Exhausted And Moribund, They Had Dragged Themselves Out To
Give Up The Ghost Where It Departs To Instant Beatitude.[FN#
15] The
spectacle showed how easy it is to die in these latitudes[FN#16]; each
man suddenly staggered, fell
As if shot; and, after a brief convulsion,
lay still as marble. The corpses were carefully taken up, and
carelessly buried that same evening, in a vacant space amongst the
crowds encamped upon the Arafat plain.[FN#17]
The boy Mohammed, who had long chafed at my pertinacious
[p.184] claim to Darwaysh-hood, resolved on this occasion to be grand.
To swell the party he had invited Omar Effendi, whom we accidentally
met in the streets of Meccah, to join us[;] but failing therein, he
brought with him two cousins, fat youths of sixteen and seventeen, and
his mother’s ground-floor servants. These were four Indians: an old man;
his wife, a middle-aged woman of the most ordinary appearance; their
son, a sharp boy, who spoke excellent Arabic[FN#18]; and a family
friend, a stout fellow about thirty years old. They were Panjabis, and
the bachelor’s history was instructive. He was gaining an honest
livelihood in his own country, when suddenly one night Hazrat Ali,
dressed in green, and mounted upon his charger Duldul[FN#19]—at least, so
said the narrator—appeared, crying in a terrible voice, “How long wilt thou
toil for this world, and be idle about the life to come?” From that
moment, like an English murderer, he knew no peace; Conscience and
Hazrat Ali haunted him.[FN#20] Finding
[p.185] life unendurable at home, he sold everything; raised the sum of
twenty pounds, and started for the Holy Land. He reached Jeddah with a
few rupees in his pocket[;] and came to Meccah, where, everything being
exorbitantly dear and charity all but unknown, he might have starved,
had he not been received by his old friend. The married pair and their
son had been taken as house-servants by the boy Mohammed’s mother, who
generously allowed them shelter and a pound of rice per diem to each,
but not a farthing of pay. They were even expected to provide their own
turmeric and onions. Yet these poor people were anxiously awaiting the
opportunity to visit Al-Madinah, without which their pilgrimage would
not, they believed, be complete. They would beg their way through the
terrible Desert and its Badawin—an old man, a boy, and a woman! What were
their chances of returning to their homes? Such, I believe, is too
often the history of those wretches whom a fit of religious enthusiasm,
likest to insanity, hurries away to the Holy Land. I strongly recommend
the subject to the consideration of our Indian Government as one that
calls loudly for their interference. No Eastern ruler parts, as we do,
with his subjects; all object to lose productive power. To an “Empire of
Opinion” this emigration is fraught with evils.
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