Flounces and Ruffles
Now, that there is a lull in the machinations of Jesuitry, we shall turn a page or two in Shakib’s account of the courting of Khalid. And apparently everything is propitious. The fates, at least, in the beginning, are not unkind. For the feud between Khalid’s father and uncle shall now help to forward Khalid’s love-affair. Indeed, the father of Najma, to spite his brother, opens to the banished nephew his door and blinks at the spooning which follows. And such an interminable yarn our Scribe spins out about it, that Khalid and Najma do seem the silliest lackadaisical spoonies under the sun. But what we have evolved from the narration might have for our readers some curious alien phase of interest.
Here then are a few beads from Shakib’s romantic string. When Najma cooks mujaddara for her father, he tells us, she never fails to come to the booth of pine boughs with a platter of it. And this to Khalid was very manna. For never, while supping on this single dish, would he dream of the mensal and kitchen luxuries of the Hermitage in Bronx Park. In fact, he never envied the pork-eating Americans, the beef-eating English, or the polyphagic French. “Here is a dish of lentils fit for the gods,” he would say. …
When Najma goes to the spring for water, Khalid chancing to meet her, takes the jar from her shoulder, saying, “Return thou home; I will bring thee water.” And straightway to the spring hies he, where the women there gathered fill his ears with tittering, questioning tattle as he is filling his jar. “I wish I were Najma,” says one, as he passes by, the jar of water on his shoulder. “Would you cement his brain, if you were?” puts in another. And thus would they gibe and joke every time Khalid came to the spring with Najma’s jar. …