The Book of Khalid by Ameen Fares Rihani (non fiction books to read .TXT) ๐
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 our poor Scribe, knee-deep in the water below, blusters out curses, which Khalid heeds not. โI am tired of this job,โ he growls; โthe stone-roller never drew so much on my strength, nor did muleteering. 43 Ah, for my dripping ceiling again, for are we not now under the running gargoyle?โ And he reverts into a stupor, leaving the world to the poet and the pump.
For five years and more they lead such a life in the cellar. And they do not move out of it, lest they excite the envy of their compatriots. But instead of sleeping on the floor, they stretch themselves on the counters. The rising tide teaches them this little wisdom, which keeps the doctor and Izrรคil away. Their merchandise, however,โโtheir crosses, and scapulars and prayer-beads,โโare beyond hope of recovery. For what the rising tide spares, the rascally flyaway peddlers carry away. That is why they themselves shoulder the box and take to the road. And the pious old dames of the suburbs, we are told, receive them with such exclamations of joy and wonder, and almost tear their coats to get from them a sacred token. For you must remember, they are from the Holy Land. Unlike their goods, they at least are genuine. And every Saturday night, after beating the hoof in the country and making such fabulous profits on their false Holy-Land gewgaws, they return to their cellar happy and content.
โIn three years,โ writes our Scribe, โKhalid and I acquired what I still consider a handsome fortune. Each of us had a bank account, and a check book which we seldom used.... In spite of which, we continued to shoulder the peddling box and tramp along.... And Khalid would say to me, โA peddler is superior to a merchant; we travel and earn money; our compatriots the merchants rust in their 44 cellars and lose it.โ To be sure, peddling in the good old days was most attractive. For the exercise, the gain, the experienceโโthese are rich acquirements.โ
And both Shakib and Khalid, we apprehend, have been hitherto most moderate in their habits. The fact that they seldom use their check books, testifies to this. They have now a peddleress, Im-Hanna by name, who occupies their cellar in their absence, and keeps what little they have in order. And when they return every Saturday night from their peddling trip, they find the old woman as ready to serve them as a mother. She cooks mojadderah for them, and sews the bed-linen on the quilts as is done in the mother country.
โThe linen,โ says Shakib, โwas always as white as a doveโs wing, when Im-Hanna was with us.โ
And in the Khedivial Library Manuscript we find this curious note upon that popular Syrian dish of lentils and olive oil.
โMojadderah,โ writes Khalid, โhas a marvellous effect upon my humour and nerves. There are certain dishes, I confess, which give me the blues. Of these, fried eggplants and cabbage boiled with corn-beef on the American system of boiling, that is to say, cooking, I abominate the most. But mojadderah has such a soothing effect on the nerves; it conduces to cheerfulness, especially when the raw onion or the leek is taken with it. After a good round pewter platter of this delicious dish and a dozen leeks, I feel as if I could do the work of all mankind. And I am then in such a beatific state of mind that I would share 45 with all mankind my sack of lentils and my pipkin of olive oil. I wonder not at Esauโs extravagance, when he saw a steaming mess of it. For what is a birthright in comparison?โ
That Shakib also shared this beatific mood, the following quaint picture of their Saturday nights in the cellar, will show.
โA bank account,โ he writes, โa good round dish of mojadderah, the lute for Khalid, Al-Mutanabbi for me,โโneither of us could forego his hobby,โโand Im-Hanna, affectionate, devoted as our mothers,โโthese were the joys of our Saturday nights in our underground diggings. We were absolutely happy. And we never tried to measure our happiness in those days, or gauge it, or flay it to see if it be dead or alive, false or real. Ah, the blessedness of that supreme unconsciousness which wrapped us as a mother would her babe, warming and caressing our hearts. We did not know then that happiness was a thing to be sought. We only knew that peddling is a pleasure, that a bank account is a supreme joy, that a dish of mojadderah cooked by Im-Hanna is a royal delight, that our dour dark cellar is a palace of its kind, and that happiness, like a bride, issues from all these, and, touching the strings of Khalidโs lute, mantles us with song.โ
Heretofore, Khalid and Shakib have been inseparable as the Pointers. They always appeared together, went the rounds of their peddling orbit together, and together were subject to the same conditions and restraints. Which restraints are a sort of sacrifice they make on the altar of friendship. One, for instance, would never permit himself an advantage which the other could not enjoy, or a pleasure in which the other could not share. They even slept under the same blanket, we learn, ate from the same plate, puffed at the same narghilah, which Shakib brought with him from Baalbek, and collaborated in writing to one lady-love! A condition of unexampled friendship this, of complete oneness. They had both cut themselves garments from the same cloth, as the Arabic saying goes. And on Sunday afternoon, in garments spick and span, they would take the air in Battery Park, where the one would invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon for the Nothingness, which is called, in the recondite cant of the sophisticated, a vague something.
In the Khedivial Library MS. we find nothing 47 which this Battery Park might have inspired. And yet, we can not believe that Khalid here was only attracted by that vague something which, in his spiritual enceinteship, he seemed to relish. Nothing? Not even the does and kangaroos that adorn the Park distracted or detained him? We doubt it; and Khalidโs lute sustains us in our doubt. Ay, and so does our Scribe; for in his Histoire Intime we read the following, which we faithfully transcribe.
โOf the many attractions of Battery Park, the girls and the sea were my favourite. For the girls in a crowd have for me a fascination which only the girls at the bath can surpass. I love to lose myself in a crowd, to buffet, so to speak, its waves, to nestle under their feathery crests. For the rolling waves of life, the tumbling waves of the sea, and the fiery waves of Al-Mutanabbiโs poetry have always been my delight. In Battery Park I took especial pleasure in reading aloud my verses to Khalid, or in fact to the sea, for Khalid never would listen.
โOnce I composed a few stanzas to the Milkmaid who stood in her wagon near the lawn, rattling out milk-punches to the boys. A winsome lass she was, fresh in her sororiation, with fair blue eyes, a celestial flow of auburn hair, and cheeks that suggested the milk and cherry in the glass she rattled out to me. I was reading aloud the stanzas which she inspired, when Khalid, who was not listening, pointed out to me a woman whose figure and the curves thereof were remarkable. โIs it not strange,โ said he, โhow the women here indraw their stomachs and outdraw their 48 hips? And is not this the opposite of the shape which our women cultivate?โ
โYes, with the Lebanon women, the convex curve beneath the waist is frontward, not hindward. But that is a matter of taste, I thought, and man is partly responsible for either convexity. I have often wondered, however, why the women of my country cultivate that shape. And why do they in America cultivate the reverse of it? Needless to say that both are pruriently titillating,โโboth distentions are damnably suggestive, quite killing. The American woman, from a fine sense of modesty, I am told, never or seldom ventures abroad, when big with child. But in the kangaroo figure, the burden is slightly shifted and naught is amiss. Ah, such haunches as are here exhibited suggest the aliats of our Asiatic sheep.โ
And what he says about the pruriently titillating convexities, whether frontward or hindward, suggests a little prudery. For in his rhymes he betrays both his comrade and himself. Battery Park and the attractions thereof prove fatal. Elsewhere, therefore, they must go, and begin to draw on their bank accounts. Which does not mean, however, that they are far from the snare. No; for when a young man begins to suffer from what the doctors call hebephrenia, the farther he draws away from such snares the nearer he gets to them. And these lusty Syrians could not repel the magnetic attraction of the polypiosis of what Shakib likens to the aliat (fattail) of our Asiatic sheep. Surely, there be more devils under such an aliat than under the hat of a Jesuit. And Khalid is the first 49 to discover this. Both have been ensnared, however, and both, when in the snare, have been infernally inspired. What Khalid wrote, when he was under the influence of feminine curves, was preserved by Shakib, who remarks that one evening, after returning from the Park, Khalid said to him, โI am going to write a poem.โ A fortnight later, he hands him the following, which he jealously kept among his papers.
I dreamt I was a donkey-boy again.
Out on the sun-swept roads of Baalbek, I tramp behind my burro, trolling my mulayiah.
At noon, I pass by a garden redolent of mystic scents and tarry awhile.
Under an orange tree, on the soft green grass, I stretch my limbs.
The daisies, the anemones, and the cyclamens are round me pressing:
The anemone buds hold out to me their precious rubies; the daisies kiss me in the eyes and lips; and the cyclamens shake their powder in my hair.
On the wall, the roses are nodding, smiling; above me the orange blossoms surrender themselves to the wooing breeze; and on yonder rock the salamander sits, complacent and serene.
I take a daisy, and, boy as boys go, question its petals:
Married man or monk, I ask, plucking them off one by one,
And the last petal says, Monk.
I perfume my fingers with crumpled cyclamens, cover my face with the dark-eyed anemones, and fall asleep.
And my burro sleeps beneath the wall, in the shadow of nodding roses.
And the black-birds too are dozing, and the bulbuls flitting by whisper with their wings, โsalaam.โ
Peace and salaam!
The bulbul, the black-bird, the salamander, the burro, and the burro-boy, are to each other shades of noon-day sun:
Happy, loving, generous, and free;โโ
As happy as each other, and as free.
50 We do what we please in Natureโs realm, go where we please;
No oneโs offended, no one ever wronged.
No sentinels hath Nature, no police.
But lo, a goblin as I sleep comes forth;โโ
A goblin taller than the tallest poplar, who carries me upon his neck to the Park in far New York.
Here women, light-heeled, heavy-haunched, pace up and down the
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