draw on their bank accounts. Which does not mean, however, that they are far from the snare. No; for when a young man begins to suffer from what the doctors call hebephrenia, the farther he draws away from such snares the nearer he gets to them. And these lusty Syrians could not repel the magnetic attraction of the polypiosis of what Shakib likens to the aliat (fattail) of our Asiatic sheep. Surely, there be more devils under such an aliat than under the hat of a Jesuit. And Khalid is the first to discover this. Both have been ensnared, however, and both, when in the snare, have been infernally inspired. What Khalid wrote, when he was under the influence of feminine curves, was preserved by Shakib, who remarks that one evening, after returning from the Park, Khalid said to him, “I am going to write a poem.” A fortnight later, he hands him the following, which he jealously kept among his papers.
I dreamt I was a donkey-boy again. Out on the sun-swept roads of Baalbek, I tramp behind my burro, trolling my mulayiah . At noon, I pass by a garden redolent of mystic scents and tarry awhile. Under an orange tree, on the soft green grass, I stretch my limbs. The daisies, the anemones, and the cyclamens are round me pressing: The anemone buds hold out to me their precious rubies; the daisies kiss me in the eyes and lips; and the cyclamens shake their powder in my hair. On the wall, the roses are nodding, smiling; above me the orange blossoms surrender themselves to the wooing breeze; and on yonder rock the salamander sits, complacent and serene. I take a daisy, and, boy as boys go, question its petals: Married man or monk, I ask, plucking them off one by one, And the last petal says, Monk. I perfume my fingers with crumpled cyclamens, cover my face with the dark-eyed anemones, and fall asleep. And my burro sleeps beneath the wall, in the shadow of nodding roses. And the blackbirds too are dozing, and the bulbuls flitting by whisper with their