The same night, after dinner, I walked out of Mena House to look for
Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr, the dragoman with whom I had contracted for a
journey, by camel, to Sakhâra on the following day. He had promised to
attend at half-past eight in order to arrange the time of starting in
the morning, together with some other details.
I failed to find him, however, among the dragomans and other natives
seated outside the hotel, and to kill time I strolled leisurely down the
road toward the electric-tram terminus. I had taken no more than ten
paces, I suppose, when a tall native, muffled to the tip of his nose in
white and wearing a white turban, appeared out of the darkness beside
me, thrust a small package into my hand, and, touching his brow, his
lips and his breast with both hands, bowed and departed. I saw him no
more!
Standing there in the road, I stared at the little package stupidly. It
consisted of a piece of fine white silk fastened about some small, hard
object. Evidently, I thought, there had been a mistake. The package
could not have been intended for me.
Returning to the hotel, I stood near a lamp and unfastened the silk,
which was delicately perfumed. It contained a piece of lapis-lazuli
carved in the form of a heart, beautifully mounted in gold and bearing
three Arabic letters, inlaid in some way, also in gold!
At this singular ornament I stared harder than ever. Certainly the
muffled native had made a strange mistake. This was a love-token--and
emphatically not for _me_!
I was standing there lost in wonderment, the heart of lapis-lazuli in my
palm, when the voice of Hassan disturbed my stupor.
"Ah, my gentleman, I am sorry to be late but----"
The voice ceased. I looked up.
"Well?" I said.
Then I, too, said no more. Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr was glaring at the
ornament in my hand as though I had held, not a very choice example of
native jewellery, but an adder or a scorpion!
"What's the matter?" I asked, recovering from my surprise. "Do you know
to whom this amulet belongs?"
He muttered something in guttural Arabic ere replying to my question.
Then:
"It is the heart of lapis," he said, in a strange voice. "It is the
heart of lapis!"
"So much is evident," I cried, laughing. "But does it alarm you?"
"Please," he said softly, and held out a brown hand--"I will see."
I placed the thing in his open palm and he gazed at it as one might
imagine an orchid hunter would gaze at a new species of _Odontoglossum_.
"What do the figures mean?" I asked.
"They form the word _alf_," he replied.
"_Alf?_ Somebody's name!" I said, still laughing.
"In Arab it mean ten hundred," he whispered.
"A thousand?"
"Yes--one thousand."
"Well?"
Hassan returned the ornament to me, and his expression was so strange
that I began to grow really annoyed. He was looking at me with a
mingling of envy and compassion which I found to be quite insufferable.
"Hassan," I said sternly, "you will tell me all you know about this
matter. One would imagine that you suspected me of stealing the thing!"
"Ah, no, my gentleman!" he protested earnestly. "But I will tell you,
yes, only you will not believe me."
"Never mind. Tell me."
Thereupon Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr told me the most improbable story to which
I had ever listened. Since to reproduce it in his imperfect English,
with my own frequent interjections, would be tedious, I will give it in
brief. Some of the historical details, imperfectly related by Hassan as
I learned later, I have corrected.
In the reign of the Khalîf El-Mamûn--a son of Hárûn er-Rashîd and
brother of the prototype of Beckford's _Vathek_--one Shâwar was Governor
of Egypt, and the daughter of the Governor, Scheherazade, was famed
throughout the domains of the Khalîf as the most beautiful maiden in the
land. Wazîrs and princes sought her hand in vain. Her heart was given
to a handsome young merchant of Cairo, Ahmad er-Mâdi, who was also the
wealthiest man in the city. Shâwar, although an indulgent father, would
not hear of such a union, however, but he hesitated to destroy his
daughter's happiness by forcing her into an unwelcome marriage. Finally,
passion conquered reason in the breasts of the lovers and they fled,
Scheherazade escaping from the palace of her father by means of a
rope-ladder smuggled into the _harêm_ apartments by a slave whom Ahmad's
gold had tempted, and meeting Ahmad outside the gardens where he waited
with a fleet horse.
Even the guard at the city gate had been bought by the wealthy merchant,
and the pair succeeded in escaping from Cairo.
The extensive possessions of Ahmad were confiscated by the enraged
father and a sentence of death was passed upon the absent man--to be
instantly put into execution in the event of his arrest anywhere within
the domain of the Khalîf.
Exiled in a distant oasis, the Sheikh of which was bound to Ahmad by
ties of ancient friendship, the prospect which had seemed so alluring to
Scheherazade became clouded. Recognising this change in her attitude,
Ahmad er-Mâdi racked his brains for some scheme whereby he might recover
his lost wealth and surround his beautiful wife with the luxury to
which she had been accustomed. In this extremity he had recourse to a
certain recluse who resided in a solitary spot in the desert far from
the haunts of men and who was widely credited with magical powers.
It was a whole week's journey to the abode of the wizard, and, unknown
to Ahmad, during his absence a son of the Khalîf, visiting Egypt,
chanced to lose his way on a hunting expedition, and came upon the
secret oasis in which Scheherazade was hiding. This prince had been one
of her most persistent suitors.
The ancient magician consented to receive Ahmad, and the first boon
which the enamoured young man craved of him was that he might grant him
a sight of Scheherazade. The student of dark arts consented. Bidding
Ahmad to look into a mirror, he burned the secret perfumes and uttered
the prescribed incantation. At first mistily, and then quite clearly,
Ahmad saw Scheherazade, standing in the moonlight beneath a tall palm
tree--her lips raised to those of her former suitor!
At that the world grew black before the eyes of Ahmad. And he, who had
come a long and arduous journey at the behest of love, now experienced
an equally passionate hatred. Acquainting the magician with what he had
seen, he demanded that he should exercise his art in visiting upon the
false Scheherazade the most terrible curse that it lay within his power
to invoke!
The learned man refused; whereupon Ahmad, insane with sorrow and anger,
drew his sword and gave the magician choice of compliance or instant
death. The threat sufficed. The wizard performed a ghastly conjuration,
calling down upon Scheherazade the curse of an ugliness beyond that of
humanity, and which should remain with her not for the ordinary span of
a lifetime but for incalculable years, during which she should continue
to live in the flesh, loathed, despised, and shunned of all!
"Until one thousand compassionate men, unasked and of their own free
will, shall each have bestowed a kiss upon thee," was the exact text of
the curse. "Then thou shalt regain thy beauty, thy love--and death."
Ahmad er-Mâdi staggered out from the cavern, blinded by a hundred
emotions--already sick with remorse; and one night's stage on his return
journey dropped dead from his saddle ... stricken by the malignant will
of the awful being whose power he had invoked! I will conclude this wild
romance in the words of Hassan, the dragoman, as nearly as I can recall
them.
"And so," he said, his voice lowered in awe, "Scheherazade, who was
stricken with age and ugliness in the very hour that the curse was
spoken, went out into the world, my gentleman. She begged her way from
place to place, and as the years passed by accumulated much wealth in
that manner. Finally, it is said, she returned to Cairo, her native
city, and there remained. To each man who bestowed a kiss upon her--and
such men were rare--she caused a heart of lapis to be sent, and upon the
heart was engraved in gold the number of the kiss! It is said that
these gifts ensured to those upon whom they were bestowed the certain
possession of their beloved! Once before, when I was a small child,
I saw such an amulet, and the number upon it was nine hundred and
ninety-nine."
The thing was utterly incredible, of course; merely a picturesque
example of Eastern imagination; but just to see what effect it would
have upon him, I told Hassan about the old woman in the Mûski. I had to
do so. Frankly, the coincidence was so extraordinary that it worried
me. When I had finished:
"It was she--Scheherazade," he said fearfully. "And it was the _last_
kiss!"
"What then?" I asked.
"Nothing, my gentleman. I do not know!"