The Book of Khalid

of taste, I thought, and man is partly responsible for either convexity. I have often wondered, however, why the women of my country cultivate that shape. And why do they in America cultivate the reverse of it? Needless to say that both are pruriently titillating⁠—both distentions are damnably suggestive, quite killing. The American woman, from a fine sense of modesty, I am told, never or seldom ventures abroad, when big with child. But in the kangaroo figure, the burden is slightly shifted and naught is amiss. Ah, such haunches as are here exhibited suggest the aliats of our Asiatic sheep.”

And what he says about the pruriently titillating convexities, whether frontward or hindward, suggests a little prudery. For in his rhymes he betrays both his comrade and himself. Battery Park and the attractions thereof prove fatal. Elsewhere, therefore, they must go, and begin to draw on their bank accounts. Which does not mean, however, that they are far from the snare. No; for when a young man begins to suffer from what the doctors call hebephrenia, the farther he draws away from such snares the nearer he gets to them. And these lusty Syrians could not repel the magnetic attraction of the polypiosis of what Shakib likens to the aliat (fattail) of our Asiatic sheep. Surely, there be more devils under such an aliat than under the hat of a Jesuit. And Khalid is the first to discover this. Both have been ensnared, however, and both, when in the snare, have been infernally inspired. What Khalid wrote, when he was under the influence of feminine curves, was preserved by Shakib, who remarks that one evening, after returning from the Park, Khalid said to him, “I am going to write a poem.” A fortnight later, he hands him the following, which he jealously kept among his papers.

I dreamt I was a donkey-boy again.
Out on the sun-swept roads of Baalbek, I tramp behind my burro, trolling my mulayiah.
At noon, I pass by a garden redolent of mystic scents and tarry awhile.
Under an orange tree, on the soft green grass, I stretch my limbs.
The daisies, the anemones, and the cyclamens are round me pressing:
The anemone buds hold out to me their precious rubies; the daisies kiss me in the eyes and lips; and the cyclamens shake their powder in my hair.
On the wall, the roses are nodding, smiling; above me the orange blossoms surrender themselves to the wooing breeze; and on yonder rock the salamander sits, complacent and serene.
I take a daisy, and, boy as boys go, question its petals:
Married man or monk, I ask, plucking them off one by one,
And the last petal says, Monk.
I perfume my fingers with crumpled cyclamens, cover my face with the dark-eyed anemones, and fall asleep.
And my burro sleeps beneath the wall, in the shadow of nodding roses.
And the blackbirds too are dozing, and the bulbuls flitting by whisper with their wings, ‘salaam.’
Peace and salaam!
The bulbul, the blackbird, the salamander, the burro, and the burro-boy, are to each other shades of noonday sun:
Happy, loving, generous, and free;⁠—
As happy as each other, and as free.
We do what we please in Nature’s realm, go where we please;
No one’s offended, no one ever wronged.
No sentinels hath Nature, no police.
But lo, a goblin as I sleep comes forth;⁠—
A goblin taller than the tallest poplar, who carries me upon his neck to the Park in far New York.
Here women, light-heeled, heavy-haunched, pace up and down the flags in graceful gait.
My roses these, I cry, and my orange blossoms.
But the goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was dumb.
The cyclamens, the anemones, the daisies, I saw them, but I could not speak to them.
The goblin placed his hand upon my mouth, and I was dumb.
O take me back to my own groves, I cried, or let me speak.
But he threw me off his shoulders in a huff, among the daisies and the cyclamens.
Alone among them, but I could not speak.
He had tied my tongue, the goblin, and left me there alone.
And in front of me, and towards me, and beside me,
Walked Allah’s fairest cyclamens and anemones.
I smell them, and the tears flow down my cheeks;
I can not even like the noonday bulbul
Whisper with my wings, salaam!
I sit me on a bench and weep.
And in my heart I sing
O, let me be a burro-boy again;
O, let me sleep among the cyclamens
Of my own land.

Shades of Whitman! But Whitman, thou Donkey, never weeps. Whitman, if that goblin tried to silence him, would have wrung his neck, after he had ridden upon it. The above, nevertheless, deserves the space we give it here, as it shadows forth one of the essential elements of Khalid’s spiritual makeup. But this slight symptom of that disease we named, this morbidness incident to adolescence, is eventually overcome by a dictionary and a grammar. Ay, Khalid henceforth shall cease to scour the horizon for that vague something of his dreams; he has become farsighted enough by the process to see the necessity of pursuing in America something more spiritual than peddling crosses and scapulars. Especially in this America, where the alphabet is spread broadcast, and free of charge. And so, he sets himself to the task of self-education. He feels the embryo stir within him, and in the squeamishness of enceinteship, he asks but for a few of the fruits of knowledge. Ah, but he becomes voracious of a sudden, and the little pocket dictionary is devoured entirely in three sittings. Hence his folly of treating his thoughts and fancies, as he was treated by the goblin. For do not words often rob a fancy of its tongue, or a thought of its soul? Many of the pieces Khalid wrote when he was devouring dictionaries were finally disposed of in a most picturesque manner, as we shall relate. And a few were given to Shakib, of which that Dream of Cyclamens was preserved.

And Khalid’s motto was, “One book at a time.”