O Khalid, I can never forgive this crime of thine against the sacred rites of Friendship. Such heartlessness, such inexorable cruelty, I have never before observed in thee. No matter how much thou hast profited by thy retirement to the mountains, no matter how much thy solitude hath given thee of health and power and wisdom, thy cruel remissness can not altogether be drowned in my rejoicing. To forget those who love thee above everything else in the world—thy mother, thy cousin, thine affectionate brother—”
And our Scribe goes on, blubbering like a good Syrian his complaint and joy, gushing now in verse, now in what is worse, in rhymed prose, until he reaches the point which is to us of import.
Khalid, in the winter of the first year of the Dustur (Constitution) writes to him many letters from Beirut, of which he gives us not less than fifty! And of these, the following, if not the most piquant and interesting, are the most indispensable to our History.
My loving Brother Shakib: > > To whom, if not to you, before all, should I send the first word of peace, the first sign of the resurrection? To my mother? To my cousin Najma? Well, yes. But if I write to them, my letters will be brought to you to be read and answered. So I write now direct, hoping that you will convey to them these tidings of joy. ’Tis more than a year now since I slinked out of Baalbek, leaving you in the dark about me. Surely, I deserve the chastisement of your bitterest thoughts. But what could I do? Such is the rigour of the sort of life I lived that any communication with the outside world, especially with friends and lovers, would have marred it. So, I had to be silent as the pines in which I put up, until I became as healthy as