Saïd the Fisherman quotes

Here, when the day’s work was done, he would squat in the shade, drawing leisurely at his narghileh, with the sound of bubbling water to cool him at every puff.

He was not a great fisherman, such as is to be found in Europe, with a sailing-boat of his own, who will go far out to sea with his nets.

If there were any such in all the coasts of Arabistan, Saïd had never heard of them.

A number of dogs were lying replete about the body of a dead donkey at the edge of the ripples, panting drowsily with their tongues out. They blinked at him as he passed, and their bellies heaved uneasily.

They were too full to snarl.

A sense of well-being was upon him. He stopped to draw forth a little bag from the girdle of his robe. It contained the gains of the day.

Night fell: the stars shone out, blackening the bulk of the dead ass, a few paces distant, which the dogs, reinforced by stray comrades from the city, were beginning to worry anew.

The ripples, breaking in luminous foam upon the beach, murmured sadly in his ears.

Hunger began to get hold of him. Hasneh would be wondering what had happened, and that savoury mess of lentils and oil would be baked to a cinder. Why should he not go home, eat and drink, and return to his search later on?

“To Damashc-ush-Shâm,” replied Saïd, and hesitated. He dared not tell the true reason of his leaving home, lest he should forfeit the esteem of his hearers.

A man who bewails his misfortunes before strangers is a fool and rightly despised; but he who exalts himself is sure of honour.

He added—

Cursing bitterly, he caught up a big stone and hurled it at Saïd, who dodged it narrowly and, without waiting for further provocation, rushed on his assailant and closed with him. Hasneh shrieked loudly for help, wakening vain echoes.

The camel, nose in air, chewed the cud placidly, as a wise man smokes his pipe, with a downward, supercilious glance at the fighters.

Victory did not hang long in the balance. Saïd was a tall man, lean and wiry, while his opponent was short and hampered with fat. The fisherman forced him backward until he tripped on a boulder and fell.

The linen bag nestled lovingly to his chest, seeming to recognise a worthier owner.

All to gain, nothing to lose.

…

His hesitation, and the misgiving which showed a little through his brave mask, had taken something from his prestige with the onlookers. They closed in upon him, clamouring for justice.

It was a lonely place; in all the darkness there was no friend.

He began to be afraid.

White domes and minarets, mosques and palaces, loomed wanly in the heart of a vast grove, which stretched, far as the eye could ascertain, to eastward towards a smooth horizon which was the desert.

Gathering shades spread a thin veil over all the plain, like the bloom on a purple grape.

An amethyst flush suffused the eastern sky—a spirit flush, soft, yet living, wherein starlight and daylight seemed mingled.

Twenty piastres will buy thee a plausible fellow who will swear to aught that pleases thee. The Qadi will count the witnesses on either side, and will give judgment for the greater number—if he have not sold his verdict beforehand, which is most likely.

Bakshìsh is lord of all.

A wise man does not fall out with the rich. It is the same all the world over. They tell of countries where justice is for rich and poor alike; but that is all a lie!”

Thou art rash, young man, to quarrel with one so powerful as the tithe-farmer. Thou hast wealth, it may be, but be sure he is richer than thee. Also he has the ear of the rulers, who profit by his exactions.

The Mehkemeh is not a house of justice as thou thinkest, but an open market where judgment goes to the heaviest purse.

Thou comest from afar; but I am of the city and speak from knowledge. Tomorrow, when thou goest to the court, thou wilt be beset at the gate by a crowd of rascals whose trade is to bear witness for money.

Through the archway he could see a flock of them strutting and pecking on the mosaic pavement of a cloistered court.

Their cooing brought the inner stillness to him in spite of the noisy crowd, like a voice in a bubble of silence.

He rode on, rejoicing in the fierce sunlight and the peaceful shadows, in all the busy throng around him.

Writhing in his anguish, he called upon Allah Most High to avenge his cause, to slay the robber and destroy that house of sin with all who dwelt there.

The voice of his rage and grief rent the calm of that peaceful garden as a cry from Hell piercing the heart of Paradise.

Selìm, the resigned, rolled a cigarette and looked rueful as he squatted in the pleasant shade.

“Hush, my friend!” interrupted his stately neighbour in a low tone of rebuke. “Thy speech is not of wisdom.

The idle words of one in authority are like sparks blown on a wind.

They may die harmless on the ground; but they have power to set a whole town in a blaze. It behoves thee, therefore, to be careful.

so I cursed him and let him go. If thou wilt thou mayst replace him as my partner. Mark well, I do not require thee to beg. Allah be my witness—no! It is for other business that I need thy strength and youth.”

He sank his voice to a whisper, which seemed a snake’s hiss in the darkness.

A lantern, borne swiftly past the grey mouth of the passage, illumined his face for a moment and showed it distorted with passion.

“Does a man change his mind with each moon? A little while since, when the chance of war seemed remote, thou wast a lion, exhorting us to battle with brave words. But now, on the eve of the tumult thy heart grows faint.

In the beginning, when there is but a spark, it is easy to fan it or blow it out, whichever one please; but afterward, when it is become a great fire all the breath of a man avails not to extinguish it.

Courage, O Excellency! It is a creditable thing to be chief among men. Be sure I will give thee all honour, and praise thee as my leader in this business!”

Secure of protection, they took pleasure in taunting the prisoners, cursing them for sons of dogs and mocking them with proffers of water when they seemed weary. The pent-up venom of centuries was on their tongues.

The poor earthworm hissed like a snake.

A number of the faithful had flocked into the quarter, drawn chiefly by the frantic outcry of the old beggar. They failed at first to grasp the position. The valorous attitude of the Christians only shocked and bewildered them.

“Ha, ha! He was fat and lay on a soft bed, whereas I am lean and used to sleep on the earth. Yet I slew him! … See the stains on my left hand—O hand of honour, O blessed hand! …

The fat who dwell in palaces must reckon with the lean beggar at their gates.

I would, O Nûr, thou hadst seen him in the death-throe. He looked so funny that all men laughed. Ha, ha, ha! … Thanks be to Allah! The reproach is taken away from my father’s house. Allah is gracious!”

Nevertheless, he still heard the roar of the tumult through a tremulous veil, as it were, of nearer sounds—the droning plaint of the singer, the bark of a dog, chirping of birds, croaking of frogs, the murmur of the stream and the rustle of leaves.

It was the same roar that he had heard on awaking, only fainter and with a note of satiety.

He wondered what the drum was that had been beating all day, and was beating yet somewhere in the city.

He was a fine man, I tell thee—straight as a Bedawi’s lance, strong and healthy even as thou art.

As the breath of winter tears leaves from a mulberry-tree, so does the length of years strip the beauty and the majesty from a man.

At last the tree falls and only the bitter wind remains. … Allah is greatest!”

Behold, am I not thy thing, to take up or to cast aside? If I likened thee by chance to a poor fellah, who had but one camel, Allah be my witness, it was because I knew no other story to meet thy case.

Fables ever deal in extremes; I meant thee no insult, as thou knowest well.

I did but give thee the best advice that I had out of the little store of wisdom which is mine. O Saïd—O my dear!

To aspire to possess that fine house was the last presumption in one of his mean quality. As for the notion of supplanting, or in any sense replacing, his Excellency, it was far from his mind.

Can the fox claim fellowship with the lion?

And yet it is no sin if the fox come to dwell in the lion’s den, after the noble beast has forsaken it, needing change;

They name her Mother of Wind and jeer at her for no reason. It is no wonder, I say, if she try in her turn to hurt them a little, for to my knowledge they use her very ill.

No one should laugh at a camel for his crookedness, nor at a woman because she is childless.

These are as Allah Most High was pleased to make them; it is no fault of their own if they are not otherwise.”

What thanks can I render thee, O my soul? Behold, my inmost secret heart is thine, and I have no desire apart from thee. Take me in thy arms, O sun that warms me! Kiss me, O my beloved!” …

Whereat Saïd became as one of no understanding.

Down the narrow road, between stone walls more or less ruined, which led to the pleasure-groves by the riverside, men in flowing robes were sauntering by groups of two and three.

Their moving shadows were long, oblique and very blue.

Most of them dangled chaplets, whose beads they shifted lazily one by one. A few of the more exquisite held flowers of strong perfume to their nostrils, at which they smelt rapturously with a deep breath like a sigh.

The blaze on the hilltops died suddenly, leaving a glow as of live coal. All things took on soft, dead tints. Shadows grew faint, ashy grey all at once.

The sky basked in an afterthought of glory, growing tender for the stars.

A low doorway of the kind which is usual in walled vineyards admitted to the garden, or rather wilderness, in which was the tavern of Rashìd. Saïd bowed his head to pass the lintel, and then stood still in astonishment.

Thy heart and thy soul are in it. At that time evil befalls a man when most he vaunts his honour and is puffed up because of it. It is not right for one to keep too close an account of his goods.

A man’s fortune is like his vineyard: the heart of it is his own, but every wayfarer has a share in the outlying parts which skirt the highway.

Who would deny a bunch of grapes to the thirsty? And if he pluck for himself, would any be found to blame him? So the heart of thy fortune is thine by Allah’s leave;

A single dome of the city, seen through a gap of the foliage, seemed to shine beyond the dark walls with a spiritual whiteness all its own.

The moon, a thin crescent like the paring of a fingernail, hung just above it, salient as a jewel on that silky sky.

A bird cried drowsily from the upper branches. The wailing voice of a singer came from some other pleasure-house down the stream. The eddies sang and murmured as they sped by.

Seen thus from above, it had no life save that which the glow from some high lattice hinted, or a group of black forms motionless upon some terraced roof.

The half-circle of the hills closed the distance, as it were the dark rim of a cup filled to the brim with moonlight.

Saïd’s eyes strayed from the precision of the near buildings to the floating mystery beyond. He was dreaming a fair dream, and the realism of keen outlines hurt his eyes. He sat there in the hollow of the night, and its silence talked with him;

She knelt close to him upon the ground, her bosom strained to his chest so that he felt its warmth. Her head was thrown somewhat back, that her eyes might look into his.

The poise of her head, with the trail of her body along the ground, suggested a snake in act to strike its prey.

He clasped her to him. “Allah is great!” he muttered; more as a convenient explosive than for any bearing the words had upon the case. He marvelled vaguely at the change which had taken place in her during the last few weeks.

“Praise be to Allah!” said Abdullah, feelingly. “I rejoice with thee”; and upon that he wished Saïd a happy night and withdrew, saying that he must hie to bed, as he was to start betimes on the morrow on his journey home.

So these two, so long asunder, met once more on friendly terms and lied freely one to the other, neither doubting his fellow’s words.

Saïd slept ill that night. Divers projects turned in his brain, distracting him. Every forward course seemed grievous, fraught with danger.

The wind abated and the sea calmed.

The sun, a mere ghost, looked down through worn places of the cloud-rack, like a pale face pressed to a rain-smeared pane.

A long, wavy line of cliffs, dirty-white, blurred and indistinct in a perpetual mist, was pointed out to him as the land of the English. He saw it vaguely as one sees whose sight is dim with tears.

He felt quite helpless, imprisoned, cut off from everywhere yet within sound of a multitude. Yellow light streamed from every aperture of the building before him, making shapes of men fiendish as they moved in black outline across it.

The lapping of the ripples against the piles, which is the same song all the world over, sounded more friendly than the voices of his kind speaking sternly and abruptly in a foreign tongue.

Worst of all, no one heeded him. A chance look, a grin, a shrug of the shoulders, and he was passed by, dismissed from the minds of those busy workers. There was something very sinister in such absorption.