But always the sons of Shapur pushed ahead, to pitch their tents a day’s march nearer the City of their Desire, nearer the Golden Gate which opened every sunset to let the royal Rajah of the Day pass through. Like a mirage that daily vision lured them on, showing them a dream gate of Opportunity, always just ahead, yet ever out of reach.
As in the days of Shapur, so it was in the days of his sons. There were some who fell by the way, and, losing all that made life dear, cried out as the caravans passed on without them, that Allah had forgotten them; and they cursed the day that they were born, and laid hopeless heads in the dust.
But Allah, the Merciful, who from the beginning knew what Desert of Waiting must lie between every son of Shapur and the City of his Desire, had long before stretched out his hand over one of the mountains of his continent. With earthquake shock it sank before him. With countless hammer strokes of hail and rain-drops, and with gleaming rills he chiselled it, till as the centuries rolled by it took the semblance of that symbol of patience, a camel, kneeling there at the passing of the ways. And now, to every heart bowed down and hopeless, it whispers the lesson that Shapur learned in his weary Desert of Waiting:
“Patience! Thou camest into the desert a vendor of salt; thou mayst go forth an alchemist, distilling from life’s tasks and sorrows such precious attar in thy soul, that its sweetness shall win for thee a welcome wherever thou goest, and a royal entrance into the City of thy Desire!”
THE END
And this, O Son of Shapur, is the secret of Omar’s alchemy: To gather something from every one thou passest on the highway, and from every experience fate sends thee, as Omar gathered from the heart of every rose, and out of the wide knowledge thus gained of human weaknesses and human needs, to distil in thine own heart the precious oil of Sympathy. That is the attar that shall win for thee a welcome wherever thou goest. And no man fills his crystal vase with it until he has first been pricked by the world’s disappointments, and bowed by its tasks.
Thou vendor of salt, who, as yet, canst follow only in the train of others, is not any waiting well worth the while, if, in the end, it shall give thee wares with which to gain a royal entrance?
