Chapter 3

YUSUF MEETS AMZI, THE MECCAN.

"Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, And resolute in heart."

--_Longfellow._

The next morning, Yusuf, against the remonstrances of Musa and his wife, prepared to proceed on his way. Like the Ancient Mariner, he felt forced to go on, "to pass like night from land to land," until he obtained that which he sought.

When he was almost ready to depart, a horseman came galloping down the valley, with the news that a caravan, en route for Mecca, was almost in sight, and would make a brief halt near the stream by which Musa's tents were pitched. Yusuf at once determined to avail himself of the timely protection on his journey.

Presently the caravan appeared, a long, irregular line--camels bearing "shugdufs," or covered litters; swift dromedaries, mounted by tawny Arabs whose long Indian shawls were twisted about their heads and fell in fringed ends upon their backs; fiery Arabian horses, ridden by Arabs swaying long spears or lances in their hands; heavily-laden pack-mules, whose leaders walked beside them, urging them on with sticks, and giving vent to shrill cries as they went; and lastly a line of pilgrims, some trudging along wearily, some riding miserable beasts, whose ribs shone through their roughened hides, while others rode, in the proud security of ease and affluence, in comfortable litters, or upon animals whose sleek and well-fed appearance comported with the self-satisfied air of their riders.

A halt was called, and immediately all was confusion. Tents were hurriedly thrown up; the pack-mules were unburdened for a moment; the horses, scenting the water, began to neigh and sniff the air; infants, who had been crammed into saddle-bags with their heads out, were hauled from their close quarters; the horsemen of Musa, still balancing their tufted spears, dashed in and out; while his herdsmen, anxious to keep the flocks from mixing with the caravan, shrieked and gesticulated, hurrying the flocks of sheep off in noisy confusion, and urging the herds of dromedaries on with their short, hooked sticks. It was indeed a babel, in which Yusuf had no part; and he once more seized the opportunity of looking at the precious parchment To his astonishment, he perceived that it was addressed to "Mohammed, son of Abdallah, son of Abdal Motalleb, Mecca," with the subscription, "From Sergius the Monk, Bosra."

Here then, Yusuf had, in perfect innocence, been entrapped into reading a communication addressed to some one else, and he smiled sarcastically as he thought of the inquisitiveness of the little Jew who had taken the liberty of "just peeping in."

It remained, now, for Yusuf to find the Jew and to put him again in possession of his charge. He searched for him through the motley crowd, but in vain; then, recollecting that the peddler's bundle had been left behind, he sought Musa, to see if he had heard anything of the little busybody.

Musa laughed heartily. "Remember you not that I said his trumpery would be gone in the morning? I was no false prophet. The man is like a weasel. When all sleep he finds his way in and helps himself to what he will: when all wake, no Jew is to be seen; trumpery and all have gone, no one knows whither."

So the priest found himself responsible for the delivery of the manuscript to this Mohammed, of whom he had never hitherto heard; and, knowing the contents, he was none the less ready to carry out the trust, hoping to find in Mohammed some one who could tell him more of the same wondrous story. He therefore placed the parchment very carefully within the folds of his garment, bade farewell to Musa and his household, and prepared to leave with the caravan, which had halted but a short time on account of the remarkable coolness of the day.

"Peace be with you!" said the Sheikh; "and if you ever need a friend, may it be Musa's lot to stand in good stead to you. I bid you good speed on your journey. We have no fears for your safety now, besides the safety of numbers, the holy month of Ramadhan[1] begins to-day, and even the wildest of the Bedouin robbers usually refrain from taking life in the holy months. Again, Peace be with you! And remember that the Bedouin can be a friend."

Yusuf embraced the chieftain with gratitude, and took his place in the train, which was already moving slowly down the wady.

As it often happens that in the most numerous concourse of people one feels most lonely, so it was now with Yusuf. There seemed none with whom he cared to speak. Most of the people were self-satisfied traders busied with the care of the merchandise which they were taking down to dispose of at the great fair carried on during the Ramadhan. A few were Arabs of the Hejaz, short and well-knit, wearing loose garments of blue, drawn back at the arms enough to show the muscles standing out like whip-cords. Some were smoking short chibouques, with stems of wood and bowls of soft steatite colored a yellowish red. As they rode they used no stirrups, but crossed their legs before and beneath the pommel of the saddle; while, as the sun shone more hotly, they bent their heads and drew their kufiyahs far over their brows. Many poor and somewhat fanatical pilgrims were interspersed among the crowd, and here and there a dervish, with his large, bag-sleeved robe of brown wool--the Zaabut, worn alike by dervish and peasant--held his way undisturbed.

Yusuf soon ceased to pay any attention to his surroundings, and sat, buried in his own thoughts, until a voice, pleasant and like the ripple of a brook, aroused him.

"What thoughts better than the thoughts of a Persian? None. Friend, think you not so?"

The words were spoken in the Persian dialect, and the priest looked up in surprise, to see a ruddy-faced man smiling down upon him from the back of a tall, white Syrian camel. He wore the jubbeh, or cloak, the badge of the learned in the Orient; his beard was turning slightly gray, and his eyes were keen and twinkling.

"One question mayhap demands another," returned Yusuf. "How knew you that I am a Persian? I no longer wear Persian garb."

"What! Ask an Arab such a question as that!" said the other, smiling. "Know you not, Persian, that we of the desert lands are accustomed to trace by a mark in the sand, the breaking of a camel-thorn, things as difficult? The stamp of one's country cannot be thrown off with one's clothes. Nay, more; you have been noted as one learned among the Persians."

Yusuf bent his head in assent. "Truly, stranger, your penetration is incomprehensible," he said, with a touch of sarcasm.

"No, no!" returned the other, good-humoredly; "but, marking you out for what you are, I thought your company might, perchance, lessen the dreariness of the way. I am Amzi, the Meccan. Some call me Amzi the rich Meccan; others, Amzi the learned; others, Amzi the benevolent. For myself, I pretend nothing, aspire to nothing but to know all that may be known, to live a life of ease, at peace with all men, and to help the needy or unfortunate where I may. More than one stranger has not been sorry for meeting Amzi the benevolent, in Mecca. Have you friends there?"

"None," said Yusuf. "Yet there is a tradition among our people that the Guebres at one time had temples even in the land of Arabia. Have you heard aught of it?"

"It is said that at one time fire-temples were scattered throughout this land, each being dedicated to the worship of a planet; that at Medina[2] itself was one dedicated to the worship of the moon and containing an image of it. It is also claimed that the fire-worshipers held Mecca, and there worshiped Saturn and the moon, from whence comes their name of the place--Mahgah, or moon's place. The Guebres also hold here that the Black Stone is an emblem of Saturn, left in the Caaba by the Persian Mahabad and his successors long ago. But, friend, Persian influence has long since ceased in El Hejaz. Methinks you will find but few traces of your country-people's glory there."

"It matters not," returned the priest. "The glory of the fire-worshipers has, so far as Yusuf is concerned, passed away. Know you not that before his eyes the sacred fire,[3] kept alive for well-nigh one thousand years, went out in the supreme temple ere he left it? May the great Omniscient Spirit grant that Persia's idolatries will die out in its ashes!"

"And think you that there is no idolatry in Mecca? Friend, believe me, not a house in Arabian Mecca which does not contain its idol! Not a man of influence who will start on an expedition without beseeching his family gods for blessing!"

"And do they not recognize a God over all?"

"They acknowledge Allah as the highest, the universal power,--yet he is virtually but a nominal deity, for they deem that none can enter into special relationship with him save through the mediation of the household gods. In his name the holiest oaths are sworn, nevertheless in true worship he has the last place. Indeed, it must be confessed that neither fear of Allah nor reverence of the gods has much influence over the mass of our people."

"What, then, is the meaning of this great pilgrimage, whose fame reached me even in Persia? Does not religious enthusiasm lead those poor wretches, hobbling along behind, to take such a journey?"

Amzi nodded his head slowly. "Religious incentives may move the few," he said. "But, friend, can you not see that barter is the leading object of the greater number--of those well-to-do pilgrims who are superintending the carriage of their baggage so complacently there? The holy months, particularly the Ramadhan, afford a period of comparative safety, a long truce that affords a convenient season for traffic. Alas, poor stranger! you will be sad to find that our city, in the time of the holy fast, becomes a place of buying and selling, of vice and robbery--a place where gain is all and God is almost unknown."

"But you, Amzi; what do you believe of such things?"

"In truth, I know not what to think. Believe in idols I cannot; worship in the Caaba I will not; so that my religion is but a belief in Allah, whom I fear to approach, and whose help and influence I know not how to obtain, a confidence in my own morality, and a consciousness of doing good works."

"Strange, strange!" said the priest, "that we have arrived at somewhat the same place by different ways! Amzi, let us be brothers in the quest! Let us rest neither night nor day until we have found the way to the Supreme God! Amzi, I want to feel him, to know him, as I am persuaded he may be known; yet, like you, I fear to approach him. Have you heard of Jesus?"

"A few among a band of coward Jews who live in the Jewish quarter of Mecca, believe in One whom they call Jesus. The majority of them do not accept him as divine; and among those who do, he seems to be little more than a name of some one who lived and died as did Abraham and Ishmael. His teaching, if, indeed, he taught aught, seems to have little effect upon their lives. They live no better than others, and, indeed, they are slurred upon by all true Meccans as cowardly dogs, perjurers and usurers."

Yusuf sighed deeply. It seemed as though he were following a flitting ignis-fatuus, that eluded him just as he came in sight of it.

The rest of the day was passed in comparative silence. The evening halt was called, and it was decided to spend the night in a grassy basin, traversed by the rocky bed of a mountain stream, a "fiumara," down which a feeble brooklet from recent mountain rains trickled. Owing to the security of the month Ramadhan, it was deemed that a night halt would be safe, and the whole caravan encamped on the spot.

As the shades of the rapidly-falling Eastern twilight drew on, Yusuf sat idly near the door of a tent, looking out listlessly, and listening to the chatter of the people about him.

Not far off a Jewish boy, a mere child, of one of the northern tribes, as shown by his fair hair and blue eyes, sang plaintively a song of the singing of birds and the humming of bees, of the flowers of the North, of rippling streams, of the miraged desert, of the waving of the tamarisk and the scent of roses.

Yusuf observed the child-like form and the effeminate paleness of the cherub face, and a feeling of protective pity throbbed in his bosom as he noted the slender smallness of the hand that glided over the one-stringed guitar, showing by its movements, even in the fading evening light, the blue veins that coursed beneath the transparent skin. He called the lad to his side, and bade him sing to him. Not till then did he notice the vacancy of the look which bespoke a slightly wandering mind. Yusuf's great heart filled with sympathy.

"Poor lad!" he said, "singing all alone! Where are your friends?"

"Dumah's friends?" said the child, wonderingly. "Poor Dumah has no friends now! He goes here and there, and people are kind to him--because Dumah sings, you know, and only angels sing. He tells them of flocks beside the pool, of lilies of Siloam, of birds in the air and angels in the heavens--then everyone is kind. Ah! the world is fair!" he continued, with a happy smile. "The breeze blows hot here, sometimes, but so cool over the sea; and the lilies blow in the vales of Galilee, and the waves ripple bright over the sea where he once walked."

"Who, child?"

"Jesus--don't you know?" with a wondering look. "He sat often by the Lake of Galilee where I have sat, and the night winds lifted his hair as they do mine, and he smiled and healed poor suffering and sinful people. Ah, he did indeed! Poor Dumah is talking sense now, good stranger; sometimes he does not--the thoughts come and go before he can catch them, and then people say, 'Poor little Dumah is demented.' But if Jesus were here now, Dumah would be healed. I dreamed one night I saw him, and he smiled, and looked upon me so sweetly and said, 'Dumah loves me! Dumah loves me!' and then I saw him no more. Friend, I know you love him, too. What is your name?"

"Yusuf."

"Then, Yusuf, you will be my friend?"

"I will be your friend, poor Dumah!"

"Oh, no, Dumah is not poor! He is happy. But his thoughts are going now. Ah, they throng! The visions come! The birds and the mists and the flowers are twining in a wreath, a wreath that stretches up to the clouds! Do you not see it?" and he started off again on his wild, plaintive song.

Yusuf's eyes filled with tears, and he drew the lad to his bosom, and looked out upon the grassy plot before the door, where a huge fire was now shedding a flickering and fantastic glare upon the wrinkled visages of the Arabs, and lighting up the scene with a weird effect only to be seen in the Orient.

Caldrons were boiling, and a savory odor penetrated the air. Men were talking in groups, and a little dervish was spinning around nimbly in a sort of dance. Yusuf looked at him for a moment. There seemed to be something familiar about his figure and movements, but in the darkness he could not be distinctly seen, and Yusuf soon forgot to pay any attention to him.

He drew the boy, who had now fallen asleep, close to him. What would he, Yusuf, not give to learn fully of that source from whence the few meagre crumbs picked up by this poor child were yet precious enough to give him, all wandering as he was at times, the assurance of a sympathetic God, and render him happy in the realization of his presence! What must be the joy of a full revelation of these blessed truths, if, indeed, truths they were!

The longing for such companionship filled Yusuf, as he lay there, with an intense desire. He could scarcely define, in truth he scarcely understood, exactly what he wanted. There was a lack in his life which no human agency had, as yet, been able to satisfy. His heart was "reaching out its arms" to know God--that was all; and he called it searching for Truth.

Far into the night the Persian pondered, his mind beating against the darkness of what was to him the great mystery; and he prayed for light. He thought of the Father, yet again he prayed to the spirits of the planets which were shining so brightly above him. But did not an echo of that prayer ascend to the throne of grace? Was not the eye of Him who notes even the sparrows when they fall, upon his poor, struggling child?

And the end was not yet.