The Book of Khalid

by Ameen Fares Rihani

CHAPTER IV

THE LAST STAR

Is it not an ethnic phenomenon that a descendant of the ancient Phœnicians can not understand the meaning and purport of the Cash Register in America? Is it not strange that this son of Superstition and Trade can not find solace in the fact that in this Pix of Business is the Host of the Demiurgic Dollar? Indeed, the omnipresence and omnipotence of it are not without divine significance. For can you not see that this Cash Register, this Pix of Trade, is prominently set up on the altar of every institution, political, moral, social, and religious? Do you not meet with it everywhere, and foremost in the sanctuaries of the mind and the soul? In the Societies for the Diffusion of Knowledge; in the Social Reform Propagandas; in the Don’t Worry Circles of Metaphysical Gymnasiums; in Alliances, Philanthropic, Educational; in the Board of Foreign Missions; in the Sacrarium of Vaticinatress Eddy; in the Church of God itself;––is not the Cash Register a divine symbol of the credo, the faith, or the idea?

“To trade, or not to trade,” Hamlet-Khalid exclaims, “that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer, etc., or to take arms against the Cash Registers of America, and by opposing end––” 131 What? Sacrilegious wretch, would you set your face against the divinity in the Holy Pix of Trade? And what will you end, and how will You end by it? An eternal problem, this, of opposing and ending. But before you set your face in earnest, we would ask you to consider if the vacancy or chaos which is sure to follow, be not more pernicious than what you would end. If you are sure it is not, go ahead, and we give you Godspeed. If you have the least doubt about it––but Khalid is incapable now of doubting anything. And whether he opposes his theory of immanent morality to the Cash Register, or to Democracy, or to the ruling powers of Flunkeydom, we hope He will end well. Such is the penalty of revolt against the dominating spirit of one’s people and ancestors, that only once in a generation is it attempted, and scarcely with much success. In fact, the first who revolts must perish, the second, too, and the third, and the fourth, until, in the course of time and by dint of repetition and resistance, the new species of the race can overcome the forces of environment and the crushing influence of conformity. This, we know, is the biological law, and Khalid must suffer under it. For, as far as our knowledge extends, he is the first Syrian, the ancient Lebanon monks excepted, who revolted against the ruling spirit of his people and the dominant tendencies of the times, both in his native and his adopted Countries.

Yes, the êthos of the Syrians (for once we use Khalid’s philosophic term), like that of the Americans, is essentially money-seeking. And whether in Beirut 132 or in New York, even the moralists and reformers, like the hammals and grocers, will ask themselves, before they undertake to do anything for you or for their country, “What will this profit us? How much will it bring us?” And that is what Khalid once thought to oppose and end. Alas, oppose he might––and End He Must. How can an individual, without the aid of Time and the Unseen Powers, hope to oppose and end, or even change, this monstrous mass of things? Yet we must not fail to observe that when we revolt against a tendency inimical to our law of being, it is for our own sake, and not the race’s, that we do so. And we are glad we are able to infer, if not from the K. L, MS., at least from his Letters, that Khalid is beginning to realise this truth. Let us not, therefore, expatiate further upon it.

If the reader will accompany us now to the cellar to bid our Syrian friends farewell, we promise a few things of interest. When we first came here some few years ago in Winter, or to another such underground dwelling, the water rose ankle-deep over the floor, and the mould and stench were enough to knock an ox dead. Now, a scent of ottar of roses welcomes us at the door and leads us to a platform in the centre, furnished with a Turkish rug, which Shakib will present to the landlord as a farewell memento.

And here are our three Syrians making ready for the voyage. Shakib is intoning some verses of his while packing; Im-Hanna is cooking the last dish of mojadderah; and Khalid, with some vague dream in his eyes, and a vaguer, far-looming hope in his heart, 133 is sitting on his trunk wondering at the variety of things Shakib is cramming into his. For our Scribe, we must not fail to remind the Reader, is contemplating great things of State, is nourishing a great political ambition. He will, therefore, bethink him of those in power at home. Hence these costly presents. Ay, besides the plated jewellery––the rings, bracelets, brooches, necklaces, ear-rings, watches, and chains––of which he is bringing enough to supply the peasants of three villages, see that beautiful gold-knobbed ebony stick, which he will present to the vali, and this precious gold cross with a ruby at the heart for the Patriarch, and these gold fountain pens for his literary friends, and that fine Winchester rifle for the chief of the tribe Anezah. These he packs in the bottom of his trunk, and with them his precious dilapidated copy of Al-Mutanabbi, and––what MS. be this? What, a Book of Verse spawned in the cellar? Indeed, the very embryo of that printed copy we read in Cairo, and which Shakib and his friends would have us translate for the benefit of the English reading public.

For our Scribe is the choragus of the Modern School of Arabic poetry. And this particular Diwan of his is a sort of rhymed inventory of all the inventions and discoveries of modern Science and all the wonders of America. He has published other Diwans, in which French morbidity is crowned with laurels from the Arabian Nights. For this Modern School has two opposing wings, moved by two opposing forces, Science being the motive power of the one, and Byron and De Musset the inspiring geniuses of the 134 other. We would not be faithful to our Editorial task and to our Friend, if we did not give here a few luminant examples of the Diwan in question. We are, indeed, very sorry, for the sake of our readers, that space will not allow us to give them a few whole qasïdahs from it. To those who are so fortunate as to be able to read and understand the Original, we point out the Ode to the Phonograph, beginning thus:

“O Phonograph, thou wonder of our time,
Thy tongue of wax can sing like me in rhyme.”

And another to the Brooklyn Bridge, of which these are the opening lines: