The Book of Khalid

by Ameen Fares Rihani

“Indeed, Im-Hanna was right. Khalid had become too odd, too queer to be sane. Needless to say, I was not prone to follow his example at that time. Nor am I now. Mashallah! Lacking the power and madness to set fire to the whole world, it were folly, indeed, to begin with one’s self. I believe I had as much right to exaggerate in peddling as I had in writing verse. My license to heighten the facts holds good in either case. And to some extent, every one, a poet be he or a cobbler, enjoys such a license. I told Khalid that the logical and most effective course to pursue, in view of his rigorous morality, would be to pour a gallon of kerosene over his own head and fire himself out of existence. For the instruments of deception and debasement are not in the peddling-box, but rather in his heart. No; I did not think peddling was as bad as other trades. Here at least, the means of deception were reduced to a minimum. And of a truth, if everybody were to judge themselves as strictly as Khalid, who would escape burning? So I turned from him that day fully convinced that my little stock of holy goods was innocent, and my balance at the banker’s was as pure as my rich neighbour’s. And he turned from me fully convinced, I believe, that I was an unregenerate rogue. Ay, and when I was knocking at the door of one of my customers, he was walking 76 away briskly, his hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes, as usual, scouring the horizon.”

And on that horizon are the gilded domes and smoking chimneys of the seething city. Leaving his last friend and his last burden behind, he will give civilised life another trial. Loafer and tramp that he is! For even the comforts of the grand cable-railway he spurns, and foots it from the Bronx down to his cellar near Battery Park, thus cutting the city in half and giving one portion to Izräil and the other to Iblis. But not being quite ready himself for either of these winged Furies, he keeps to his cellar. He would tarry here a while, if but to carry out a resolution he has made. True, Khalid very seldom resolves upon anything; but when he does make a resolution, he is even willing to be carried off by the effort to carry it out. And now, he would solve this problem of earning a living in the great city by honest means. For in the city, at least, success well deserves the compliments which those who fail bestow upon it. What Montaigne said of greatness, therefore, Khalid must have said of success. If we can not attain it, let us denounce it. And in what terms does he this, O merciful Allah! We translate a portion of the apostrophe in the K. L. MS., and not the bitterest, by any means.

“O Success,” the infuriated failure exclaims, “how like the Gorgon of the Arabian Nights thou art! For does not every one whom thou favorest undergo a pitiful transformation even from the first bedding with thee? Does not everything suffer from thy look, thy touch, thy breath? The rose loses its perfume, the 77 grape-vine its clusters, the bulbul its wings, the dawn its light and glamour. O Success, our lords of power to-day are thy slaves, thy helots, our kings of wealth. Every one grinds for thee, every one for thee lives and dies.... Thy palaces of silver and gold are reared on the souls of men. Thy throne is mortised with their bones, cemented with their blood. Thou ravenous Gorgon, on what bankruptcies thou art fed, on what failures, on what sorrows! The railroads sweeping across the continents and the steamers ploughing through the seas, are laden with sacrifices to thee. Ay, and millions of innocent children are torn from their homes and from their schools to be offered to thee at the sacrificial-stone of the Factories and Mills. The cultured, too, and the wise, are counted among thy slaves. Even the righteous surrender themselves to thee and are willing to undergo that hideous transformation. O Success, what an infernal litany thy votaries and high-priests are chanting to thee.... Thou ruthless Gorgon, what crimes thou art committing, and what crimes are being committed in thy name!”

From which it is evident that Khalid does not wish for success. Khalid is satisfied if he can maintain his hold on the few spare feet he has in the cellar, and continue to replenish his little store of lentils and olive oil. For he would as lief be a victim of success, he assures us, as to forego his mojadderah. And still having this, which he considers a luxury, he is willing to turn his hand at anything, if he can but preserve inviolate the integrity of his soul and the freedom of his mind. 78 These are a few of the pet terms of Khalid. And in as much as he can continue to repeat them to himself, he is supremely content. He can be a menial, if while cringing before his superiors, he were permitted to chew on his pet illusions. A few days before he burned his peddling-box, he had read Epictetus. And the thought that such a great soul maintained its purity, its integrity, even in bonds, encouraged and consoled him. “How can they hurt me,” he asks, “if spiritually I am far from them, far above them? They can do no more than place gilt buttons on my coat and give me a cap to replace this slouch. Therefore, I will serve. I will be a slave, even like Epictetus.”

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.”