The Book of Khalid, Ameen Fares Rihani [top romance novels .TXT] 📗

the Virgin, rising on its sable pedestal, and looking, from this distance, like a candle in a bronze candle-stick. That Statue, fifty years hence, the people of the Lebanons will rebaptise as the Statue of Liberty. Masonry, even to-day, raises around it her mace. But whether these sacred mountains will be happier and more prosperous under its régime, I can not say. The Masons and the Patriarch of the Maronites are certainly more certain. Only this I know, that between the devil and the deep sea, Mary the Virgin shall hold her own. For though the name be changed, and the alm-box thrown into the sea, she shall ever be worshipped by the people. The Statue of the Holy Virgin of Liberty it will be called, and the Jesuits and priests can go a-begging. Meanwhile, the Patriarch will issue his allocutions, and the Jesuits, their pamphlets, against rationalism, atheism, masonry, and other supposed enemies of their Blessed Virgin, and point them out as enemies of Abd’ul-Hamid. ’Tis curious how the Sultan of the Ottomans can serve the cause of the Virgin!

“I visit the Statue for the love of my mother, and mounting to the top of the pedestal, I look up and behold my mother before me. The spectre of her, standing before the monument, looks down upon me, reproachfully, piteously, affectionately. I sit down at the feet of the Virgin Mary and bury my face in 260 my hands and weep. I love what thou lovest, O my mother, but I can see no more what thou seest. For thy love, O my mother, these kisses and tears. For thy love, I stand here like a child, and look up to this inanimate figure as I did when I was an acolyte. My intellect, O my mother, I would drown in my tears, and thy faith I would stifle with my kisses. Only thus is reconciliation possible.

“Leaving this throne of modern mythology, I cross many wadis, descend and ascend many hills, pass through many villages, until I reach, at Ghina and Masshnaka, the tomb of the mythology of the ancients. At Ghina are ruins and monuments, of which Time has spared enough to engage the interest of archæologists. Let the Pères Jesuit, Bourquenoud and Roz, make boast of their discoveries and scholarship; I can only boast of the fact that the ceremonialisms of worship are the same to-day as they were in the days of my Phœnician ancestors. Which, indeed, speaks well for THEM. This tablet, representing an armed figure and a bear, commemorates, it is said, the death of Tammuz. And the figure of the weeping woman near it is probably that of Ashtaroth. Other figures there are; but nothing short of the scholarship of Bourquenoud and Roz can unveil their marble mystery.

“At Masshnaka, overlooking the River Adonis, are ruins of an ancient temple in which can still be seen a few Corinthian columns. This, too, we are told, was consecrated to Tammuz; and in this valley the women of Byblus bemoaned every year the fate of their god. 261 Isis and Osiris, Tammuz and Ashtaroth, Venus and Adonis,––these, I believe, are one and the same. Their myth borrowed from the Phœnicians, the Egyptians, and the Romans, from either of the two. But the Venus of Rome is cheerful, joyous, that of the Phœnicians is sad and sorrowful. Even mythology triumphs in its evolution.

“Here, where my forebears deliquesced in sensuality, devotion, and grief, where the ardency of the women of Byblus flamed on the altar of Tammuz, on this knoll, whose trees and herbiage are fed perchance with their dust, I build my athafa (little kitchen), Arab-like, and cook my noonday meal. On the three stones, forming two right angles, I place my skillet, kindle under it a fire, pour into it a little sweet oil, and fry the few eggs I purchased in the village. I abominate the idea of frying eggs in water as the Americans do.[1] I had as lief fry them in vinegar or syrup, where neither olive oil nor goat-butter is obtainable. But to fry eggs in water? O the barbarity of it! Why not, my friend, take them boiled and drink a little hot water after them? This savours of originality, at least, and is just as insipid, if not more. Withal, they who boil cabbage, and heap it in a plate over a slice of corn-beef, and call it a dish, can break a few boiled eggs in a cup of hot water and call them 262 fried. Be this as it may. The Americans will be solesistically simple even in their kitchen.

“Now, my skillet of eggs being ready, I draw out of my basket a cake of cheese, a few olives, an onion, and three paper-like loaves, rather leaves, of bread, and fall to. With what relish, I need not say. But let it be recorded here, that under the karob tree, on the bank of the River Adonis, in the shadow of the great wall surrounding the ruins of the temple of Tammuz, I Khalid, in the thirty-fourth year of the reign of Abd’ul-Hamid, gave a banquet to the gods––who, however, were content in being present and applauding the devouring skill of the peptic host and toast-master. Even serene Majesty at Yieldiz would give away, I think, an hundred of its sealed dishes for such a skillet of eggs in such an enchanted scene. But for it, alas! such wild and simple joy is a sealed book. Poor Serene Majesty! Now, having gone through the fruit course––and is not the olive a fruit?––I fill my jug at the River to make my coffee. And here I ask, In what Hotel Cecil or Waldorf or Savoy, or in what Arab tent in the desert, can one get a better cup of coffee than this, which Khalid makes for himself? The gods be praised, before and after. Ay, even in washing my pots and dishes I praise the good gods.

“And having done this, I light my cigarette, lug my basket on my back, and again set forth. In three hours, on my way to Byblus, I reach a hamlet situated in a deep narrow wadi, closed on all sides by huge mountain walls. The most sequestered, the most 263 dreary place, I have yet seen. Here, though unwilling, the dusk of the December day having set in, I lay down the staff of wayfare. And as I enter the little village, I am greeted by the bleat of sheep and the low of the kine. The first villager I meet is an aged woman, who stands in her door before which is a pomegranate tree, telling her beads. She returns my salaam graciously, and invites me, saying, ‘Be kind to tarry overnight.’ But can one be kinder than such an hostess? Seeing that I laid down my burden, she calls to her daughter to light the seraj (naphtha lamp) and bring some water for the stranger. ‘Methinks thou wouldst wash thy feet,’ quoth she. Indeed, that is as essential and refreshing, after a day’s walk, as washing one’s face. I sit me down, therefore, under the pomegranate, take off my shoes and stockings, and the little girl, a winsome, dark-eyed, quick-witted lass, pours to me from the pitcher. I try to take it from her; but she would not, she said, be deprived of the pleasure of serving the stranger. Having done, I put on my stockings, and, leaving my shoes and basket near the door, enter a beit (one-room house) meagrely but neatly furnished. The usual straw mats are spread on the winter side, behind the door; in the corner is a little linen-covered divan with trimming of beautiful hand-made lace, the work of the little girl; and nearby are a few square cushions on the floor and a crude chair. The seraj, giving out more smoke and smell than light, is placed on a little shelf attached to the central pillar of the beit. Near the door is a bench for the water jars, and in the other corner are 264 the mattresses and quilts, and the earthen tub containing the round leaves of bread. Of these consist the furniture and provision of mine hostess.

“Her son, a youth of not more than two score years, returns from his day’s labour a while after I had arrived. And as he stands in the door, his pick-axe and spade on his shoulder, his sister runs to meet him, and whispers somewhat about the stranger. Sitting on the threshold, he takes off his spats of cloth and his clouted shoes, while she gets the pitcher of water. After having washed, he enters, salaams graciously, and squats on the floor. The mother then brings a wicker tray on which is set the supper, consisting of only bread and olives. ‘Thou wilt overlook our penury,’ she falters out; ‘here be all we have.’ In truth, my hostess is of the poorest of the Lebanon peasants; even her sweet-oil pipkin and her jars of lentils and beans, are empty. She lays the tray before her son and invites me to partake of the repast. I go to my basket, bring forth the few onions and the two cakes of cheese I had left, lay them with an apology on the tray––the mother, abashed, protests––and we sit down cross-legged in a circle to supper. When we rise, the little girl lights a little fire, and they enjoy the cup of coffee I make for them. And the mother, in taking hers, tells me naïvely, and with a sigh, that it is five years now since she had had a cup of coffee. Indeed, she had seen better days. And ’tis sorrow, forestalling Time, which furrows her cheeks and robs her black eyes of their lustre and spark. 265

“She had once cattle, and a beit of her own, and rugs, too, and jars full of provision. But now she is a tenant. And her husband, ever since he emigrated to America, did not send a single piaster or even write a letter. From necessity she becomes a prey of usurers; for those Lebanon Moths, of which we saw a specimen in the village of bells and potteries, fall mostly in the wardrobe of women. They are locusts rather, who visit only the wheat fields of the poor. Her home was mortgaged to one such, and failing to meet her obligation, the mortgage is closed and he takes possession. Soon after she is evicted, her son, the first-born, a youth of much promise, dies.

“‘He could read and write, my son,’ quoth she, sobbing; ‘of a sharp wit he was, and very assiduous in his studies. Once he accompanied the priest of the village on a visit to the Patriarch, and read there a eulogium of his own composition, for which he received a silver medal. The Patriarch then sent him to a Seminary; he was to become a priest, my son. He wrote a beautiful hand––both Arabic and French; he was of a fine wit, sharp, quick, brilliant. Ah, me, but those who are of such minds never live!’

“She then tells me how they lost their last head of cattle. An excellent sheep it was; which one night they forgot outside; and the wolf, visiting the village, sees it tied to the mulberry, howls for joy, and carries it off. And thus Death robs the poor woman of her son; America, of her husband; the Shylock of the village, of her home; and the wolf, of her last head of 266 cattle. And this were enough to age even a Spartan woman. Late in the evening, after she had related at length of her sorrows, three mattresses––all she had––are laid on the straw mat near each other, and the little girl had