The Book of Khalid - Ameen Fares Rihani (good books for high schoolers txt) 📗

the camp. Indeed, finding the solitude agreeable she has a tent pitched near theirs. And as a relief from the noise and bustle of tourists and the fatiguing formalities of Hotel life, she repairs thither for a few days every week.

Now, in this austere delicacy of the desert, where allwhere is the softness of pure sand, Khalid is perfectly happy. Never did he seem so careless, our Scribe asserts, and so jovial and child-like in his joys. Far from the noise and strife of politics, far from the bewildering tangle of thought, far from the vain hopes and dreams and ambitions of life, he lives each day as if it were the last of the world. Here are joys manifold for a weary and persecuted spirit: the joy of having your dearest friend and comrade with you; the joy of nursing and helping to restore to health and happiness the woman dearest to your heart; the joy of a Love budding in beauty and profusion; and––this, the rarest and sublimest for Khalid––the joy of worshipping at the cradle––of fondling, caressing, and bringing up one of the brightest, sweetest, loveliest of babes.

Najib is his name––it were cruel to neutralise such a prodigy––and he is just learning to walk and lisp. Khalid teaches him the first step and the first monosyllable, 336 receiving in return the first kiss which his infant lips could voice. With what joy Najib makes his first ten steps! With what zest would he practise on the soft sands, laughing as he falls, and rising to try again. And thus, does he quickly, wonderfully develop, unfolding in the little circle of his caressers––in his mother’s lap, in Shakib’s arms, on Khalid’s back, on Mrs. Gotfry’s knee––the irresistible charm of his precocious spirit.

In two months of desert life, Najib could run on the sands and sit down when tired to rest; in two months he could imitate in voice and gesture whatever he heard or saw: the donkey’s bray, and with a tilt of the head like him; the cry of the cock; the shrill whistle of the train; and the howling of donkey boys. His keen sense of discrimination in sounds is incredible. And one day, seeing a Mohammedan spreading his rug to pray, he begins to kneel and kiss the ground in imitation of him. He even went into the tent and brought Khalid’s jubbah to spread it on the sand likewise for that purpose. So sensitive to outside impressions is this child that he quickly responds to the least suggestion and with the least effort. Early in the morning, when the chill of night is still on the sands, he toddles into Khalid’s tent cooing and warbling his joy. A walking jasmine flower, a singing ray of sunshine, Khalid calls him. And the mother, on seeing her child thus develop, begins to recuperate. In this little garden of happiness, her hope begins to blossom.

But Khalid would like to know why Najib, on 337 coming into his tent in the morning and seeing him naked, always pointed with his little finger and with questioning smile, to what protruded under the navel. The like questions Khalid puts with the ease and freedom of a child. And writes full pages about them, too, in which he only succeeds in bamboozling himself and us. For how can we account for everything a child does? Even the psychologist with his reflex-action theory does not solve the whole problem. But Khalid would like to know––and perhaps not so innocently does he dwell upon this subject as upon others––he would like to know the significance of Najib’s pointed finger and smile. It may be only an accident, Khalid. “But an accident,” says he, “occurring again and again in the same manner under stated conditions ceases to be such.” And might not the child, who is such an early and keen observer, have previously seen his mother in native buff, and was surprised to see that appendage in you, Khalid?

Even at Al-Hayat Najib is become popular. Khalid often comes here carrying him on his back. And how ready is the child to salaam everybody, and with both hands, as he stands on the veranda steps. “Surely,” says Khalid, “there is a deeper understanding between man and child than between man and man. For who but a child dare act so freely among these polyglots of ceremony in this little world of frills and frocks and feathers? Who but a child dare approach without an introduction any one of these solemn-looking tourists? Here then is the divine source of the sweetest and purest joy. Here is that 338 one touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin. For the child, and though he be of the lowest desert tribe, standing on the veranda of a fashionable Hotel, can warm and sweeten with the divine flame that is in him, the hearts of these sour-seeming, stiff-looking tourists who are from all corners of the earth. Is not this a miracle? My professor of psychology will say, ‘Nay.’ But what makes the heart leap in that grave and portly gentleman, who might be from Finland or Iceland, for all I know, when Najib’s hand is raised to him in salutation? What makes that stately and sombre-looking dame open her arms, when Najib plucks a flower and, after smelling it, presents it to her? What makes that reticent, meditative, hard-favoured ancient, who is I believe a psychologist, what makes him so interested in observing Najib when he stands near the piano pointing anxiously to the keyboard? For the child enjoys not every kind of music: play a march or a melody and he will keep time, listing joyously from side to side and waving his hand in an arch like a maestro; play something insipid or chaotic and he will stand there impassive as a statue.”

And “the reticent hard-favoured ancient,” who turns out to be an American professor of some ology, explains to Khalid why lively music moves children, while soft and subtle tones do not. But Khalid is not open to argument on the subject. He prefers to believe that children, especially when so keenly sensitive as his prodigy, understand as much, if not more, about music as the average operagoer of to-day. 339 But that is not saying much. The professor furthermore, while admitting the extreme precocity of Najib’s mind, tries to simplify by scientific analysis what to Khalid and other laymen seemed wonderful, almost miraculous. Here, too, Khalid botches the arguments of the learned gentleman in his effort to give us a summary of them, and tells us in the end that never after, so long as that professor was there, did he ever visit Al-Hayat.

He prefers to frolic and philosophise with his prodigy on the sands. He goes on all four around the tent, carrying Najib on his back; he digs a little ditch in the sand and teaches him how to lie therein. Following the precept of the Greek philosophers, he would show him even so early how to die. And Najib lies in the sand-grave, folds his hands on his breast and closes his eyes. Rising therefrom, Khalid would teach him how to dance like a dervish, and Najib whirls and whirls until he falls again in that grave.

When Mrs. Gotfry came that day, Khalid asked the child to show her how to dance and die, and Najib begins to whirl like a dervish until he falls in the grave; thereupon he folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles a pathetic smile. This by far is the masterpiece of all his feats. And one evening, when he was repeating this strange and weird antic, which in Khalid’s strange mind might be made to symbolise something stranger than both, he saw, as he lay in the grave, a star in the sky. It was the first time he saw a star; and he jumped out of his sand-grave exulting 340 in the discovery he had made. He runs to his mother and points the star to her....

And thus did Khalid spend his halcyon months in the desert. Here was an arcadia, perfect but brief. For his delight in infant worship, and in the new Love which was budding in beauty and profusion, and in tending his sick cousin who was recovering her health, and in the walks around the ruins in the desert with his dearest comrade and friend,––these, alas, were joys of too pure a nature to endure. 341