On the day when the Emîr set sail for England in the custody of his
forbidding uncle, Iskender, with the sum of two mejîdis in his pouch,
set out on foot for the Holy City. On his way to join a horde of
Russian pilgrims with whom, by Mîtri's advice, he was to walk for
safety, he saw the carriage belonging to the Hotel Barûdi, conveying
the two Englishmen to the gate of the town. The carriage passed him
from behind; its inmates must have had him long in view, the road being
empty; yet the Emîr deigned never a glance at him, but laughed and
talked, as if enchanted, with the horrible old ghoul who sat beside
him. Iskender called down curses on their race, and hastened on to
find his Russian pilgrims.
These were peasants, men and women, for the most part old, with faces
gnarled and knotted like the trunks of ancient olives, and pale eyes
which had a patient, rapt expression as if they saw Heaven opened, but
a long way off. They took no notice of Iskender there beside them,
though his adherence was conspicuous as a flower among grey rocks, but
trudged onward, singing hymns in a strange tongue.
The general rate of advance was very slow, so many aged, feeble folk
were of the company; but some three hours after noon of the third day,
having toiled long through a wilderness of stony hills, they saw the
city. Men and women kissed the ground, weeping and crying aloud. The
priests in charge of the pilgrims struck up a psalm of thanksgiving.
Iskender left them at these devotions, passing on into the city. There
he lost all purpose and the count of time in rapture with the colours
of the motley throng, which budded in the night of long, dark tunnels
and blossomed in the open alleys, full of shade. The sense of an
infinitude of burning light, resting above, gave to the shadow and its
bedded splendours something magical, reminding Iskender of his childish
fancies of what it must be like to live at the bottom of the sea. He
had stood for a long while glued to the pavement of a certain entry,
outside the jostling crowd, gazing entranced at the shop of a
coppersmith across the way--where, in the darkness of a kind of cave,
the burnished wares gave forth a bluish gleam like negro faces--when
some one smote his chest.
There was Yuhanna the dragoman, his old enemy, grinning down at him,
for once quite friendly.
"Shrink not, O my son, fear nothing," he said, laughing, when Iskender
half retreated. "Thou didst not perjure thyself, it seems, that time
thou knowest, so I have no grudge against thee. And now thou hast
joined the Church, thou art my brother. I heard the blessed news from
one I met upon the road. Art thou not happy to be now a child of
light, delivered from the prospect of everlasting damnation? Wallah,
it is bad to be Brûtestânt."
He gave Iskender's arm a cunning twist, just enough to suggest the
torture in reserve for heretics; and then, detaining his hand inquired
the nature of his business in the city. Thus reminded of his errand
which had quite escaped him, Iskender confessed that he was in search
of the shop of one Ibrahîm abu Yûsuf, a painter of religious pictures.
Yuhanna told him it was close at hand, and, having treated him to a cup
of coffee and some sticky sweet-stuff, showed him the way, which could
hardly have been found without direction. Through a deserted alley,
down first one dark, stinking passage, then another, Iskender reached a
crazy door and, knocking on it twice, was told to enter.
The room within was small and very dark. It had only one window, high
up in the wall, and even that looked out upon a covered way. When
Iskender entered, the artist was in the act of rising from his knees,
having been on the floor at work upon a picture. He was a wizened
elder with a fine white beard, clad in a soiled kaftan, black turban
and big black-rimmed spectacles. Lighting a candle-end he read the
letter of the priest Mîtri, and, having read, embraced his new
disciple. He took off his spectacles, brushed them, wiped his eyes
repeatedly, and then knelt again to his painting, bidding Iskender
watch the way of it. When the youth suggested that more light was
needed, Ibrahîm abu Yûsuf shook his head decidedly. This room, he
explained, had been chosen precisely on account of its obscurity, which
meant seclusion. Were he to ply his trade in the light of day, the
Muslim zealots of the city would speedily tear him in pieces as an
idol-maker. "Though some of them make pictures also," he explained,
"not here but in Esh-Shâm and other places. They quote in excuse some
fetwah of the learned. I have no appeal; for did I quote their fetwah
they would call it blasphemy." The room, he said, possessed advantages
for health as well as privacy. Its window gave upon the market of the
shoemakers, and, when it stood open, admitted the smell of leather,
than which nothing in the world is more wholesome and invigorating.
Iskender was glad to learn that he was not required to sleep there, but
in the private house of his master, whither he was conducted at the end
of the day's work. The old man and his wife seemed pleased to have him
in the room of their only son, an adventurous youth who had gone with
merchandise to America to seek his fortune.
The Sheykh Ibrahîm took great pains with his pupil's instruction, and
taught him divers little tricks which saved much trouble.
"But times are bad!" he would suspire in moments of depression. "Once
it was a profitable trade; all the pictures required used to be wrought
and purchased in the land. But now the majority of the clergy buy them
ready-made from Europe. That the Franks have a pretty, life-like trick
is undeniable; yet I think our ancient style, stiff and conventional as
they call it, is far more reverent. There is no one left to practise
it, nowadays, except myself, and here and there a religious in the
monasteries."
Yet, for all the old man's moan, there seemed no lack of business; and
Iskender wished that he had half the money which he saw paid into his
master's hand. Monks and nuns and priests, and even prelates, found
their way to the cell of the painter; and Iskender's work was highly
thought of by such visitors. The old man was laughingly told to look
to his laurels, for the young one at his side had almost Frankish
talent.
"Heed them not, O my soul!" said Abu Yûsuf. "They speak as fools who
know not. That the Frankish way has merits, all must allow; but ours,
I do maintain, is more devotional. Let it be one thing or the other;
that is all I ask. And I would have thee purge thy style, once and for
all, of just those lifelike touches which these fools admire."
Iskender, of sheer laziness, was content to humour the old man; and
soon acquired such skill in practice that he could have wrought with
his eyes shut, as the Sheykh Abu Yûsuf virtually did, for he was almost
blind. Every morning, before setting to work, he hastened to the
Church of the Resurrection and said a prayer there, kneeling at the
tomb of Christ, ere studying the paintings which adorn its dim old
walls. At the end of a year and a half his work was in greater demand
than that of his master. The latter, recognising that his hand was
failing and his sight would soon be gone, offered to sell him the
business. But Iskender had no money for the purchase. He consented,
however, to a scheme of partnership; and, proud of his achievements,
sent a letter to the priest Mîtri, announcing his return to claim his
bride. After four days came the priest's reply, to the effect that
preparations were being made for the wedding; upon receipt of which
Iskender set forth on his journey, mounted upon an ass, and accompanied
by two wealthy Christian merchants of El Cuds, new friends of his, who
valued his acquaintance. Their escort won him standing in his native
town.