The Book of Khalid

denizens. For our part, we have had enough of this painful task. And truly, we have never before undergone such trials in sailing between⁠—but that Charybdis and Scylla allusion has been done to death. Indeed, we love America, and in the course of our present task, which we also love, we had to suffer Khalid’s shafts to pass through our ken and sometimes really through our heart. But no more of this. Ay, we would fain set aside our pen from sheer weariness of spirit and bid the Reader, too, farewell. Truly, we would end here this Book of Khalid were it not that the greater part of the most important material in the K.L. MS. is yet intact, and the more interesting portion of Shakib’s History is yet to come. Our readers, though we do not think they are sorry for having come out with us so far, are at liberty either to continue with us, or say goodbye. But for the Editor there is no choice. What we have begun we must end, unmindful of the influence, good or ill, of the Zodiacal Signs under which we work.

“Our Phoenician ancestors,” says Khalid, “never left anything they undertook unfinished. Consider what they accomplished in their days, and the degree of culture they attained. The most beautiful fabrications in metals and precious stones were prepared in Syria. Here, too, the most important discoveries were made: namely, those of glass and purple. As for me, I can not understand what the Murex trunculus is; and I am not certain if scholars and archaeologists, or even mariners and fishermen, will ever find a fossil of that particular species. But murex or no murex, Purple was discovered by my ancestors. Hence the purple passion, that is to say the energy and intensity which coloured everything they did, everything they felt and believed. For whether in bemoaning Tammuz, or in making tear-bottles, or in trading with the Gauls and Britons, the Phoenicians were the same superstitious, honest, passionate, energetic people. And do not forget, you who are now enjoying the privilege of setting down your thoughts in words, that on these shores of Syria written language received its first development.

“It is also said that they discovered and first navigated the Atlantic Ocean, my Phoenicians; that they worked gold mines in the distant isle of Thasos and opened silver mines in the South and Southwest of Spain. In Africa, we know, they founded the colonies of Utica and Carthage. But we are told they went farther than this. And according to some historians, they rounded the Cape, they circumnavigated Africa. And according to recent discoveries made by an American archaeologist, they must have discovered America too! For in the ruins of the Aztecs of Mexico there are traces of a Phoenician language and religion. This, about the discovery of America, however, I can not verify with anything from Sanchuniathon. But might they not have made this discovery after the said Sanchuniathon had given up the ghost? And if they did, what can We, their worthless descendants do for them now? Ah, if we but knew the name of their Columbus! No, it is not practical to build a monument to a whole race of people. And yet, they deserve more than this from us, their descendants.

“These dealers in tin and amber, these manufacturers of glass and purple, these developers of a written language, first gave the impetus to man’s activity and courage and intelligence. And this activity of the industry and will is not dead in man. It may be dead in us Syrians, but not in the Americans. In their strenuous spirit it rises uppermost. After all, I must love the Americans, for they are my Phoenician ancestors incarnate. Ay, there is in the nature of things a mysterious recurrence which makes for a continuous, everlasting modernity. And I believe that the spirit which moved those brave sea-daring navigators of yore, is still working lustily, bravely, but alas, not joyously⁠—bitterly, rather, selfishly, greedily⁠—behind the steam engine, the electric motor, the plough, and in the clinic and the studio as in the Stock Exchange. That spirit in its real essence, however, is as young, as puissant today as it was when the native of Byblus first struck out to explore the seas, to circumnavigate Africa, to discover even America!”

And what in the end might Khalid discover for us or for himself, at least, in his explorations of the Spirit-World? What Colony of the chosen sons of the young and puissant Spirit, on some distant isle beyond the seven seas, might he found? To what far, silent, undulating shore, where “a written language is the instrument only of the lofty expressions and aspirations of the soul” might he not bring us? What Cape of Truth in the great Sea of Mystery might we not be able to circumnavigate, if only this were possible of the language of man?

“Not with glass,” he exclaims, “not with tear-bottles, not with purple, not with a written language, am I now concerned, but rather with what those in Purple and those who make this written language their capital, can bring within our reach of the treasures of the good, the true, and the beautiful. I would fain find a land where the soul of man, and the heart of man, and the mind of man, are as the glass of my ancestors’ tear-bottles in their enduring quality and beauty. My ancestors’ tear-bottles, and though buried in the earth ten thousand years, lose not a grain of their original purity and transparency, of their soft and iridescent colouring. But where is the natural colour and beauty of these human souls, buried in bunks under hatches? Or of those moving in high-lacquered salons above?⁠ ⁠…

“O my Brothers of the clean and unclean species, of the scented and smelling kind, of the have and have-not classes, there is but one star in this vague dusky sky above us, for you as for myself.