Khaled - F. Marion Crawford (ap literature book list .TXT) 📗

“No. You need nothing to make you beautiful.”

“And for the matter of that, I can say it of you. You tell me that you love me. Is it love that makes your body tall and straight, your beard black, your forehead smooth, your hand strong? Would not any woman see what I see, whether you loved her or not? See! Is your hand whiter than mine because you love and I do not?”

She laughed again as she held her hand beside his.

“Truly,” thought Khaled, “it is less easy than I supposed. For the heart of a woman who does not love is like the desert, when the wind blows over it, and there are neither tracks nor landmarks. And I am wandering in this desert like a man seeking lost camels.”

But he said nothing, for he was not yet skilled in the arguments of love. Thereupon Zehowah smiled, and resting her cheek upon her hand, looked into his face, as though saying scornfully, “Is it not all vanity and folly?”

Khaled sighed, for he was disappointed, as a thirsty man who, coming to drink of a clear spring, finds the water bitter, while his thirst increases and grows unbearable.

“Why do you sigh?” Zehowah asked, after a little silence. “Are you weary? Are you tired with the feasting? Are you full of bitterness, because I do not love you? Command me and I will obey. Are you not my lord to whom I am subject?”

He did not speak, but she drew him to her, so that his head rested upon her bosom, and she began to sing to him in a low voice.

For a long time Khaled kept his eyes shut, listening to her voice. Then, on a sudden, he looked up, and without speaking so much as a word, he clasped her in his arms and kissed her.

Before it was day there was a great tumult in the streets of Riad, of which the noise came up even to the chamber where Khaled and Zehowah were sleeping. Zehowah awoke and listened, wondering what had happened and trying to understand the cries of the distant multitude. Then she laid her hand upon Khaled’s forehead and waked him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It is war,” she answered. “The enemy have surprised the city in the night of the feast. Arise and take arms and go out to the people.”

Khaled sprang up and in a moment he was clothed and had girt on his sword. Then he took Zehowah in his arms.

“While I live, you are safe,” he said.

“Am I afraid? Go quickly,” she answered.

At that time the Sultan of Nejed was at war with the northern tribes of Shammar, and the enemy had taken advantage of the month of Ramadhan, in which few persons travel, to advance in great numbers to Riad. During the three days’ feast of Bairam they had moved on every night, slaying the inhabitants of the villages so that not one had escaped to bring the news, and in the daytime they had hidden themselves wherever they could find shelter. But in the night in which Khaled and Zehowah were married they reached the very walls of the city, and waiting until all the people were asleep, a party of them had climbed up upon the ramparts and had opened one of the gates to their companions after killing the guards.

Khaled found his mare and mounted her without saddle or bridle in his haste, then drawing his sabre he rode swiftly out of the palace into the confusion. The enemy with their long spears were driving the panic-stricken guards and the shrieking people before them towards the palace, slaughtering all whom they overtook, so that the gutters of the streets were already flowing with blood, and the horses of the enemy stumbled over the bodies of the defenders. The whole multitude of the pursued and the pursuers were just breaking out of the principal street into the open space before the palace when Khaled met them, a single man facing ten thousand.

“I shall certainly perish in this fight,” he said to himself, “and yet I shall not receive the reward of the faithful, since Allah has not given me a soul. Nevertheless certain of these dogs shall eat dirt before the rest get into the palace.”

So he pressed his legs to the bare sides of his mare and lifted up his sword and rode at the foe, having neither buckler, nor helmet, nor shirt of mail to protect him, but only his clothes and his turban. But his arm was strong, and it has been said by the wise that it is better to fall upon an old lion with a reed than to stand armed in the way of a man who seeks death.

“Yallah! The Sword of the Lord!” shouted Khaled, in such a terrible voice that the assailants ceased to kill for a moment, and the terrified guards turned to see whence so great a voice could proceed; and some who had seen Khaled recognised him and ran to meet him, and the others followed.

When the enemy saw a single man riding towards them across the great square before the palace, they sent up a shout of derision, and turned again to the slaughter of such of the inhabitants as could not extricate themselves.

“Shall one man stop an army?” they said. “Shall a fox turn back a herd of hyenas?”

But when Khaled was among them they found less matter for laughter. For the sword was keen, the mare was swift to double and turn, and Khaled’s hand was strong. In the twinkling of an eye two of the enemy lay dead, the one cloven to the chin, the other headless.

Then a strange fever seized Khaled, such as he had not heard of, and all things turned to scarlet before his eyes, both the walls of the houses, and the faces and the garments of his foes. Men who saw him say that his face was