As famous too is al-Iman ul-Ouzaai the scholar; al-Makrizi the historian; Kallinichus the chemist, who invented the Greek fire; Kosta ibn Luka, a doctor and philosopher, who wrote among much miscellaneous rubbish a treaty entitled, On the Difference Between the Mind and the Soul ; and finally the Muezzin of Baalbek to whom “even the beasts would stop to listen.” Ay, Shakib relates quoting al-Makrizi, who in his turn relates, quoting one of the octogenarian Drivellers, Muhaddetheen (these men are the chief sources of Arabic History) that he was told by an eye and ear witness that when this celebrated Muezzin was once calling the Faithful to prayer, the camels at the creek craned their necks to listen to the sonorous music of his voice. And such was their delight that they forgot they were thirsty. This, by the way of a specimen of the Muhaddetheen .
Now, about these historical worthies of Baalbek, whom we have but named, Shakib writes whole pages, and concludes—and here is the point—that Khalid might be a descendant of any or all of them! For in him, our Scribe seriously believes, are lusty strains of many varied and opposing humours. And although he had not yet seen the sea, he longed when a boy for a long sea voyage, and he would sail little paper boats down the stream to prove the fact. In truth, that is what Shakib would prove. The devil and such logic had a charm for us once, but no more.
Here is another bubble of retrospective analysis to which we apply the needle. It is asserted as a basis for another astounding deduction that Khalid used to sleep in the ruined Temple of Zeus. As if ruined temples had anything to do with the formation or deformation of the brain-cells or the soul-afflatus! The devil and such logic, we repeat, had once a charm for us.
But this, in brief, is how it came about. Khalid hated the pedagogue to whom he had to pay a visit of courtesy every day, and loved his cousin Najma whom he was not permitted to see. And when he runs away from the bastinado, breaking in revenge the icon of the Holy Virgin, his father turns him away from home. Complaining not, whimpering not, he goes.