“Sarkár,” said Murshid Khan, turning to me, “I have, with these two eyes of mine, seen things beyond belief, though I believe in them myself, and many a true believer shares the belief with me.” Here he turned his face in the direction of the Harem, raised his eyes, and cried: “By the owner of this Harem, the truth of my story is this: I had a sister, by name Javáher, who became Jinni, Jinnstruck, when she was ten years old. She had been of an equal mind until one day she went into a field in Hamadan, where a servant was milking the goats. It appears that she spilt the milk by accidentally kicking over the bowl containing it, and thenceforward her mind was troubled: she was Jinni. Now we people of Hamadan accounted ourselves lucky in that there lived among us a pious Mullá ’Alí, whose extraordinary capabilities were a matter of wonder and adoration. As a Jinn-gir, or Jinn-trapper, he was unrivalled. Him, therefore, we called in that he might cast out the Jinn that had disturbed the peace of my sister’s mind. When he came he brought with him his famous tás—a bowl used for ablutions—and a long white sheet. Having filled the tás, he ordered my sister to sit down beside it and to gaze into the water. Then he threw the sheet over the child and the bowl, and made certain passes with a wand he held in his right hand. Whereupon, as we noticed to our terror, there arose a mighty stir beneath the sheet, as though a host were fighting there. On a signal from Mullá ’Alí the tumult ceased and all was in a hush. Suddenly, the good priest, calling my sister by her name, said: ‘What do you see there?’ And my sister replied, in a dreamy, awestruck whisper: ‘O, Mullá ’Alí, I see him seated gloriously on a throne studded with precious gems, and hundreds of attendants, both men and women, are kneeling before him. It is the King of the Jinns.’ ‘And what do you hear? be attentive!’ said the priest. ‘One little Jinn,’ replied my sister, in a terror-stricken voice, ‘is prostrating herself before his Majesty, and this is what she says: “Javáher—may she be punished—spilled a bowl of milk a month ago, and hurt my toes, and I have been lame ever since. Though my friends have cast a spell over her, I must request your Majesty to increase her punishment, that she may learn to fear the displeasure of our King.” Oh, oh, oh! How she cries and weeps before the throne of his Majesty; I am fainting.’ ‘Beg her humbly to forgive you, and promise to be more careful in the future, and all will be well,’ cried Mullá ’Alí. It was impossible to doubt the sincerity of my sister’s repentance, and when the priest removed the sheet, which he did so soon as my sister had made her appeal before the throne, behold my sister was in her right mind once more. I forgot to say that before the removal of the covering a neighbour came in, saying that he had lost a gold diamond ring, probably by theft. So the priest commanded my sister to ask the Jinn she had injured to tell her where the ring was. The Jinn in question was good enough to mention the thief by name, much to the delight of our neighbour, who subsequently recovered his property. I can assure you, Sarkár, that this last proof of the Mullá’s power made Hamadan the safest city in Persia. Theft was unknown there. May Mullá ’Alí have a long life!”
The talisman-monger was the next to speak. He said: “You must know that I am not always in Mecca. I come here for the three journeying months, then I return to Smyrna, where I have two shops of this nature in the bazaars. Next to one of my shops there is a small coffee-house, whither I go for refreshment in my leisure hours. About three years ago there came to Smyrna a man named Dervish Ibrahim, from Turkistan. Everybody except myself believed in the supernatural power of this dervish, who wore a white beard on a shining face. One evening, when I had closed my shop and was proceeding home, I found the dervish seated on the front bench of the coffee-house, surrounded by his followers. He called me by my name—Abdullah-ben-Jafar—though it had never been mentioned before him, and when I went to him he said: ‘I can see from your face that you scoff at the power of talismans, though you sell them to those who are wiser than yourself, and therein show yourself possessed of some share of wisdom. It is my humour to-night to reveal to you a single drop of the ocean of omnipotence. Come, take this scrap of paper, whereon I have written a few words to the dead, carry it to the neighbouring cemetery, bury it in the sand near the entrance, and bring back to me a handful of the sand. Be careful, on returning, not to look behind you, for, if you do so, you will be torn in a million pieces that will be distributed among those that lie there. Look ahead, and your life will be safe.’ Well, curiosity possessed me, and off I went. When I had buried the scrap of paper, and taken up a handful of sand, I heard thunder and the voices of the dead crying, ‘Oh, Abdullah-ben-Jafar, take not the sand away, else you will be cut in bits. Stop! Stop! Stop!’ I shuddered all over my body, and lost consciousness suddenly. When I awoke it was to see the sun rising. I hurried to the dervish, and kissed his feet, and implored him to forgive me for having doubted his power to work miracles.”
This story-telling had attracted a number of pilgrims, who, to the exaltation of the talisman-monger, fell to examining his curiosities with a view to business. After every purchase, Abdullah-ben-Jafar raised his hands to heaven, and cried: “Praise be to God on high! May His kindness be increased!”
CHAPTER III
SEYYID ’ALÍ’S STORY OF HIS REDEMPTION
On leaving the talisman-monger’s we went about our shopping in the Meccan bazaars, my guide pointing out to me the places of interest on the way. He grew excited when we passed a certain coffee-house, from within whose doors, as he assured me, he had escaped from himself into the bosom of the Beloved more times than he could count. “There are better ways of ascending into heaven, yá-Moulai,” he exclaimed, ecstatically, “than by being buried underground!” He paused as if to give me the opportunity of begging him to explain the connection; but all I said in reply was that a Tower of Silence would scarcely suit one whose tongue was for ever on the wag.
“’Tis true,” he affirmed, in no way disconcerted, “the birds of prey are not to my liking. I would discourse of the parrot of mysteries, that hath opened to me the gates of Paradise more than once. If your Excellency would acquaint himself with——” I interrupted him, saying: “Are you speaking of hashísh, my friend? If you are, let me tell you that I have no wish to renew my experience of the drug.” And when I hurried on, he drew a deep breath, but whether of disappointment or of relief I couldn’t make out. “In that coffee-house, yá-Moulai,” he said at last, “you might have tasted of every narcotic of the drowsy East: of hashísh, the master Seyyid, or the Parrot of Mysteries, an acquired taste; of bang, a most potent liberator of thought; and, lastly, of opium, which is, as we Persians have it, the Antidote, the healer of every ill except the one it engenders. I was once a well-seasoned vafurí (opium-smoker), and could discourse of mysteries more eloquently than any dervish. My nose would grow wet every time I smoked a pipe of hashísh and my imagination bear me on its wings to the seventh heaven, or plunge me into the lowest hell. Those were days of spiritual intoxication—yá-Allah. What cured me of drug-bibbing was the dread of remaining in the abode of the damned.”
He sauntered on, telling over the beads of his rosary. “Never,” he cried suddenly, “shall I forget the last pipe of hashísh I smoked.” I followed him up on the scent of a story. “Come,” said I, “tell me your tale, and have done with it.”
“Well, it was at Shíráz; I was in the society of some twenty matured dervishes, and the year was at the spring and the sun was set. I never hear a nightingale, nor smell a rose, but I can taste that kalyan of hashísh and tobacco. Not that I was conscious at the time of any stomachic qualm. Not more than half-a-dozen whiffs were enough to speed me on my way into a world in which this mortal flesh lay shuddering at the terrible aspect of things—terrible beyond the imagination of the unenlightened to conceive. Supper was brought in. Among the dishes laid before me was a plate of piláw, dome-shaped, having on top a multitude of round pieces of meat, and these, to my exceeding terror, came tumbling down the pyramid of white rice, owing to the carelessness of the servant in handling the dish. But what did I, in my excited fancy, behold, yá-Moulai? I thought I was at the foot of a snow-clad mountain, whose crest dwarfed that of Demavend, and from the summit thereof there came hurtling down on me huge boulders of massy rock. I cried aloud in terror, and tried to hide myself in the corner of the room. My friends, the dervishes, laid hold of me, and carried me into the compound, and flung me into the tank, and in so doing they cheated me to believe that a host of angels had rescued me from the avalanche, and, bearing me into Paradise, had cast me into the living waters of Salsabíl. For, on opening my eyes, I saw a heavenly houri, whose face shone as the face of the sun. Her feet were on the earth, but her head reached as high as the fourth heaven. How could I—a man of ordinary stature—make love to a houri whose height, even among the ladies of Paradise, must have been a swallow’s flight above the average? True, I might sit in adoration at her feet, but that a taller man than I would have the pleasure of kissing her lips seemed only too likely. This thought was blasphemy in itself; and no sooner did it creep into this unregenerate mind of mine than two angels caught me by the hands and threw me into the burning furnace of hell. And this sudden change in my fortunes corresponded with the actions of my friends in taking me out of the tank and putting me to bed, and applying a hot remedy to what they believed to be a cold disease. Yá-Allah, how I burned, but without consuming, in that fire of the unredeemed. I cried for help, but Allah—may I be His sacrifice—cast me still deeper into the hell of His displeasure, saying, ‘He who would worship me must worship me in soberness and sincerity! Eschew all narcotics, O Seyyid ’Alí, lest I leave thee here to perish in the flames.’ Then repentance wrung my heart so that the tears started to my eyes and overflowed. And when that happened a wind from heaven blew, and I caught sight of a cloud of sun-lit hair—the hair of the divine houri who had previously overawed me—and these radiant tresses were wafted by the wind within arms’ reach of my despair. I clutched them in these two hands. The exhilaration of a swift ascent filled my soul with thanksgiving, and a shriek—like a throb of pain—darted through me from without, striking on the drum of consciousness within me. In other words, I awoke to find myself lying at home, with a handful of my wife’s hair pressed to my lips in rapture. How I came to be there I never discovered, but the mother of my children explained to me with many words that the too forcible removal of the hair I held in my fingers had left a bald patch on the crown of her head. And this, yá-Moulai, is the true story of my redemption.”
Meanwhile, we had reached the northern extremity of Mussah-street, where in a shop I noticed a number of small bags of yellow leather containing, as Seyyid ’Alí informed me, the celebrated henna of Wady Fatima. This valley, called after the Prophet’s daughter, the wife of ’Alí, his cousin, is situated about eight hours’ journey to the north-west of Mecca, on the road to Medina. The whole neighbourhood abounds in the shrub from whose pounded leaves the henna paste is produced. The act of dyeing the hair with henna is known by the name of khezab, and is so popular among the Muhammadans of both sexes that it has come to be almost a religious rite. Many a devout dyes his hands and feet and hair once a week, the paste giving to the skin an orange-reddish colour, and deepening the original shade of dark hair to a ruddy black. On the hammám day the henna is taken to the bath; the attendant forms it into a paste in small dishes used for the purpose and called jamé-henna; the decoction should be allowed to stand for half an hour before it is applied to the skin and the hair. There are special women artists who draw, on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands, all manner of pictures with this dye. Not less than eight hours are devoted to the practice, the victims—women, of course—lying with outstretched limbs, for the henna “to take its colour.”
If one neglects to make use of the dye one runs the risk of bringing misfortune and leprosy on one’s whole family. The henna of Wady Fatima, which has a perfume peculiar to itself, is considered particularly blessed. I was told by the shopkeeper—a prejudiced person, no doubt—that the Devil himself could be rendered harmless to the Muslim who should dye his hands once a week and employ an apt quotation from the Kurán, always provided he were not clad in ihrám. The assurance that he had sold one hundred thousand bags of the precious dye to the pilgrims within the month gave me a lively notion of the credulity of his customers.