85 again, “Who quotes a heresy is not guilty of it”; nevertheless, we do not feel warranted in rending the veil of the reader’s prudery, no matter how transparent it might be. We believe, however, that the pruriency of Orientals, like the prudery of Occidentals, is in fact only an appearance. On both sides there is a display of what might be called verbal virtue and verbal vice. And on both sides, the exaggerations are configured in a harmless pose. Be this as it may, we at least, shall withhold from Shakib’s lasciviousness the English dress it seeks at
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