Story of the Month: Sheikh Ajjaj

On August 13, 1799, Admiral "Dewey" with his American fleet smashed the fleet of Spain in a naval battle off the shores of the city of "Manila," and planted the American flag where he had torn up the Spanish one.

And on August 13, 1939, the city of Manila was dressed in carnival garb, celebrating the day of Admiral "Dewey's" victory; and there entered "Manila," by way of its harbor, a personage strutting and swaggering — you would have taken him for Admiral "Dewey" reincarnated, come to witness the feast held in his honor and to remember that conquest which the world had recorded for him in its history.

Had anyone shaken from the soul of Sheikh "Ajjaj Jadallah" its secrets, he would have discovered that Sheikh Ajjaj, strutting and swaggering on the pier of "Manila's" harbor, reckoned himself of higher station than Admiral "Dewey." And how not, when he was one of the Jadallah sheikhs, chieftains of the Lebanese village of "Sahtouf" — among them Sheikh Farhoud al-Abbas Jadallah, who strangled the leopard with his two hands; and Sheikh Hassoun Asaad Jadallah, who defeated Napoleon's army at Acre; and the horseman Sheikh Hawwash Jadallah, whose mare was tormented by thirst when water failed him, so he opened the vein of his forearm and gave her his blood to drink; and Sheikh Jadallah Jadallah, to whom a Beiruti came wishing to buy a piece of his lands to build a "hotel" upon, and Sheikh Jadallah Jadallah shouted at him that all the money of Beirut could not buy one hair from the tail of the cow of the Jadallah sheikhs — that cow which had died the year before — and that he could uproot Beirut with one puff, grind it with one blow, and scatter it with one spit; and curses on the religion of money, which had dragged the khawajas of Beirut into the insolence of trying to buy the properties of the sheikhs of Lebanon.

Our Sheikh Ajjaj had not come to "Manila" as a tourist nor as a conqueror. He had forsaken Lebanon when the world changed and the sons of the "common folk" grew rich, and the sheikhs' due of respect declined. The time came to pay off the mortgage on his properties, so he left Lebanon for Australia, where most of the sons of the Arabs were Beirutis who set no store by sheikhs and knew nothing of the glorious history of the Jadallah clan. Their mockery of him galled Sheikh Ajjaj, and poverty wore him down, so he boarded a steamer bound he knew not where; and when she dropped anchor at "Manila" the captain came and said, your ticket carries you as far as this city — and with your leave, "Your Majesty." Yes indeed, the passengers of that steamer had dubbed him "His Majesty," for Sheikh Ajjaj, in his gait, his talk, and his bearing, was as though he were still Sheikh Ajjaj Jadallah addressing the common folk in the village of "Sahtouf."

He shouldered his bundle of clothes and came down from the ship, and one of them called out mockingly, "Won't you have porters to carry your luggage?" As for the "taxi" drivers, they knew from his shabby clothes that he was one of the "capitalists of the wasteland," a title they bestow in the Far East on penniless whites who feed on the leavings from the tables of the anchored steamers.

And Ajjaj walked along, gazing at the finery, and at the name "Dewey" gleaming everywhere. "Who is this Admiral Dewey?" the Sheikh wondered. Perhaps one of the lucky "commoners" of the Americans. His luck was good, if he had a fleet and sailors behind him. Give the Jadallah sheikhs a fleet and sailors, and the world would see what cities they conquer. But Sheikh Ajjaj's imaginings were cut short by a hunger that began to gnaw at him, and his appetite was whetted by the sight of the restaurants crowded with food and diners. He went roaming through the city, most of it shut, until he slipped into the great street where the lights and the big stores were, and he began to feast his eyes upon the curios and the goods, until his gaze came to rest at a magnificent store with open doors. He said to himself that the shops of this city, measured against this magnificent store, were like the commoners of "Sahtouf" beside the Jadallah sheikhs. The comparison pleased him, and he walked toward the store, his steps hurried by a strange instinct which he understood when he lifted his eyes to the signboard and read "Hasib Nabhan." Could he be of the Nabhan house, the "Sahhafa"?! He peered into the store, and the sight overawed him — silks, jewels, mirrors, and treasures like those of the Thousand and One Nights, and employees in such pomp they might have been a king's retinue. But nothing daunts the Sheikh: he recovered his composure after the astonishment of the surprise and entered the store, and set his feet upon that colored tiling — whereupon a human hyena fell on him and shouted at him, meaning to drive him out, saying that the owner of the establishment was not there. That is the phrase with which they drive off white beggars. The Sheikh froze where he stood, his wits flew from him, and he knew not what to do; but a voice like a trumpet boomed from within the establishment, rebuking the servant in Spanish. Sheikh Ajjaj looked toward the source of the voice — and there was a bald pate

rising upward, followed by two eyes like automobile headlamps; then appeared a pair of mustaches like a watchman's staff, and a mouth opened upon Arabic speech: "Might you be a son of the Arabs, my boy?" And the words came in a Lebanese accent bearing the stamp of "Sahtouf." Confidence flooded back over Sheikh Ajjaj's soul, and he stood fast in his place — nay, he drew himself up loftily and cried out, as though proclaiming "We, King of England and Emperor of India," and said, "I am Sheikh Ajjaj Jadallah." As for the owner of the bald pate — Hasib Nabhan — he was dumbfounded, and struck his wrinkled forehead with his palm, as though he had touched an unseen electric button, and a lamp shone forth, lighting the darkness of a distant past; for the years leaped backward, and there he was, a boy in the village of "Sahtouf," his father the watchman of the village; and there he was one day, playing in the "Square of the Sheikhs" — the Jadallah sheikhs — when Sheikh Abbas Jadallah pounces on him with the cry, "Don't you know that the sons of the common folk do not play in the squares of the sheikhs?" And Sheikh Abbas takes up a stone and hurls it at him, and it strikes the brow of Hasib Nabhan. And Hasib ran his hand once more over the wrinkles of his forehead, and there among them was a valley — the scar of the wound from Sheikh Abbas's stone, wherein the unseen electric button had lain hidden. And here was the son of Sheikh Abbas being thrown out of Hasib Nabhan's store; and here was Hasib Nabhan in a store like a Jew's dream — goods, and sales, and customers; and here were forty years gone by over the wounded boy. The world spun with Hasib, and feelings mingled within him — vanity at the success that had come to him, pity for a pauper, respect for a sheikhdom he had been reared to revere, chivalry toward a stricken sheikh, and a longing for the homeland whose memory the years had all but effaced. His head swam, and he did not come to himself until he heard the Sheikh clearing his throat, still standing erect in his place. Then Hasib sprang to his collar and put it on, ringed his neck with a necktie, took his jacket from the wall and thrust into its sleeves two arms as thick as a pair of bridge-beams, bent down over his shoes and laced them tight, and advanced with all humility toward Sheikh Ajjaj and bowed in greeting: "How fares your honor, our master Sheikh Ajjaj?" What music those words were in the ears of the wandering Sheikh! God bless this city, where they know men's titles and men's stations; and God curse Australia, where they do not know the ranks of men. And Sheikh

Ajjaj took his time in answering, saying: "You are of the Nabhan house? The Nabhan house in Sahtouf belong to us."
— The house of Nabhan are your protégés, our master the Sheikh.
Do us the honor of stepping inside, Sheikh Ajjaj.

And the Sheikh cast his gaze around the establishment and discovered something that had not shown from outside: that the store had four floors, and that the building which housed it bore the name "Hasib Nabhan" — it was his property. Silence settled over the two of them until the Sheikh opened his mouth and graced the store's owner with this question: "Your father was the watchman of our properties?"
— Aye, he was the watchman of your honor's properties, our master the Sheikh.

Hasib might be gracious in his talk, and bow to sheikhly rank; but that unlettered, self-made man, the watchman's son, who had come to Manila with nothing in his pocket but his passport, and who now owned the biggest store and spread his name across several buildings, was no simpleton. He had talked with his sheikh but a few minutes before he knew the truth of Sheikh Ajjaj's condition, and to what poverty and misery he had come. So Hasib circled his guest in a verbal maneuver and brought him to condescend so far as to ask the watchman's son about the state of trade; whereupon the latter hastened to complain and grumble of the stagnation of business, the standstill of work, and the fierceness of competition. The Sheikh took alarm, supposing his interlocutor had begun preparing excuses against coming to his aid; but he recovered his calm on hearing Hasib beg him to buy something from the store, to be entered against him "on account." And the merchant walked that "customer" — the Sheikh — about, and "sold" him a few suits and shirts and shoes and handkerchiefs and socks, and called to the clerk to open an account in the name of Sheikh Ajjaj Jadallah, and to charge against it the price of all he had bought. And he thanked the Sheikh for that windfall, for but for it, the merchant Hasib Nabhan's day would have been a slack day indeed. Then the talk wandered on, and Hasib gently gave his sheikh to understand that, what with the stagnation of business and the difficulty of putting money to work, cash had piled up in his hands, and the bank would pay him no more than two percent interest on his money; and that the Sheikh would be doing Hasib a kindness if he borrowed from him a few hundred riyals at better interest than 2 percent. Sheikh Ajjaj bowed his head in thought and said, very well — bring five hundred dollars and make out a promissory note for one year, at nine percent interest. Hasib feigned delight, sprang to his cashbox and drew from it the sum named, and paid it over to the Sheikh,

thanking him for the help in the investing of his money, and reminding him that the Jadallah sheikhs had always shown favor to their protégés, the house of Nabhan. No wonder, then, if Sheikh Ajjaj condescended and obliged his protégé, the son of Nabhan, by buying from him and borrowing!

The hour of closing came, and they shut up the store, and the employees came out of it by the dozens, and Hasib's automobile arrived. The chauffeur opened its door, and Hasib motioned to the Sheikh — "If your honor will do us the honor" — and the Sheikh got in and sat on the right. The car carried them about, Hasib pointing out to his companion the city's hotels, then saying: "It is not fitting that your honor should put up at a hotel frequented by any stranger whatever. My house, for all its lowliness, is better for lodging your honor than any hotel." The tour ended, and the car stopped before the house of the watchman's son — and behold, it was a palace ringed round with gardens, with stables of horses, and automobiles, and artificial lakes, and every appearance of wealth and luxury. And behold, the garden that surrounded it was vaster than all the lands of the village of "Sahtouf." But of all this the Sheikh saw nothing. For all he knew of the world was that he was a "sheikh," and that the son of the common folk might grow rich, might get learning, might conquer and might triumph — but God had created him of the common folk, a follower to the son of sheikhs. Whose eyes, then, should these gardens and stores and servants dazzle? So did life pass for Sheikh Ajjaj and his host: when the Sheikh lacked money, he "borrowed" from Hasib; and when he needed clothes and necessities, he "bought" from the store.

In "Manila" there were some hundred of the "sons of the Arabs," all of whom came to Hasib Nabhan and had need of him; and having seen him honor Sheikh Ajjaj with sincerity and affection, they showed Ajjaj respect and treated him as a sheikh. Among themselves, however, they wondered whether there were not in the brain of that "Sheikh" a touch of madness, since a hollow, imagined grandeur had carried him to the lands of exile; and had it not been for their respect for Hasib, they would have wondered too whether this man were not madder than the "Sheikh," since he kept fixing in the simpleton Ajjaj's brain the belief in that fantastic grandeur.

★

As for Hasib Nabhan, in all his long years of exile nothing lovelier had come his way than the hospitality of Sheikh

Ajjaj: he lived in a new world of memories, tossed by contradictory currents of feeling which he could not grasp — except that, taken all together, they left in his soul an emotional intoxication he did not understand.

*

That year the government of the Philippine Islands held in the capital — Manila — an international lottery, dedicating half its proceeds to the charitable societies, and set the first prize at a quarter of a million dollars. People rushed to buy, out of greed for the winnings and sympathy for the charitable societies; and those societies took to besieging the merchants with an army of sellers to dispose of the lottery tickets. Naturally a shower of lottery tickets poured down upon Hasib Nabhan from his customers and friends; and Hasib was liberal in buying and generous in giving — he bought these tickets and distributed them free among his friends. And one day he approached his guest and said, "Be so kind as to accept this ticket as a gift, Sheikh Ajjaj." The latter examined that blue ticket and read: "First prize, $250,000. Number 712537." He added up these figures, and they came to — 25. Yes indeed: in the stable of his grandfather Sheikh Farhoud there had been 25 thoroughbred mares. He took that coincidence as a good omen. "This number will win," he told himself, then murmured, "Thank you, Hasib." And he went out into the street and bought ten numbers, paying their price out of a pregnant wallet — for he had "borrowed" a sum that very morning. And he came back to Hasib and handed him the ten tickets, saying to himself: "Thus do I teach the common folk the generosity of the sheikhs."

*

The day of the drawing came, and the thousands crowded into the horse-racing grounds, hopes leaping in their breasts and shouts breaking from their throats. And among those thousands was one calm personage, as though he were at a wedding among the commoners of "Sahtouf," presiding over the gathering and waiting for the coffee and sweets to be brought him. The horses ran, and the panel of judges came, and they took their stand before a steel drum containing hundreds of thousands of balls with the numbers printed on them. A nurse stepped up to the drum and pressed an electric button; the drum turned, and a ball came out of it, which the judges examined. The crowds fell silent, in awe, and a judge stood before the microphone and read out the winning number, 712537, and a banner was raised bearing the winning number — 712537. And Sheikh Ajjaj fished the blue ticket from his pocket, rubbed his eyes, and read 712537 — two hundred and fifty

thousand dollars. A palace in "Sahtouf" and a palace in Beirut — servants and retainers and horses, and a deputy's seat in the council of Beirut. Emirs would call upon him, and the mountain folk would receive him with huda chants and cavasses. Strange, how wealth could descend upon Sheikh Ajjaj Jadallah and his heart not flutter, his face not redden, his voice not tremble. Then suddenly his eyes flashed, and a strange light shone from them.

"The Jadallah sheikhs," the Sheikh thought, "built their glory on the sword, and generosity, and valor, and deeds of chivalry. Shall I soil their name with money come by way of the lottery, from a ticket given by a son of the common folk?! Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars?! Hah!! What is this paltry sum? Our watchman's son has more than that. The shame of the lottery would ride us forever. People would leave off extolling the memory of the Jadallah sheikhs, and would nickname us the 'House of Bou Lottery,' as they nicknamed the sheikhs of 'Abu Radi' the house of 'Abu Matches.'" And Sheikh Ajjaj's gaze wandered, and his body shook, and blood ran from his nose and stained his lips. And he stood up on his chair, like one mounting a pulpit, and cried out to the people, orating in Arabic: "O people! My grandfather strangled the leopard with his two palms! My grandfather defeated Napoleon! My grandfather gave his mare his own blood to drink! My grandfather drowned Beirut with one spit! And here I am, tearing up the winning ticket — bear witness, O people of God, to the pride of the Jadallah sheikhs!" And he took the winning ticket and tore it up and flung away its pieces and came down from his chair. As for the people, they too were in hysterics, for the judges were announcing the winning numbers — the second prize, one hundred thousand dollars; the third... — and the crowds were in uproar and clamor; and who will listen to Arabic orations in a crowd that knows no Arabic? Sheikh Ajjaj had expected the crowd to carry him on their shoulders and hail him with huda chants — "O our Sheikh! O Sheikh Ajjaj!" And when he saw that no one paid him any heed, he fumed, and went off to the house of Hasib Nabhan — the man who knew the station of men and their worth.

He entered Hasib's palace like a whirlwind. The latter was in the kitchen, giving the cook a lesson in the science of preparing a dish of "hummus with tahini." The Sheikh burst in on him and cried, "Do you remember the lottery ticket you presented to me?" Hasib answered, "You were kind enough to take ten off me, our Sheikh." He said, "That is not what I mean. Do you remember that its number was 712537?" Hasib answered, "Perhaps. But I do not remember the number — hundreds of them passed through my hands." Sheikh Ajjaj shouted, "No matter, if you do not remember the numbers. Know that it won — and that I tore up the ticket!" And he mounted a chair in the kitchen and orated: "The glories of the Jadallah sheikhs are not to be built on lotteries. Do you understand? Let the common folk and the rabble rejoice over money flung in their faces. As for us, it is by the sword and by valor that we build. Do you understand?"

As for Hasib, his whole concern at that hour was to learn the cookery of a dish of hummus with tahini. So he kept still — but he became certain then that Sheikh Ajjaj was genuinely mad; and naturally he did not believe the story of the tearing up of the lottery ticket.

*

Five months passed, and no one came forward with the winning lottery ticket to collect the prize from the government. And the law provided that the prize should revert to the government's treasury if the holder of the winning ticket did not appear within six months. Toward the end the rumors multiplied, as hundreds claimed the ticket had been in their possession and been lost, and brought witnesses and proofs; and other people forged winning tickets, but the government's experts found them out. And on the last day of the six months a clever journalist came out to his readers with eight columns telling them that a great man of wealth had confided to him that the winning number was in his possession; that he did not think it seemly to keep that small fortune for himself, he being the owner of a great fortune; that he preferred that his affair remain concealed and that people know him by the name of "the Unknown Benefactor"; and that he begged the government to build a hospital with the sum. The journalist went further, and proposed that the hospital be for the insane; for he alleged that anyone who refuses a fortune of $250,000, be he rich or poor, is a madman beyond all doubt.

*

And the government took over the sum and raised a hospital which it called "the Hospital of the Unknown Benefactor," setting it apart for the sufferers of mental diseases — madmen, crackbrains, and imbeciles.

*

As for Hasib Nabhan, he is to this very day the owner of the great commercial house; and every Sunday he takes up gifts of food and tobacco and goes to "the Hospital of the Unknown Benefactor" and asks to see Number 713. He enters the room and says, "Good morning, our master Sheikh Ajjaj," and the latter replies: "Welcome, son of the watchman! Do people know that my grandfather defeated the armies of Napoleon at Acre, that my grandfather gave his mare his own blood to drink, that my grandfather drowned Beirut with one spit, and that I flung $250,000 in their faces?!"

— They know, our master the Sheikh.

— And what did they do with the money?

— They built a hospital and named it after you. And Hasib pointed his finger at the plaque on the door-post, and he read: "Hospital of the Unknown Benefactor — Sheikh Ajjaj Jadallah. Number 713." And Sheikh Ajjaj smiles with pride and asks the meaning of 713?

— The number of your protégés, our master Sheikh Ajjaj. And the Sheikh laughs, and chortles. And a bell rings, and a voice cries out: "Visitors outside! Visiting time is over." And Hasib Nabhan bows and says with respect, I shall return next Sunday to have the honor of inquiring after your honor's well-being, our master the Sheikh.

From the book "A Toast to the Enemy"