Between
Muna and Arafat I saw no fewer than five men fall down and die upon the
highway:
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.
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