The Book of Khalid

by Ameen Fares Rihani

REVOLUTIONS WITHIN AND WITHOUT

“Even Carlyle can be longwinded and short-sighted on occasions. ‘Once in destroying the False,’ says he, ‘there was a certain inspiration.’ And always there is, to be sure, my Master. For the world is not Europe, and the final decision on Who Is and What Is To Rule, was not delivered by the French Revolution. The Orient, the land of origination and prophecy, must yet solve for itself this eternal problem of the Old and New, the False and True. And whether by Revolutions, Speculations, or Constitutions, ancient Revelation will be purged and restored to its original pristine purity: the superannuated lumber that accumulated around it during centuries of apathy, fatalism, and sloth, must go: the dust and mould and cobwebs of the Temple will be swept away. Indeed, ‘a war must be eternally waged on evils eternally renewed.’ The genius of destruction has done its work, you say, O my esteemed Master? and there is nothing more to destroy? The gods might say this of other worlds than ours. In Europe, as in Asia, there is to be considered and remembered: if this mass of things we call humanity and civilisation were as healthy as the eternal powers would have them, the healthiest of 288 the race would not be constantly studying and dissecting our social and political ills.

“In a certain sense, we are healthier to-day than the Europeans; but our health is that of the slave and not the master: it is of more benefit to others than it is to ourselves. We are doomed to be the drudges of neurasthenic, psychopathic, egoistic masters, if we do not open our minds to the light of science and truth. ‘Every age has its Book,’ says the Prophet. But every book, if it aspires to be a guide to life, must contain of the eternal truth what was in the one that preceded it. We can not afford to let aught of this die. Leave the principal original altar in the Temple, and destroy all the others. Light on that altar the torch of science, which the better mind and cleaner hand of Europe are transmitting to us, and place your foot upon its false and unspeakable divinities. The gods of wealth, of egoism, of alcohol, of fornication, we must not acknowledge; nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing to-day? Instead of looking up to the pure and lofty souls of Europe for guidance, we welter in the mud with the lowest and most degenerate. We are beginning to know and appreciate English whiskey, but not English freedom; we know the French grisettes, but not the French sages; we guzzle German beer, but of German wisdom we taste not a drop.

“O my Brothers, let us cease rejoicing in the Dastur; for at heart we know no freedom, nor truth, nor order. We elect our representatives to Parliament, 289 but not unlike the Europeans; we borrow from France what the deeper and higher mind of France no longer believes; we imitate England in what England has long since discarded; but our Books of Revelation, which made France and Germany and England what they are, and in which is the divine essence of truth and right and freedom, we do not rightly understand. A thousand falsehoods are cluttered around the truth to conceal it from us. I call you back, O my Brothers, to the good old virtues of our ancestors. Without these the Revolution will miscarry and our Dastur will not be worth a date-stone. Our ancestors,––they never bowed their proud neck to tyranny, whether represented in an autocrat or in a body of autocrats; they never betrayed their friends; they never soiled their fingers with the coin of usury; they never sacrificed their manhood to fashion; they never endangered in the cafés and lupanars their health and reason. The Mosque and the Church, notwithstanding the ignorance and bigotry they foster, are still better than lunatic asylums. And Europe can not have enough of these to-day.

“Continence, purity of heart, fidelity, simplicity, a sense of true manhood, magnanimity of spirit, a healthiness of body and mind,––these are the beautiful ancient virtues. These are the supreme truths of the Books of Revelation: in these consists the lofty spirituality of the Orient. But through what thick, obscene growths we must pass to-day, through what cactus hedges and thistle-fields we must penetrate, before we rise again to those heights. 290

“‘There can be no Revolution without a Reformation,’ says a German philosopher. And truly so. For the fetters which bind us can not be shaken off, before the conscience is emancipated. A political revolution must always be preceded by a spiritual one, that it might have some enduring effect. Otherwise, things will revert to their previous state of rottenness as sure as Allah lives. But mind you, I do not say, Cut down the hedges; mow the thistle-fields; uproot the obscene plants; no: I only ask you to go through them, and out of them, to return no more. Sell your little estate there, if you have one; sell it at any price: give it away and let the dead bury their dead. Cease to work in those thorny fields, and God and nature will do the rest.

“I am for a reformation by emigration. And quietly, peacefully, this can be done. Nor fire, nor sword bring I: only this I say: Will and do; resolve and act upon your resolution. The emigration of the mind before the revolution of the state, my Brothers. The soul must be free, and the mind, before one has a right to be a member of a free Government, before one can justly enjoy his rights and perform his duties as a subject. But a voting slave, O my Brothers, is the pitifulest spectacle under the sun. And remember that neither the Dastur, nor the Unionists, nor the Press, can give you this spiritual freedom, if you do not awake and emigrate. Come up to the highlands: here is a patrimony for each of you; here are vineyards to cultivate. Leave the thistle-fields and marshes behind; regret nothing. Come out of the superstitions 291 of the sheikhs and ulema; of the barren mazes of the sufis; of the deadly swamps of theolougues and priests: emigrate! Every one of us should be a Niazi in this moral struggle, an Enver in this spiritual revolution. A little will-power, a little heroism, added to those virtues I have named, the solid virtues of our ancestors, and the Orient will no longer be an object of scorn and gain to commercial Europe. We shall then stand on an equal footing with the Europeans. Ay, with the legacy of science which we shall learn to invest, and with our spirituality divested of its cobwebs, and purified, we shall stand even higher than the Americans and Europeans.”––

On the following day Damascus was simmering with excitement––Damascus, the stronghold of the ulema––the learned fanatics––whom Khalid has lightly pinched. But they scarcely felt it; they could not believe it. Now, the gentry of Islam, the sheikhs and ulema, would hear this lack-beard dervish, as he was called. But they disdain to stand with the rabble in the Midan or congregate with the Mutafarnejin (Europeanised) in the public Halls. Nowhere but at the Mosque, therefore, can they hear what this Khalid has to say. This was accordingly decided upon, and, being approved by all parties concerned,––the Mufti, the Vali, the Deputies of the Holy Society and the speaker,––a day was set for the great address at the great Mosque of Omaiyah.

Meanwhile, the blatant Officer, the wheedling Politician, and the lack-beard Dervish, are feasted by the personages and functionaries of Damascus. The 292 Vali, the Mufti, Abdallah Pasha,––he who owns more than two score villages and has more than five thousand braves at his beck and call,––these, and others of less standing, vie with each other in honouring the distinguished visitors. And after the banqueting, while Ahmed Bey retires to a private room with his host to discuss the political situation, Khalid, to escape the torturing curiosity of the bores and quidnuncs of the evening, goes out to the open court, and under an orange tree, around the gurgling fountain, breathes again of quietude and peace. Nay, breathes deeply of the heavy perfume of the white jasmines of his country, while musing of the scarlet salvias of a distant land.

And what if the salvia, as by a miracle, blossoms on the jasmine? What if the former stifles the latter? Indeed, one can escape boredom, but not love. One can flee the quidnuncs of the salon, but not the questioning perplexity of one’s heart. A truce now to ambiguities.