The Book of Khalid (32 page)

And this, we learn, is a litany of praises, beginning with Abd’ul-Hamid and ending with the ulema of Damascus; which litany the Society Deputies would place in the mouth of Khalid for the good of all concerned. Ay, for his good, too,
if he but knew. If he but looked behind him, he would have yielded a whit, this Khalid. The deep chasm between him and the Deputy, however, justifies the conduct of each on his side: the lack of gumption in the one and the lack of depth in the other render impossible any sort of understanding between them. While we recommend, therefore, the prudence of the oleaginous Ahmed, we can not with justice condemn the perversity of our fretful Khalid. For he who makes loud boast of spiritual freedom, is, nevertheless, a slave of the Idea. And slavery in some shape or shade will clutch at the heart of the most powerful and most developed of mortals. Poor Khalid! if Truth commands thee to destroy the memorandum of Ahmed Bey, Wisdom suggests that thou destroy, too, thine address. And Wisdom in the person of Sheikh Taleb now knocks at thy door.

The Sheikh is come to admonish Khalid, not to return his visit. For at this hour of the day he should have been a-bed; but his esteem for Mrs. Gotfry, billah, his love, too, for her friend Khalid, and his desire to avert a possible danger, banish sleep from his eyes.

“My spirit is perturbed about thee,” thus further, “and I can not feel at ease until I have given my friendly counsel. Thou art free to follow it or not to follow it. But for the sake of this beard Sheikh Khalid, do not speak at the Mosque today. I know the people of this City: they are ignorant, obtuse, fanatical, blind. ‘God hath sealed up their hearts and their hearing.’ They will not hear thee; they can not understand thee. I know them better than thou: I have lived amongst them for forty years. And what talk have we wasted. They will not hear; they can not see. It’s a dog’s tail, Sheikh Khalid. And what Allah hath twisted, man can not straighten. So, let it be. Let them wallow in their ignorance. Or, if thou wilt
help them, talk not to them direct. Use the medium of the holy man, like myself. This is my advice to thee. For thine own sake and for the sake of that good woman, thy friend and mine, I give it. Now, I can go and sleep. Salaam.”

And the grey beard of Sheikh Taleb and his sharp blue eyes were animated, as he spoke, agitated like his spirit. What he has heard abroad and what he suspects, are shadowed forth in his friendly counsel. Let Khalid reflect upon it. Our Scribe, at least, is persuaded that Sheikh Taleb spoke as a friend. And he, too, suspects that something is brewing abroad. He would have Khalid hearken, therefore, to the Sheikh.

But Khalid in silence ponders the matter. And at table, even Mrs. Gotfry can not induce him to speak. She has just returned from the bazaar; she could hardly make her way through the choked arcade leading to the Mosque; the crowd is immense and tumultuous; and a company of the Dragoons is gone forth to open the way and maintain order. “But I don’t think they are going to succeed,” she added. Silently, impassively, Khalid hears this. And after going through the second course, eating as if he were dreaming, he gets up and leaves the table. Mrs. Gotfry, somewhat concerned, orders her last course, takes her thimble-full of coffee at a gulp, and, leaving likewise, hurries upstairs and calls Khalid, who was pacing up and down the hall, into her room.

“What is the matter with you?”

“Nothing, nothing,” murmured Khalid absent-mindedly.

“That’s not true. Everything belies your words. Why, your actions, your expression, your silence oppresses me. I know what is disturbing you. And I would prevail upon you, if I could, to give up this afternoon’s business. Don’t go; don’t speak. I have a premonition that things are not going
to end well. Why, even my dragoman says that the Mohammedan mob is intent upon some evil business. Be advised. And since you are going to break with your associates, why not do so now. The quicker the better. Come, make up your mind. And we’ll not wait for the morning train. We’ll leave for Baalbek in a special carriage this afternoon. What say you?”

Just then the brass band in front of the Hotel struck up the Dastur march in honour of the Sheikhs who come to escort the Unionist Deputies and the speaker to the Mosque.

“I have made up my mind. I have given my word.”

And being called, Mrs. Gotfry, though loath to let him go, presses his hand and wishes him good speed.

And here we are in the carriage on the right of the green-turbaned Sheikh. We look disdainfully on the troops, the brass band, and the crowd of nondescripts that are leading the procession. We cross the bridge, pass the Town-Hall, and, winding a narrow street groaning with an electric tramway, we come to the grand arcade in which the multitudes on both sides are pressed against the walls and into the stalls by the bullying Dragoons. We drive through until we reach the arch, where some Khalif of the Omayiahs used to take the air. And descending from the carriage, we walk a few paces between two rows of book-shops, and here we are in the court of the grand Mosque Omayiah.

We elbow our way through the pressing, distressing multitudes, following Ahmed Bey into the Mosque, while the Army Officer mounts a platform in the court and dispenses to the crowd there of his Turkish blatherskite. We stand in the Mosque near the heavy tapestried square which is said to be the sarcophagus of St. John. Already a Sheikh is in the pulpit preaching on the excellences of liberty, chopping out
definitions of equality, and quoting from Al-Hadith to prove that all men are Allah’s children and that the most favoured in Allah’s sight is he who is most loving to his brother man. He then winds up with an encomium on the heroes of the day, curses vehemently the reactionaries and those who curse them not (the Mosque resounds with “Curse the reactionists, curse them all!”), tramples beneath his heel every spy and informer of the New Era, invokes the great Allah and his Apostle to watch over the patriots and friends of the Ottoman nation, to visit with grievous punishment its enemies, and—descends.

The silence of expectation ensues. The Mosque is crowded; and the press of turbans is such that if a pea were dropt from above it would not reach the floor. From the pulpit the great Mohammedan audience, with its red fezes, its green and white turbans, seemed to Khalid like a verdant field overgrown with daisies and poppies. “It is the beginning of Arabia’s Spring, the resuscitation of the glory of Islam,” and so forth; thus opening with a flourish of flattery like the spouting tricksters whom he so harshly judges. And what shall we say of him? It were not fair quickly to condemn, to cry him down at the start. Perhaps he was thus inspired by the august assembly; perhaps he quailed and thought it wise to follow thus far the advice of his friends. “It was neither this nor that,” say our Scribe. “For as he stood in the tribune, the picture of the field of daisies and poppies suggested the picture of Spring. A speaker is not always responsible for the frolics of his fancy. Indeed, an audience of some five thousand souls, all intent upon this opaque, mysterious Entity in the tribune, is bound to reach the very heart of it; for think what five thousand rays focussed on a sensitive plate can do.” Thus our Scribe, apologetically.

But after the first contact and the vibrations of enthusiasm and flattery that followed, Khalid regains his equilibrium and reason, and strikes into his favourite theme. He begins by arraigning the utilitarian spirit of Europe, the rank materialism which is invading our very temples of worship. God, Truth, Virtue, with them, is no longer esteemed for its own worth, but for what it can yield of the necessities and luxuries of life. And with these cynical materialistic abominations they would be supreme even in the East; they would extinguish with their dominating spirit of trade every noble virtue of the soul. And yet, they make presumption of introducing civilisation by benevolent assimilation, rather dissimulation. For even an Englishman in our country, for instance, is unlike himself in his own. The American, too, who is loud-lunged about democracy and shirt-sleeve diplomacy, wheedles and truckles as good as the wiliest of our pashas. And further he exclaims:

“Not to Christian Europe as represented by the State, therefore, or by the industrial powers of wealth, or by the alluring charms of decadence in art and literature, or by missionary and educational institutions, would I have you turn for light and guidance. No: from these plagues of civilisation protect us, Allah! No: let us have nothing to do with that practical Christianity which is become a sort of divine key to Colonisation; a mint, as it were, which continually replenishes the treasuries of Christendom. Let us have nothing to do with their propagandas for the propagation of supreme Fakes. No, no. Not this Europe, O my Brothers, should we take for our model or emulate: not the Europe which is being dereligionised by Material Science; disorganised by Communion and Anarchy; befuddled by Alcoholism; enervated by Debauch. To another Europe indeed, would I direct
you—a Europe, high, noble, healthy, pure, and withal progressive. To the deep and inexhaustible sources of genius there, of reason and wisdom and truth, would I have you advert the mind. The divine idealism of German philosophy, the lofty purity of true French art, the strength and sterling worth of English freedom,—these we should try to emulate; these we should introduce into the gorgeous besottedness of Oriental life, and literature, and religion.…”

And thus, until he reaches the heart of his subject; while the field of daisies and poppies before him gently sways as under a soft morning breeze; nods, as it were, its approbation.

“Truly,” he continues, “religion is purely a work of the heart,—the human heart, and the heart of the world as well. For have not the three monotheistic religions been born in this very heart of the world, in Arabia, Syria, and Palestine? And are not our Books of Revelation the truest guides of life hitherto known to man? How then are we to keep this Heart pure, to free it, in other words, from the plagues I have named? And how, on the other hand, are we to strengthen it, to quicken its sluggish blood? In a word, how are we to attain to the pinnacle of health, and religion, and freedom,—of power, and love, and light? By political revolutions, and insurrections, and Dasturs? By blindly adopting the triple political tradition of France, which after many years of terror and bloodshed, only gave Europe a new Yoke, a new Tyranny, a new grinding Machine? No, my Brothers; not by political nomenclature, not by political revolutions alone, shall the nations be emancipated.”

Whereupon Ahmed Bey begins to knit his brows; Shakib shakes his head, biting his nether lip; and here and there in the audience is heard a murmur about retrogression and
reaction. Khalid proceeds with his allegory of the Muleteer and the Pack-Mule.

“See, the panel of the Mule is changed; the load, too; and a few short-cuts are made in the rocky winding road of statecraft and tyranny. Ah, the stolid, patient, drudging Mule always exults in a new Panel, which, indeed, seems necessary every decade, or so. For the old one, when, from a sense of economy, or from negligence or stupidity, is kept on for a length of time, makes the back sore, and the Mule becomes kickish and resty. Hence, the plasters of conservative homeopathists, the operations suggested by political leeches, the radical cures of social quacks, and such like. But the Mule continues to kick against the pricks; and the wise Muleteer, these days, when he has not the price of a new Panel, or knows not how to make one, sells him to the first bidder. And the new owner thereupon washes the sores and wounds, applies to them a salve of the patent kind, buys his Mule a new Panel, and makes him do the work. That is what I understand by a political revolution.… And are the Ottoman people free to-day? Who in all Syria and Arabia dare openly criticise the new Owner of the Mule?

“Ours in a sense is a theocratic Government. And only by reforming the religion on which it is based, is political reform in any way possible and enduring.” And here he argues that the so-called Reformation of Islam, of which Jelal ud-Dïn el-Afghani and Mohammed Abdu are the protagonists, is false. It is based on theological juggling and traditional sophisms. Their Al-Gazzali, whom they so much prize and quote, is like the St. Augustine of the Christians: each of these theologians finds in his own Book of Revelation a divine criterion for measuring and judging all human knowledge. No; a scientific truth can not be measured by a
Korânic epigram: the Korân, a divine guide to life; a work of the heart should not attempt to judge a work of the mind or should be judged by it.

“But I would brush the cobwebs of interpretation and sophism from this Work of the heart,” he cries; “every spider’s web in the Mosque, I would sweep away. The garments of your religion, I would have you clean, O my Brothers. Ay, even the threadbare adventitious wrappages, I would throw away. From the religiosity and cant of to-day I call you back to the religion pure of the heart.…”

But the Field of poppies and daisies begins to sway as under a gale. It is swelling violently, tumultuously.

“I would free al-Islam,” he continues, “from its degrading customs, its stupefying traditions, its enslaving superstitions, its imbruting cants.”

Here several voices in the audience order the speaker to stop. “Innovation! Infidelity!” they cry.

“The yearly pestiferous consequences of the Haji”—But Khalid no longer can be heard. On all sides zealotry raises and shakes a protesting hand; on all sides it shrieks, objurgating, threatening. Here it asks, “We would like to know if the speaker be a Wahhabi.” From another part of the Mosque comes the reply: “Ay, he is a Wahhabi.” And the voice of the speaker thundering above the storm: “Only in Wahhabism pure and simple is the reformation of al-Islam possible.”… Finis.

Zealotry is set by the ear; the hornet’s nest is stirred. Your field of poppies and daisies, O Khalid, is miraculously transformed into a pit of furious grey spectres and howling red spirits. And still you wait in the tribune until the storm subside? Fool, fool! Art now in a civilised assembly? Hast thou no eyes to see, no ears to hear?

“Reactionist! Infidel! Innovator! Wahhabi! Slay him! Kill him!”—Are these likely to subside the while thou wait? By the tomb of St. John there, get thee down, and quickly. Bravo, Shakib!—He rushes to the tribune, drags him down by the jubbah, and, with the help of another friend, hustles him out of the Mosque. But the thirst for blood pursues them. And Khalid receives in the court outside a stiletto-thrust in the back and a slash in the forehead above the brow down to the ear. Which, indeed, we consider a part of his good fortune. Like the muleteer of his Lebanon tour, we attribute his escape with two wounds to the prayers of his good mother. For he is now in the carriage with Shakib, the blood streaming down his back and over his face. With difficulty the driver makes his way through the crowds, issues out of the arcade, and—crack the whip! Quickly to the Hotel.