“O, thou blessed that contains no demon, but a fairy! When I follow thee thou takest me into regions overlooking Paradise. My sorrows are as nothing. My rags are become as robes of silk. My feet are shod, not worn and bleeding. I lift up my head——O Flower of Paradise! O Flower of Paradise!”
Old Arabian Song.
“When the European is weary he calls for alcohol to revive him; when he is joyful he thinks of wine that he may have more joy. In like manner the Chinese wooes his ‘white lady,’ the poppy flower. The Indian chews bhang, and the West African seeks surcease in kola. To the Yemen Arab, khat, the poor man’s happiness, his ‘flower of paradise,’ is more than any of these to its devotees. It is no narcotic compelling sleep, but a stimulant like alcohol, a green shrub that grows upon the hills in moist places. On the roads leading to the few cities of Arabia, and in the cities themselves, it may be seen being borne on the backs of camels to the market-place or the wedding feast—the wet and dripping leaves of the shrub. The poor and the well-to-do at once crave and adore it. They speak of it as ‘the strength of the weak,’ ‘the inspiration of the depressed,’ ‘the dispeller of sorrow and too deep care.’ All who may, buy and chew it, the poor by the anna’s worth, the rich by the rupee. The beggar when he can beg or steal it—even he is happy too.”
American Consular Report.
The dawn had long since broken over the heat-weary cup and slopes of the Mugga Valley, in which lies Hodeidah. In the centre of the city, like a mass of upturned yellow cups and boxes surrounded by a ring of green and faced by the sea, were the houses, with their streets and among and in them the shopkeepers of streets or ways busy about the labors of the day. Al Hajjaj, the cook, whose place was near the mosque in the centre of the public square, had already set his pots and pans over the fire and washed his saucers and wiped his scales and swept his shop and sprinkled it. And indeed his fats and oils were clear and his spices fragrant, and he himself was standing behind his cooking pots ready to serve customers. Likewise those who dealt in bread, ornaments, dress goods, had put forth such wares as they had to offer. In the mosque a few of the faithful had entered to pray. Over the dust of the ill-swept street, not yet cleared of the rubbish of the day before, the tikka gharries of the better-to-do dragged their way along the road about various errands. The same was speckled with natives in bright or dull attire, some alive with the interest of business, others dull because of a life that offered little.
In his own miserable wattle-covered shed or hut, no more than an abandoned donkey’s stall at the edge of the city, behold Ibn Abdullah. Beggar, ne’er-do-well, implorer of charity before the mosque, ex-water-carrier and tobacco seller in Mecca and Medina, from whence he had been driven years before by his extortions and adulterations, he now turned wearily, by no means anxious to rise although it was late. For why rise when you are old and weary and ragged, and life offers at best only a little food and sleep—or not so much food as (best and most loved of all earthly blessings) khat, the poor man’s friend? For that, more than food or drink, he craved. Yet how to come by it was a mystery. There was about him not a single anna wherewith to sate his needs—not so much as a pice!
Indeed, as Ibn Abdullah now viewed his state, he had about reached the end of his earthly tether. His career was and had been a failure. Born in the mountain district back of Hodeidah, in the little village of Sabar, source of the finest khat, where formerly his father had been a khat farmer, his mother a farmer’s helper, he had wandered far, here and there over Arabia and elsewhere, making a living as best he might: usually by trickery. Once for a little while he had been a herdsman with a Bedouin band, and had married a daughter of the tribe, but, restlessness and a lust of novelty overcoming him, he had, in time, deserted his wife and wandered hence. Thence to Jiddah, the port of debarkation for pilgrims from Egypt and Central Africa approaching Mecca and Medina, the birthplace and the burialplace of the Prophet. Selling trinkets and sacred relics, water and tobacco and fruit and food, and betimes indulging in trickery and robbery, he had finally been taken in the toils of the Cadis of both Mecca and Medina, by whose henchmen he had been sadly drubbed on his back and feet and ordered away, never to return. Venturing once more into the barren desert, a trailer of caravans, he had visited Taif, Taraba and Makhwa, but finding life tedious in these smaller places he had finally drifted southward along the coast of the Red Sea to the good city of Hodeidah, where, during as many as a dozen years now, he had been eking out a wretched existence, story-telling, selling tobacco (when he could get it) or occasionally false relics to the faithful. Having grown old in this labor, his tales commonplace, his dishonesty and lack of worth and truth well known, he was now weary and helpless, truly one near an unhonored end.
Time was, in his better days and greater strength, as he now bethought him on this particular morning, when he had had his full share of khat, and food too. Ay-ee! There had been some excellent days in the past, to be sure! Not even old Raschid, the khat drunkard, or Al Hajjaj, the cook, who might be seen of a late afternoon before his shop, his pillow and carpets and water chatties about him, his narghili lit, a bunch of khat by his side, his wife and daughter at the window above listening to him and his friends as they smoked or chewed and discoursed, had more of khat and food than had he. By Allah, things were different then! He had had his girls, too, his familiar places in the best of the mabrazes, where were lights and delightful strains of song, and dancing betimes. He had sung and applauded and recounted magnificent adventures with the best of them. Ay-ee!
But of late he had not done well—not nearly as well as in times past. He was very, very old now, that was the reason; his bones ached and even creaked. An undue reputation for evil things done in the past—Inshallah! no worse than those of a million others—pursued him wherever he went. It was remembered of him, unfortunately, here in Hodeidah, as in Mecca and Medina (due no doubt to the lying, blasting tongue—may it wither in his mouth!—of Tahrbulu, the carrier, whom he had known in Mecca)—that he had been bastinadoed there for adulterating the tobacco he sold—a little dried goats’ and camels’ dung, wind-blown and clean; and as for Taif, to which place he had gone after Mecca, Firaz, the ex-caravan guard who had known him in that place—the dog!—might his bones wither in the sun!—had recalled to various and sundry that at Mecca he had been imprisoned for selling water from a rain-pit as that of the sacred well of Jezer! Be it so; he was hard pressed at the time; there was no place to turn; business was poor—and great had been his yearning for khat.
But since then he had aged and wearied and all his efforts at an honest livelihood had served him ill. Betimes his craving for khat had grown, the while his ability to earn it—aye, even to beg it with any success!—had decreased. Here in Hodeidah he was too well known (alas, much too well known!), and yet where else was he to go? By sea it was all of three hundred miles to Aden, a great and generous place, so it was said, but how was he to get there at his time of life? No captain would carry him. He would be tossed into the sea like a rat. Had he not begged and been roundly cursed? And to Jiddah, whereby thousands came to Mecca, a full five hundred miles north, he dare not return. Were he there, no doubt he would do better: the faithful were generous.... But were he caught in the realm of the Grand Sherif— No; Hodeidah had its advantages.