About these essentialities Khalid is silent. We only know from him that he is a descendant of the brave sea-daring Phoenicians—a title which might be claimed with justice even by the aborigines of Yucatan—and that he was born in the city of Baalbek, in the shadow of the great Heliopolis, a little way from the mountain-road to the Cedars of Lebanon. All else in this direction is obscure.
And the K.L. MS. which we kept under our pillow for thirteen days and nights, was beginning to worry us. After all, might it not be a literary hoax, we thought, and might not this Khalid be a myth. And yet, he does not seem to have sought any material or worldly good from the writing of his Book. Why, then, should he resort to deception? Still, we doubted.
And one evening we were detained by the sandomancer, or sand-diviner, who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of the mosque. “I know your mind,” said he, before we had made up our mind to consult him. And mumbling his “abracadabra” over the sand spread on a cloth before him, he took up his bamboo-stick and wrote therein—Khalid! This was amazing.
“And I know more,” said he. But after scouring the heaven, he shook his head regretfully and wrote in the sand the name of one of the hashish-dens of Cairo. “Go thither; and come to see me again tomorrow evening.” Saying which, he folded his sand-book of magic, pocketed his fee, and walked away.
In that hashish-den—the reekiest, dingiest of the row in the Red Quarter—where the etiolated intellectualities of Cairo flock after midnight, the name of Khalid evokes much resounding wit, and sarcasm, and laughter.
“You mean the new Mahdi,” said one, offering us his chikbouk of hashish; “smoke to his health and prosperity. Ha, ha, ha.”