The Book of Khalid Part 2

In their baggy, lapping trousers and crimson caps, each carrying a bundle and a rug under his arm, Shakib and Khalid are smuggled through the port of Beirut at night, and safely rowed to the steamer. Indeed, we are in a country where one can not travel without a pa.s.sport, or a pa.s.sword, or a little pa.s.s-money. And the boatmen and officials of the Ottoman Empire can better read a gold piece than a pa.s.sport. So, Shakib and Khalid, not having the latter, slip in a few of the former, and are smuggled through. One more longing, lingering glance behind, and the dusky peaks of the Lebanons, beyond which their native City of Baal is sleeping in peace, recede from view. On the high sea of hope and joy they sail; "under the Favonian wind of enthusiasm, on the friendly billows of boyish dreams," they roll. Ay, and they sing for joy. On and on, to the gold-swept sh.o.r.es of distant lands, to the generous cities and the bounteous fields of the West, to the Paradise of the World--to America.

We need not dwell too much with our Scribe, on the repulsive details of the story of the voyage. We ourselves have known a little of the suffering and misery which emigrants must undergo, before they reach that Western Paradise of the Oriental imagination. How they are huddled like sheep on deck from Beirut to Ma.r.s.eilles; and like cattle transported under hatches across the Atlantic; and bullied and browbeaten by rough disdainful stewards; and made to pay for a leathery gobbet of beef and a slice of black flint-like bread: all this we know. But that New World paradise is well worth these pa.s.sing privations.

The second day at sea, when the two Baalbekian lads are snug on deck, their rugs spread out not far from the stalls in which Syrian cattle are shipped to Egypt and Arab horses to Europe or America, they rummage in their bags--and behold, a treat! Shakib takes out his favourite poet Al-Mutanabbi, and Khalid, his favourite bottle, the choicest of the Ksarah distillery of the Jesuits. For this whilom donkey-boy will begin by drinking the wine of these good Fathers and then their--blood! His lute is also with him; and he will continue to practise the few lessons which the bulbuls of the poplar groves have taught him. No, he cares not for books. And so, he uncorks the bottle, hands it to Shakib his senior, then takes a nip himself, and, thrumming his lute strings, trolls a few doleful pieces of Arabic song. "In these," he would say to Shakib, pointing to the bottle and the lute, "is real poetry, and not in that book with which you would kill me." And Shakib, in stingless sarcasm, would insist that the music in Al-Mutanabbi's lines is just a little more musical than Khalid's thrumming. They quarrel about this. And in justice to both, we give the following from the _Histoire Intime_.

"When we left our native land," Shakib writes, "my literary bent was not shared in the least by Khalid. I had gone through the higher studies which, in our hedge-schools and clerical inst.i.tutions, do not reach a very remarkable height. Enough of French to understand the authors tabooed by our Jesuit professors,--the Voltaires, the Rousseaus, the Diderots; enough of Arabic to enable one to pa.r.s.e and a.n.a.lyse the verse of Al-Mutanabbi; enough of Church History to show us, not how the Church wielded the sword of persecution, but how she was persecuted herself by the pagans and barbarians of the earth;--of these and such like consists the edifying curriculum. Now, of this high phase of education, Khalid was thoroughly immune. But his intuitive sagacity was often remarkable, and his humour, sweet and pathetic. Once when I was reading aloud some of the Homeric effusions of Al-Mutanabbi, he said to me, as he was playing his lute, 'In the heart of this,' pointing to the lute, 'and in the heart of me, there be more poetry than in that book with which you would kill me.' And one day, after wandering clandestinely through the steamer, he comes to me with a gesture of surprise and this: 'Do you know, there are pa.s.sengers who sleep in bunks below, over and across each other? I saw them, billah! And I was told they pay more than we do for such a low pa.s.sage--the fools! Think on it. I peeped into a little room, a dingy, smelling box, which had in it six berths placed across and above each other like the shelves of the reed manchons we build for our silk-worms at home. I wouldn't sleep in one of them, billah! even though they bribe me. This bovine fragrance, the sight of these fine horses, the rioting of the wind above us, should make us forget the brutality of the stewards. Indeed, I am as content, as comfortable here, as are their Excellencies in what is called the Salon. Surely, we are above them--at least, in the night. What matters it, then, if ours is called the Fourth Cla.s.s and theirs the Primo. Wherever one is happy, Shakib, there is the Primo.'"

But this happy humour is a.s.sailed at Ma.r.s.eilles. His placidity and stolid indifference are rudely shaken by the sharpers, who differ only from the boatmen of Beirut in that they wear pantaloons and intersperse their Arabic with a jargon of French. These brokers, like rapacious bats, hover around the emigrant and before his purse is opened for the fourth time, the trick is done. And with what ceremony, you shall see. From the steamer the emigrant is led to a dealer in frippery, where he is required to doff his baggy trousers and crimson cap, and put on a suit of linsey-woolsey and a hat of hispid felt: end of First Act; open the purse. From the dealer of frippery, spick and span from top to toe, he is taken to the hostelry, where he is detained a fortnight, sometimes a month, on the pretext of having to wait for the best steamer: end of Second Act; open the purse. From the hostelry at last to the steamship agent, where they secure for him a third-cla.s.s pa.s.sage on a fourth-cla.s.s ship across the Atlantic: end of Third Act; open the purse. And now that the purse is almost empty, the poor emigrant is permitted to leave. They send him to New York with much grat.i.tude in his heart and a little trachoma in his eyes. The result being that a month later they have to look into such eyes again. But the purse of the distressed emigrant now being empty,--empty as his hopes and dreams,--the rapacious bats hover not around him, and the door of the verminous hostelry is shut in his face. He is left to starve on the western sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean.

Ay, even the droll humour and stolidity of Khalid, are shaken, aroused, by the ghoulish greed, the fell inhumanity of these sharpers.

And Shakib from his cage of fancy lets loose upon them his hyenas of satire. In a squib describing the bats and the voyage he says: "The voyage to America is the Via Dolorosa of the emigrant; and the Port of Beirut, the verminous hostelries of Ma.r.s.eilles, the Island of Ellis in New York, are the three stations thereof. And if your hopes are not crucified at the third and last station, you pa.s.s into the Paradise of your dreams. If they are crucified, alas! The gates of the said Paradise will be shut against you; the doors of the hostelries will be slammed in your face; and with a consolation and a vengeance you will throw yourself at the feet of the sea in whose bosom some charitable Jonah will carry you to your native strands."

And when the emigrant has a surplus of gold, when his capital is such as can not be dissipated on a suit of shoddy, a fortnight's lodging, and a pa.s.sage across the Atlantic, the ingenious ones proceed with the Fourth Act of _Open Thy Purse_. "Instead of starting in New York as a peddler," they say, unfolding before him one of their alluring schemes, "why not do so as a merchant?" And the emigrant opens his purse for the fourth time in the office of some French manufacturer, where he purchases a few boxes of trinketry,--scapulars, prayer-beads, crosses, jewelry, gewgaws, and such like,--all said to be made in the Holy Land. These he brings over with him as his stock in trade.

Now, Khalid and Shakib, after pa.s.sing a fortnight in Ma.r.s.eilles, and going through the Fourth Act of the Sorry Show, find their dignity as merchants rudely crushed beneath the hatches of the Atlantic steamer.

For here, even the pleasure of sleeping on deck is denied them. The Atlantic Ocean would not permit of it. Indeed, everybody has to slide into their stivy bunks to save themselves from its rising wrath. A fortnight of such unutterable misery is quite supportable, however, if one continues to cherish the Paradise already mentioned. But in this dark, dingy smelling hole of the steerage, even the poets cease to dream. The boatmen of Beirut and the sharpers of Ma.r.s.eilles we could forget; but in this grave among a hundred and more of its kind, set over and across each other, neither the lute nor the little that remained in that Ksarah bottle, could bring us any solace.

We are told that Khalid took up his lute but once throughout the voyage. And this when they were permitted one night to sleep on deck.

We are also informed that Khalid had a remarkable dream, which, to our Scribe at least, is not meaningless. And who of us, thou silly Scribe, did not in his boyhood tell his dreams to his mother, who would turn them in her interpretation inside out? But Khalid, we are a.s.sured, continued to cherish the belief, even in his riper days, that when you dream you are in Jannat, for instance, you must be prepared to go through Juhannam the following day. A method of interpretation as ancient as Joseph, to be sure. But we quote the dream to show that Khalid should not have followed the setting sun. He should have turned his face toward the desert.

They slept on deck that night. 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. "For I have dreamt last night," he continues, "that, in the multicoloured robes of an Arab amir, on a caparisoned dromedary, at the head of an immense mult.i.tude of people, I was riding through the desert. Whereto and wherefrom, I know not. But those who followed me seemed to know; for they cried, 'Long have we waited for thee, now we shall enter in peace.' And at every oasis we pa.s.sed, the people came to the gate to meet us, and, prostrating themselves before me, kissed the fringe of my garment. Even the women would touch my boots and kiss their hands, exclaiming, '_Allahu akbar!_' And the palm trees, billah! I could see bending towards us that we might eat of their fruits, and the springs seemed to flow with us into the desert that we might never thirst. Ay, thus in triumph we marched from one camp to another, from one oasis to the next, until we reached the City on the Hills of the Cedar Groves.

Outside the gate, we were met by the most beautiful of its tawny women, and four of these surrounded my camel and took the reins from my hand. I was then escorted through the gates, into the City, up to the citadel, where I was awaited by their Princess. And she, taking a necklace of cowries from a bag that hung on her breast, placed it on my head, saying, 'I crown thee King of--' But I could not hear the rest, which was drowned by the cheering of the mult.i.tudes. And the cheering, O Shakib, was drowned by the hose of the sailors. Oh, that hose! Is it not made in the paradise you harp upon, the paradise we are coming to? Never, therefore, mention it to me more."

This is the dream, at once simple and symbolic, which begins to worry Khalid. "For in the evening of the day he related it to me," writes Shakib, "I found him sitting on the edge of his bunk brooding over I know not what. It was the first time he had the blues. Nay, it was the first time he looked pensive and profound. And upon asking him the reason for this, he said, 'I am thinking of the paper-boats which I used to sail down the stream in Baalbek, and that makes me sad.'"

How strange! And yet, this first event recorded by our Scribe, in which Khalid is seen struggling with the mysterious and unknown, is most significant. Another instance, showing a latent phase, hitherto dormant, in his character, we note. Among the steerage pa.s.sengers is a Syrian girl who much resembles his cousin Najma. She was sea-sick throughout the voyage, and when she comes out to breathe of the fresh air, a few hours before they enter the harbour of New York, Khalid sees her, and Shakib swears that he saw a tear in Khalid's eye as he stood there gazing upon her. Poor Khalid! For though we are approaching the last station of the Via Dolorosa, though we are nearing the enchanted domes of the wonder-working, wealth-worshipping City, he is inexplicably sad.

And Shakib, directly after swearing that he saw a tear in his eye, writes the following: "Up to this time I observed in my friend only the dominating traits of a hard-headed, hard-hearted boy, stubborn, impetuous, intractable. But from the time he related to me his dream, a change in his character was become manifest. In fact a new phase was being gradually unfolded. Three things I must emphasise in this connection: namely, the first dream he dreamt in a foreign land, the first time he looked pensive and profound, and the first tear he shed before we entered New York. These are keys to the secret chamber of one's soul."

And now, that the doors, by virtue of our Scribe's open-sesames, are thrown open, we enter, _bismillah_.

CHAPTER IV

ON THE WHARF OF ENCHANTMENT

Not in our make-up, to be sure,--not in the pose which is preceded by the tantaras of a trumpet,--do the essential traits in our character first reveal themselves. But truly in the little things the real self is exteriorised. Shakib observes closely the rapid changes in his co-adventurer's humour, the shadowy traits which at that time he little understood. And now, by applying his palm to his front, he illumines those chambers of which he speaks, and also the niches therein. He helps us to understand the insignificant points which mark the rapid undercurrents of the seemingly sluggish soul of Khalid. Not in vain, therefore, does he crystallise for us that first tear he shed in the harbour of Manhattan. But his gush about the recondite beauty of this pearl of melancholy, shall not be intended upon the gustatory nerves of the Reader. This then we note--his description of New York harbour.

"And is this the gate of Paradise," he asks, "or the port of some subterrestrial city guarded by the Jinn? What a marvel of enchantment is everything around us! What manifestations of industrial strength, what monstrosities of wealth and power, are here! These vessels proudly putting to sea; these tenders scurrying to meet the Atlantic greyhound which is majestically moving up the bay; these barges loading and unloading schooners from every strand, distant and near; these huge lighters carrying even railroads over the water; these fire-boats scudding through the harbour shrilling their sirens; these careworn, grim, strenuous mult.i.tudes ferried across from one enchanted sh.o.r.e to another; these giant structures tickling heaven's sides; these cable bridges, spanning rivers, uniting cities; and this superterrestrial G.o.ddess, torch in hand--wake up, Khalid, and behold these wonders. Salaam, this enchanted City! There is the Brooklyn Bridge, and here is the Statue of Liberty which people speak of, and which are as famous as the Cedars of Lebanon."

But Khalid is as impa.s.sive as the bronze G.o.ddess herself. He leans over the rail, his hand supporting his cheek, and gazes into the ooze.

The stolidity of his expression is appalling. With his mouth open as usual, his lips relaxed, his tongue sticking out through the set teeth,--he looks as if his head were in a noose. But suddenly he braces up, runs down for his lute, and begins to serenade--Greater New York?

"On thee be Allah's grace, Who hath the well-loved face!"

No; not toward this City does his heart flap its wings of song. He is on another sea, in another harbour. Indeed, what are these wonders as compared with those of the City of Love? The Statue of Eros there is more imposing than the Statue of Liberty here. And the bridges are not of iron and concrete, but of rainbows and--moonshine! Indeed, both these lads are now on the wharf of enchantment; the one on the palpable, the sensuous, the other on the impalpable and unseen. But both, alas, are suddenly, but temporarily, disenchanted as they are jostled out of the steamer into the barge which brings them to the Juhannam of Ellis Island. Here, the unhappy children of the steerage are dumped into the Bureau of Emigration as--such stuff! For even in the land of equal rights and freedom, we have a right to expect from others the courtesy and decency which we ourselves do not have to show, or do not know.

These are st.u.r.dy and adventurous foreigners whom the grumpy officers jostle and hustle about. For neither poverty, nor oppression, nor both together can drive a man out of his country, unless the soul within him awaken. Indeed, many a misventurous cowering peasant continues to live on bread and olives in his little village, chained in the fear of dying of hunger in a foreign land. Only the brave and daring spirits hearken to the voice of discontent within them. They give themselves up to the higher aspirations of the soul, no matter how limited such aspirations might be, regardless of the dangers and hardship of a long sea voyage, and the precariousness of their plans and hopes. There may be nothing n.o.ble in renouncing one's country, in abandoning one's home, in forsaking one's people; but is there not something remarkable in this great move one makes? Whether for better or for worse, does not the emigrant place himself above his country, his people and his Government, when he turns away from them, when he goes forth propelled by that inner self which demands of him a new life?

And might it not be a better, a cleaner, a higher life? What say our Masters of the Island of Ellis? Are not these straggling, smelling, downcast emigrants almost as clean inwardly, and as pure, as the grumpy officers who hara.s.s and humiliate them? Is not that spirit of discontent which they cherish, and for which they carry the cross, so to speak, across the sea, deserving of a little consideration, a little civility, a little kindness?

Even louder than this Shakib cries out, while Khalid open-mouthed sucks his tongue. Here at the last station, where the odours of disinfectants are worse than the stench of the steerage, they await behind the bars their turn; stived with Italian and Hungarian fellow sufferers, uttering such whimpers of expectancy, exchanging such gestures of hope. Soon they shall be brought forward to be examined by the doctor and the interpreting officer; the one shall pry their purses, the other their eyes. For in this United States of America we want clear-sighted citizens at least. And no cold-purses, if the matter can be helped. But neither the eyes, alas, nor the purses of our two emigrants are conformable to the Law; the former are filled with granulations of trachoma, the latter have been emptied by the sharpers of Ma.r.s.eilles. Which means that they shall be detained for the present; and if within a fortnight nothing turns up in their favour, they shall certainly be deported.

Trachoma! a little granulation on the inner surface of the eyelids, what additional misery does it bring upon the poor deported emigrant?

We are asked to shed a tear for him, to weep with him over his blasted hopes, his strangled aspirations, his estate in the mother country sold or mortgaged,--in either case lost,--and his seed of a new life crushed in its cotyledon by the physician who might be short-sighted himself, or even blind. But the law must be enforced for the sake of the clear-sighted citizens of the Republic. We will have nothing to do with these poor blear-eyed foreigners.

And thus our grievous Scribe would continue, if we did not exercise the prerogative of our Editorial Divan. Rather let us pursue our narration. Khalid is now in the hospital, awaiting further development in his case. But in Shakib's, whose eyes are far gone in trachoma, the decision of the Board of Emigration is final, irrevokable. And so, after being detained a week in the Emigration pen, the unfortunate Syrian must turn his face again toward the East. Not out into the City, but out upon the sea, he shall be turned adrift. The grumpy officer shall grumpishly enforce the decision of the Board by handing our Scribe to the Captain of the first steamer returning to Europe--if our Scribe can be found! For this flyaway son of a Phoenician did not seem to wait for the decision of the polyglot Judges of the Emigration Board.

And that he did escape, we are a.s.sured. For one morning he eludes the grumpy officer, and sidles out among his Italian neighbours who were permitted to land. See him genuflecting now, to kiss the curbstone and thank Allah that he is free. But before he can enjoy his freedom, before he can sit down and chuckle over the success of his escapade, he must bethink him of Khalid. He will not leave him to the mercy of the honourable Agents of the Law, if he can help it. Trachoma, he knows, is a hard case to cure. And in ten days, under the care of the doctors, it might become worse. Straightway, therefore, he puts himself to the dark task. A few visits to the Hospital where Khalid is detained--the patients in those days were not held at Ellis Island--and the intrigue is afoot. On the third or fourth visit, we can not make out which, a note in Arabic is slipt into Khalid's pocket, and with a significant Arabic sign, Shakib takes himself off.

The evening of that very day, the trachoma-afflicted Syrian was absent from the ward. He was carried off by Iblis,--the porter and a few Greenbacks a.s.sisting. Yes, even Shakib, who knew only a few English monosyllables, could here make himself understood. For money is one of the two universal languages of the world, the other being love.

Indeed, money and love are as eloquent in Turkey and Dahomey as they are in Paris or New York.

And here we reach one of those hedges in the _Histoire Intime_ which we must go through in spite of the warning-signs. Between two paragraphs, to be plain, in the one of which we are told how the two Syrians established themselves as merchants in New York, in the other, how and wherefor they shouldered the peddling-box and took to the road, there is a crossed paragraph containing a most significant revelation. It seems that after giving the matter some serious thought, our Scribe came to the conclusion that it is not proper to incriminate his ill.u.s.trious Master. But here is a confession which a hundred crosses can not efface. And if he did not want to bring the matter to our immediate cognisance, why, we ask, did he not re-write the page? Why did he not cover well that said paragraph with crosses and arabesques? We do suspect him here of chicanery; for by this plausible recantation he would shift the responsibility to the shoulders of the Editor, if the secret is divulged. Be this as it may, no red crosses can conceal from us the astounding confession, which we now give out. For the two young Syrians, who were smuggled out of their country by the boatmen of Beirut, and who smuggled themselves into the city of New York (we beg the critic's pardon; for, being foreigners ourselves, we ought to be permitted to stretch this term, smuggle, to cover an Arabic metaphor, or to smuggle into it a foreign meaning), these two Syrians, we say, became, in their capacity of merchants, smugglers of the most ingenious and most evasive type.

We now note the following, which pertains to their business. We learn that they settled in the Syrian Quarter directly after clearing their merchandise. And before they entered their cellar, we are a.s.sured, they washed their hands of all intrigues and were shrived of their sins by the Maronite priest of the Colony. For they were pious in those days, and right Catholics. 'Tis further set down in the _Histoire Intime_:

"We rented a cellar, as deep and dark and damp as could be found. And our landlord was a Teague, nay, a kind-hearted old Irishman, who helped us put up the shelves, and never called for the rent in the dawn of the first day of the month. In the front part of this cellar we had our shop; in the rear, our home. On the floor we laid our mattresses, on the shelves, our goods. And never did we stop to think who in this case was better off. The safety of our merchandise before our own. But ten days after we had settled down, the water issued forth from the floor and inundated our shop and home. It rose so high that it destroyed half of our capital stock and almost all our furniture. And yet, we continued to live in the cellar, because, perhaps, every one of our compatriot-merchants did so. We were all alike subject to these inundations in the winter season. I remember when the water first rose in our store, Khalid was so hard set and in such a pucker that he ran out capless and in his shirt sleeves to discover in the next street the source of the flood. And one day, when we were pumping out the water he asked me if I thought this was easier than rolling our roofs in Baalbek. For truly, the paving-roller is child's play to this pump. And a leaky roof is better than an inundated cellar."

However, this is not the time for brooding. They have to pump ahead to save what remained of their capital stock. But Khalid, nevertheless, would brood and jabber. And what an inundation of ideas, and what questions!

"Think you," he asks, "that the inhabitants of this New World are better off than those of the Old?--Can you imagine mankind living in a huge cellar of a world and you and I pumping the water out of its bottom?--I can see the palaces on which you waste your rhymes, but mankind live in them only in the flesh. The soul I tell you, still occupies the bas.e.m.e.nt, even the sub-cellar. And an inundated cellar at that. The soul, Shakib, is kept below, although the high places are vacant."

And his partner sputters out his despair; for instead of helping to pump out the water, Khalid stands there gazing into it, as if by some miracle he would draw it out with his eyes or with his breath. And the poor Poet cries out, "Pump! the water is gaining on us, and our shop is going to ruin. Pump!" Whereupon the lazy, absent-minded one resumes pumping, while yearning all the while for the plashing stone-rollers and the purling eaves of his home in Baalbek. And once in a pinch,--they are labouring under a peltering rain,--he stops as is his wont to remind Shakib of the Arabic saying, "From the dripping ceiling to the running gargoyle." He is labouring again under a hurricane of ideas. And again he asks, "Are you sure we are better off here?"

And our poor Scribe, knee-deep in the water below, bl.u.s.ters out curses, which Khalid heeds not. "I am tired of this job," he growls; "the stone-roller never drew so much on my strength, nor did muleteering. Ah, for my dripping ceiling again, for are we not now under the running gargoyle?" 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 Izrail away. Their merchandise, however,--their crosses, and scapulars and prayer-beads,--are 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 Sat.u.r.day 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.

"In three years," writes our Scribe, "Khalid 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, 'A peddler is superior to a merchant; we travel and earn money; our compatriots the merchants rust in their cellars and lose it.' To be sure, peddling in the good old days was most attractive. For the exercise, the gain, the experience--these are rich acquirements."

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 Sat.u.r.day 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.

"The linen," says Shakib, "was always as white as a dove's wing, when Im-Hanna was with us."

And in the Khedivial Library Ma.n.u.script we find this curious note upon that popular Syrian dish of lentils and olive oil.

"_Mojadderah_," writes Khalid, "has 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 with all mankind my sack of lentils and my pipkin of olive oil.

I wonder not at Esau's extravagance, when he saw a steaming mess of it. For what is a birthright in comparison?"

That Shakib also shared this beatific mood, the following quaint picture of their Sat.u.r.day nights in the cellar, will show.

"A bank account," he writes, "a good round dish of _mojadderah_, the lute for Khalid, Al-Mutanabbi for me,--neither of us could forego his hobby,--and Im-Hanna, affectionate, devoted as our mothers,--these were the joys of our Sat.u.r.day 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.