In Freikeh: The Color Red, the Eye, the Red Butterfly

... The eyes of the night did not sleep, that night in Freikeh!

And the eyes of "Freikeh" did not sleep that night!

And even this red butterfly, the color of flame in the fire, never stilled a wing... it went on fluttering... and it was fluttering upon the lashes of my eyes!

My eyes hung upon those two blazing wings...

while I listened to a faint, deep whisper within it...

Whence had that red butterfly come, in that night, to the house of Rihani?

Was it a perfume in a flask, that the Rihanis had let loose in welcome to the kings among us and to the vagabonds?

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... Above Sannine a star still hangs in the night... and over the sea one like it, bewildered... and the gray cloaks of fog flood the valley with something like the color of incense in the censers...

And I drink in deeply, alone, with the night, these deep moments of my life...

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I fancied I had outrun the morning, to meet the face of God before morning rose.

But there, before me, was a face radiant with faith in God, a lip murmuring the name of God, and a heart hailing God, from the balcony of the Rihani house above the old church, the house's neighbor. This is the face of "Umm Amin." I knew her before I ever met her, in this deep spiritual serenity that has known nothing but goodness and happiness...

And in this furrowed brow, where the paths and windings of the lines of age intertwine, and a merry smile on a mouth over which nothing has fluttered but the name of the Most Holy.

... And I bent to kiss the pure hand, and the beads of that long rosary, the Papacy's gift in Rome to a stubborn infidel among the infidels of my country... a rosary Amin carried from the corridors of the Vatican as a gift to Umm Amin...

— Amin has gone ahead of you, my son, and ahead of me, down to the valley — his habit every day, he outruns the sparrows to the valley, on the back of his Saudi mare...

He is down in the valley, writing, writing for the sparrows and the pines, the rocks and the gorse and the broom.

... What does he write?... I ask him, what do you do, my son, every morning in the valley alone? And he laughs and says: I glorify God, Umm Amin, with the sparrows and the rocks of the valley and its plants.

— Glorify God in the church, my son — this neighbor who reproaches you that you have not entered her door in fifty years... Glorify Him with the people, Amin, my boy, I tell him; and he embraces me and says: You pray to God for me, Umm Amin; pray always for me in this church and in all the churches of Lebanon... The church is God's house, mother, for those who know no house of God but the churches. As for me, Umm Amin, I have known all God's doors in His houses... or I fancy I have known them... Every place, to me, is God's house... In the East I see Him, Umm Amin, and in the West; in the cathedrals of Rome I have seen Him, mother, and from the rooftops of Mecca... in this valley of ours, and in every valley... In the desert of the Arabs I walked, and God walked beside me, barefoot; and in the clamor of New York, God was likewise with me...

God is great, Umm Amin, and mighty; and if people can find Him only in a small house, then so be it, and let them believe their belief..."

The star that was over Sannine has set, and its sister over the sea as well...

... I was in awe of entering the hall of kings, where the kings of the Arabs gather with Rihani.

... And had not Albert Rihani greatly steadied my heart — he the master of the house and its elder, boon companion of kings and vagabonds in the Rihani house — my feet would never have stepped into that awesome room...

I entered the hall with an awe that seized even my steps, so that they nearly stumbled on the carpets; I gave the greeting of the people of Freikeh, my eyes fixed on the floor, and sat, politely, in the smallest corner...

Imam Yahya, lord of green Yemen, was sitting as great kings sit, and the sight of him overawed me...

And Abdulaziz reclined in an easy posture, in his face hardness and strength, and in his eyes the innocence of the desert... And Faisal the elder sat pensive, on his face the serenity of holiness, his eyes far away; and Ghazi — on his brow, clouds of which no one knows what storms they carry!

And Rihani was on the opposite side, with his deep eyes, a lock of his hair drooping over his brow and touching his lashes...

... And Rihani was reading Faisal's latest letter to him.

"... I have been asking after your news, and expressing my longing for you and my desire to see you.

The glad tidings of your coming to us rang with joy and gladness... So welcome, and welcome again..."

— Why did you not come to us, Amin, when we had made all ready to receive you in Baghdad...

— Indeed, my lord Faisal, it is ever my intention; and if I ask God to lengthen my life, it is that I may live in the shade of your love, and of the love of all the kings of the Arabs.

The tall minarets of Baghdad never leave my mind.

Nor the tents of the desert.

And I have a craving to walk barefoot on the sands,

and for a draught of water from the tributaries of the Euphrates or the Tigris...

My heart is with the Arabs — with you, my lord — but my mind is not here; my mind is there... It is in my thoughts to visit the countries of the world, to make my endeavor in them, to struggle for the great cause to which I have devoted my pen and my heart. The cause occupies my mind greatly... The world is against us... America — even America, that good country — stands united with England against the cause of Palestine and against the Arabs. What are we all to do here...

Allow me to say what you yourselves have done... You are great kings — but is it fitting that you should be great kings over wretched, feeble peoples?... God forgive me — our peoples need a unified leadership, a directing head; and had one led them toward a definite goal, they would have wrought wonder upon wonder...

What have we done for these peoples?... We made ourselves kings over them in their feebleness, and kept them in their feebleness. We want a leader — wherever he may come from, whatever he may be.

And we look about us, and find nothing but idlers kneeling in the dervish lodges!!

You are great, my lord Faisal.

And you are great, O long of life.

You are all great... but the nation is greater than you.

The cause is greater than you... The peoples you rule are greater than you, and great history will speak its word about you and about us all.

And Rihani takes from his desk a small book entitled "Flowers from the Holy Land," holds it in his hands, and continues: Flowers from the Holy Land... Look, my lords — is there still, in that land, a flower that lifts its face to the sun?

And what holiness remains in the Holy Land?... Abominations upon abominations, defilements upon defilements — sinful gangs wrecking our homes... and we fight them with the charlatanry of words...

... The sun is on the sea, its light dying slowly, and the evening creeps slowly into the valley and over the hills... Kings and poets from every corner of the earth gather, on an evening of the blessed month of fasting, in the house of a man whose tongue fasted from all but truth and whose heart fasted from all but purity. And Rihani points to the other slope, to Kesrouan, where the high domes stand among the church bells, and says: Here is the lair of stubborn Maronitism in Lebanon; here is Christianity in the lands of the Arabs, spreading its shadows over every slope and on every summit — in these crosses raised upon the high courses of stone, in the fragrance of incense rising from the depths of the houses on these clear Lebanese evenings. Here is Maronitism in Lebanon; here is Christianity, fearful and fearsome.

— Why, and of what, is this Christianity afraid, Amin?

— It is afraid of you, my lord — afraid of the unity that you yourselves fear... It wants to stay perched with the eagles in these high mountains, because to come down to the plain means, in this Christianity's reckoning, the destruction of the Christian flock. It fears unity — and it has the right to fear, for you yourselves fear this unity...

You fear it, my lord Abdulaziz, as a Hashemite unity; and my lord Faisal fears it as a Saudi one... and these Christians fear it as an Islamic one...

And this fear will destroy our country utterly; and so we remain a people without kings, and kings with crowns on their heads and no subjects.

— And what shall we do for these Christians, Amin, so that they will not be afraid?

— Widen your hearts, O sovereign lords; open your hearts and your houses to these Christians... They live in the memories of a dark and terrible past — so erase that past from their minds, until nothing remains for them but this bright day on which you open to them the gates of tolerance and kindness. Then they will enter — they will enter, and their fear will not enter with them; and on that day we shall live, for this homeland and for this sky, in the name of one great God.

Christian Europe — godless Europe, which denied Christ and sold His blood and His cross for less than thirty paltry pieces of silver — Europe has no door left to her in the lands of the Arabs but this one, through which she enters upon the fold with her fangs and her claws. So lock it — lock it in her face... Lock it with the keys of love and forbearance. Shut the mouths of those who call for an Islamic unity, and you shut the door on fanatical, hungry Europe, and you shut the door on the like of those in Lebanon who call for a Christian homeland...

We in Lebanon — those we have among us poison the air; we lie ever in wait for them. So do you lie in wait for those among you... you have many of them...

Win the hearts of the Christians with love, and open your hearts and your houses to the Christians, O masters. This is my last testament to you...

The bells of Lebanon answer one another down the slopes, in the bends of the valleys, and upon the hills...

The kings of the Arabs are at the sunset prayer, and Rihani at his own prayer... And the bells, in the dusk — their echo rolls among the hills of Kesrouan, and supplications rise to God upon the ringing and the yearning of those bells... All Lebanon, at that hour, was praying to its Lord that great Mecca might pray to the echo of these Lebanese bells, and that Lebanon might pray to Mecca's call to prayer... Amen, O Lord...