Khalid takes shelter in one of the shops; a cameleer rates the boys and chases them away. The stoning was repeated the following day, and the cause of it, Shakib tells us, is patent. For when it became known in Baalbek that Khalid, the excommunicated one, is living in the Hotel, and with an American woman! the old prejudices against him were aroused, the old enemies were astirring.
The priests held up their hands in horror; the women wagged their long tongues in the puddle of scandal; and the most fanatical shrieked out, execrating, vituperating, threatening even the respectable Shakib, who persists in befriending this muleteer’s son. Excommunicated, he now comes with this Americaniyah (American woman) to corrupt the community.
Horrible! We will even go farther than this boy’s play of stoning. We present petitions to the kaimakam demanding the expulsion of this Khalid from the Hotel, from the City.
From other quarters, however, come heavier charges against Khalid. The Government of Damascus has not been idle ever since the seditious lack-beard Sheikh disappeared. The telegraph wires, in all the principal cities of Syria, are vibrating with inquiries about him, with orders for his arrest. One such the kaimakam of Baalbek had just received when the petition of the “Guardians of the Morals of the Community” was presented to him. To this, the kaimakam , in a perfunctory manner, applies his seal, and assures his petitioners that it will promptly be turned over to the proper official. But Turk as Turks go, he “places it under the cushion,” when they leave. Which expression, translated into English means, he quashes it.
Now, by good chance, this is the same kaimakam who sent Khalid a year ago to prison, maugre the efforts and importunities and other inducements of Shakib. And this time, he will do him and his friend a good turn.