reinstated in Baalbek. No tryst this, believe us, but a scene pathetic, more sacred. Not Najma this questionable companion, but one as dear to Khalid. Ay, it is his mother come to seek him here. And she begs him, in the name of the Virgin, to return home, and try to do the will of his father. She beats her breast, weeps, prostrates herself before him, beseeches, implores, cries out, “ dakhilak (I am at your mercy), come home with me.” And Khalid, taking her up by the arm, embraces her and weeps, but says not a word. As two statues in the Temple, silent as an autumn midnight, they remain thus locked in each other’s arms, sobbing, mingling their sighs and tears. The mother then, “Come, come home with me, O my child.” And Khalid, sitting on one of the steps of the Temple, replies, “Let him move out of the house, and I will come. I will live with you, if he will keep at the Jesuits.”
For Khalid begins to suspect that the Jesuits are the cause of his banishment from home, that his father’s religious ferocity is fuelled and fanned by these good people. One day, before Khalid was banished, Shakib tells us, one of them, Father Farouche by name, comes to pay a visit of courtesy, and finds Khalid sitting cross-legged on a mat writing a letter.
The Padre is received by Khalid’s mother who takes his hand, kisses it, and offers him the seat of honour on the divan. Khalid continues writing. And after he had finished, he turns round in his cross-legged posture and greets his visitor. Which greeting is surely to be followed by a conversation of the sword-and-shield kind.
“How is your health?” this from Father Farouche in miserable Arabic.
“As you see: I breathe with an effort, and can hardly speak.”
“But the health of the body is nothing compared with the health of the soul.”
“I know that too well, O Reverend” ( Ya Muhtaram ).