He accorded to us the usual greeting, and contrary to the use and wont of ignorant Dervishes and Moolahs, who dislike soldiers in general and infidels in particular, he seated himself by our fire and partook at once of some bread and meat which were offered him by Callum, but shook his averted head when the leathern flasks of wine and potent raki were held towards him by Sergeant Mac Ildhui.
'Nay, nay,' said he, 'wine and gaming are alike forbidden by the Koran—yet there was a time when I was daily and nightly addicted to both.'
'And when did you reform, reverend Moolah?' I asked.
'When I ceased to be a soldier,' he answered with a quiet smile.
'A soldier!' I reiterated; 'have you then been one of ourselves?'
'Yes, Aga, and one who could handle this with the best man among you,' he replied, snatching up a musket and fixing and unfixing the bayonet with an adroitness that none but a practised soldier can achieve. This old man was spare and brawny, quick of speech and sharp in eye. 'Yes—I was a soldier of Scherif Bey's regiment, and fought at the battles of Ilonis, of Athens, and of Koniah.'
'Yes, by the beard of the Prophet,' exclaimed the Yuze Bashi, waking up suddenly; 'and you it was, O most worthy Moustapha! who assisted me to save the colours of the Scherif, by stuffing them into my regimental breeches. Mashallah! 'twas well, it was not the standard of Islam, for where were the mortal breeches which would have held that?'
'True, O gallant Yuze Bashi; and the same battle of Koniah which made thy fortune on earth, while it marred mine here, made it, I trust, in Paradise.'
'You were left on the field?' said Hussein.
'Pierced by a ball.'
'May dogs defile the grave of him who shot it!'
'Nay, nay, Hadjee Hussein, that bullet brought light and repentance to me; for until that day so fatal to the fortune of our lord the Sultan in Egypt, I was a very wretch—an apostate—a scoffer—an unbeliever in the prophet—yea, a veritable Janissary!'
'But a brave soldier, Hafiz Moustapha.'
'My lord is pleased to be merry.'
'By the night and all that it enfolds in its shades, I am not, Moustapha! I speak but the truth of you, Hafiz. You were ever a brave soldier as any in the ranks of Islam—as any in the army of Mahmoud II., though somewhat of a visionary.'
The old Moolah crossed his hands upon his breast, and bowed down his bearded face in reply.
'And did you see much of war and battles in those days, reverend Moolah?' I asked.
'Enough and to spare.'
'Mashallah!' exclaimed Hussein, 'I have seen him carrying six Egyptian heads at once by the top knot, a handful of them all grasped like a cluster of gourds, and I have seen him with four-and-twenty ears all strung like herrings on his ramrod, when Egyptian ears sold as high as ten paras each. Beard of Khalid! I have sent a bushel of them more than once to the tent of Reschid Pasha. Moustapha went hand in hand with the wild Koords in roasting and impaling our prisoners—for what are Egyptians but curs like the Greeks?'
'Curs of a darker hue.'
'True, oh reverend Moolah—though it is said, if thou wishest to please the eye, take a Circassian maid; but if for pleasure and voluptuousness, try an Egyptian one.'
'And did you tire of slaughter or of soldiering?' I asked, not being naturalist enough to ponder long over the last remark—a proverbial one in the East.
'Of neither, though I saw enough of both while under Scherif Bey; but in my youth I was good and pious, and knowing all the Koran and Bible by heart, was styled Hafiz, which meaneth Bible-reader. I became a soldier, and fell into evil ways. I had a vision—a vision, O Frank! such as seldom opens up to mortal eyes,' he continued, pointing upward, while his eyes flashed with a red unearthly glare, and his whole face flushed from his brow to his long white beard; 'and from that hour I was a changed man. I ceased to regard the things of this life, or be solicitous of aught on earth—where I should find food in the morning or rest at night—looking forward only to death as the gate through which I should pass to Paradise. I was once avaricious as a Jew, but now my heart is expanded; all that the sun enlightens would I give in charity, had it been mine. I, who had been often red to the elbows in the blood of slaughtered Greeks and dark Egyptians, now shrank from blood as from a flaming fire; I who had no more conscience than a Bedouin of the desert, and less remorse than an African savage, now see my sins of omission and commission—all my deeds of sorrow and cruelty, performed in the days of my ignorance and trouble, rising like a stupendous column in the very path that leads direct to the place of our abode—to the garden of pleasure—the paradise of the blessed. After the battle of Koniah I was a changed man, yea changed as if the black drop of original sin had been wrung out of my heart.'
'Tell the Frankish officer the story, O Hafiz—my old brother soldier; for though you were but an onbashi and I a captain, I look back with pride to the days when we unsheathed our swords in the same field beneath the green banner of Beschid Pasha,' said Hussein.
'The Frank may but mock me as the Ingleez do all strangers,' said the old Moolah, with a species of growl in his tone, as he glanced uneasily at my soldiers, most of whom had already dropped asleep.
I laid a hand on my breast, and expressed a hope that he would not think so meanly of me.
'No, no, I shall answer for him,' said the Yuze Bashi; 'it ill becometh a young soldier to mock the white beard of an old one. Moreover, what sayeth the Koran? "O Unbelievers, I will not worship that which ye worship, nor will ye worship that which I worship. Ye have your religion, and I have my religion," and there is an end of it, say I, Hadjee Hussein. 'Tis a story as well as another, and I delight in stories—they always set me to sleep.'
'I will tell you in a few words,' replied the old Moolah, adjusting his high conical cap of grey felt, and disposing his mighty beard over the breast of his robe; 'but I presume that you, O valiant Yuze Bashi, have heard it before?'
'By the spout of the holy Kaaba, most reverend Hafiz; and by the holy camel's blessed hump I never did!' said the irritable Yuze Bashi, giving the coils of his arguillah a kick, and smoking away at the amber mouth-piece.
'It made noise enough in the camp of the Sultan's troops.'
'Then I hope it may make a noise here too, for the place is quiet enough,' retorted Hussein, who was in a furious pet at all this unnecessary delay.
'You must know, O Frank!' began the Moolah, 'that I was a corporal in the third Orta or battalion of Scherif Bey's regiment, in the army of the Grand Vizier, Reschid Pasha, and warred against the revolted Egyptians of Mehemet Ali; and was wounded by a bayonet at Homs in the Pashalick of Damascus, where we fought a desperate battle on the right bank of the Orontes; I lost the tip of my right ear at the battle of Athens when fighting against the Greeks, and had a mouthful of teeth driven down my throat by a half-spent Russian bullet at Navarino; but all these wounds were as nothing when compared to one I received at the fatal defeat of Koniah in Asia Minor, where in the winter of 1247, by the reckoning of the Hejira, Ibrahim Pasha, defeated Reschid and cast everlasting disgrace on the banners of the Sultan.
'All his reverses in the Russian wars had failed to teach generalship to Reschid Pasha, who, with the fugitives of Homs, had halted at the thrice-blessed city of Koniah, where a snow-covered plain of sixty miles in extent gave ample room for the Osmanlies, forty-five thousand in number, to fight the fifteen thousand Egyptian curs at Ibrahim. Brave to a fault—for he was the son of a Koordish chief and a Georgian slave—old Reschid led the charge of Horse, which, by its failure, lost the battle. Vain was the fury of the Koordish Cavalry, and vain the fiery valour of the bare-kneed Albanian Guard! The battle was lost by us, and the banner of the Sultan was trod to the dust by the steeds of the desert. All our cannon were taken. O day of calamities!—and all our standards!'
'Except one,' urged Hussein, parenthetically.
'Yes, most valiant Yuze Bashi—except one, after assisting you to save which, a musket-shot pierced my breast, and, half-choked in my blood, I sank powerless on the field; and on becoming faint, remember no more of that unfortunate battle, though its roar was so great that one might have supposed all hell was being dragged by chains to judgment, as the Prophet says, it shall be, on the great and inevitable day.
'When consciousness returned, the sun was setting beyond the snow-covered mountains, and faint and blue their spotless cones rose like the waves of a frozen sea around the distant walls of Koniah. On the gilded domes of its twelve great mosques, and the hundred minars of its lesser shrines, fell the last rays of that sinking sun; and full of thoughts of awe and death, I turned me, in penitence and grief, from the horrors of that lost battle-field, and bent my head in prayer as the shrill cries of the muezzins reached me from the tall steeples of the Sultan Selim and of Sheik Ibrahim; and as I prayed, the dying sunset faded on the snow-capped hills and gilded domes; the minarets grew dark and cold, and ghastly mountain-piles turned to purple tints as the night set in, deep, calm, and beautiful. The stars were sparkling above the silent city and that dreadful battle-plain. A painful and burning thirst oppressed me; and while crawling towards a spring that bubbled near me in the moonlight, I again became unconscious.
'Glory be to Allah and to his Prophet! Amid that unconsciousness or stupor which oppressed me there came at times a sense of pain in my smarting wound, and of thirst in my parched throat, while the gurgle of the fresh, cool fountain sung drowsily in my ear, like the murmur of a distant multitude.
'Recollection came again, and I saw the fountain sparkling in the moonlight, which tipped with silver the blue and white water-lilies, and every floweret, leaf, and shrub, for all was bright and clear as in the brightest and clearest noon.
'While gazing at the glittering water with longing eyes, lo! I suddenly beheld before me the beautiful figure of a woman—a nymph lovely beyond all earthly loveliness. Dazzling as Ayesha, the best-beloved wife of Mohammed, and fair as the rose of Cashmere, her exquisite form, was discernible through the only garment she wore, a slight cymar of green—the colour sacred to the Prophet—and her smooth round limbs were white as the driven snow. Her slender neck, her curved shoulders, and tapered arms, were modelled in the most charming symmetry; a faint blush was on her soft cheek, and the expression of her large dark eyes was such as I dare not trust myself to describe, for they possessed a lustre and a winning sweetness which confused, fascinated, and bewildered me. Long and black as winter night, her glossy tresses fell upon her white shoulders, and half shrouded her swelling bosom.
'The air around her was filled with delicious perfume. She spoke to me; but for a time I knew not what she said; for with her voice there seemed to come a stream of gentle music from a distance; and by its melody I was filled with a rapture such as never fired my soul, or swept my nerves before.
'Her sparkling eyes were full of conscious power; her radiant smile was full of conscious loveliness, tempered by all the pride of purity and innocence; for know, O Frank! that she who stood before me was one of the Hûr al Oyn—the black-eyed girls of Paradise—the ever-blooming brides of the faithful, though I knew it not then; but imagined—sinner that I was!—that some Naide of old, or some lascivious goddess of the lying Greeks had come to earth again.
'"Moustapha," said the maiden, "thou shalt not be one of those who will perish in this world and pass away with it on that day when the mighty hills shall roll like smoke before the dreadful wind, that is to blow from the east."
'"How, O beautiful one?" I asked, while trembling with a more than mortal joy.
'"Because, know, Hafiz Moustapha, that the blessed finger of the Prophet is on thee."
'"Upon me—a mite—an atom!"
'"He remembereth the leaves of the forest, O Hafiz! and the grains of sand on the sea-shore. He is the father of all wisdom."
'"I am but a poor corporal of foot," said I, remembering the rattan of our adjutant, which I had felt more often than the finger of the Prophet.
'"A weak mortal, assuredly—but a true Believer."
'"Bechesm! Upon thy beautiful eyes be it, that I am."
'A fire seemed to rage within me, and I strove to reach and embrace her; but in vain, for lo! there suddenly rose around her a hedge of thorns and brambles—the fuel of hell—that pricked and tore my heated flesh.
'The maiden smiled with all her alluring sweetness of lips and eyes, and almost laughed as she held up a beautiful hand to deprecate my folly; while the wound in my breast caused me almost to swoon with a sudden pang of agony.
'"What is your name?" I asked.
'"Noura."
'"Which meaneth—"
'"Light."
'"And why without garments?"
'"Because garments are a sign of the disobedience of our first parents, and in our blessed abode that disobedience is forgotten. Al Araf separates us from those by whom it is remembered with sorrow, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Think, O Hafiz Maustapha, think of what is before thee! Thou hast neglected alms, and scoffed at prayer; blinded by vice, thou hast forgotten all about punishment hereafter; and intoxicated by the grosser pleasures of earth, thou hast dared to doubt those which were to come, yet vaunted thyself a true Mussulman—being a liar and a hypocrite, even as Abdallah Elen Obba was a liar and a hypocrite before thee."
'At these words a deadly terror fell upon my soul, for the eyes of the maiden gleamed with a lurid light as she spoke. I wept and said—
'"What shall I do, O lovely one, to merit Paradise?"
'"Fear the Holy Prophet—keep his laws—and love me."
'"Love you!" I said, and stretched my arms in ecstasy towards her; but, with a cry of astonishment and despair, as her figure melted away and I saw only the cold fountain plashing in the pale moonlight. Then there descended upon me a darkness and a horror, amid which I felt a soft hand grasping mine with a touch that thrilled me, and the voice of Noura whispered in my ear—
'"Come, Moustapha, come! Ascend to Paradise, where two-and-seventy such as I await thee with smiles and with impatience."
'Now by all the devils that shaved the Queen of Saba!' shouted the irreverend Yuze Bashi; 'think of that! two-and-seventy wives all to be had for mere belief, which costs nothing, when I have paid a thousand xerifs, and not an asper less, for one Circassian, in my lifetime.'
'Peace!' exclaimed the moolah, with a brow and tone of severity; 'peace, Hussein Ebn al Ajuz; or, by the souls of the seven lawgivers, I shall cease. Allah is indeed most merciful that he does not smite thee deaf, and dumb, and blind.
'In a moment, grief, pain, and darkness passed away—and light, music, and perfume, with a myriad brilliant figures and objects, all beaming with a celestial glory, were around me. Then a holy joy filled all my soul, for I knew that I had left the earth, with its petty cares and wretched vanities, far, far away below the seven heavens and the mansions of the moon; and that now the Garden of the Blessed—the Eden of old—the Januat al Ferdaws of the Faithful—was before me.
'O Mahmoud resoul Allah! May the angels of victory sweep away the dust from beneath thy feet, and may their wings shield all who believe in thee! O strange it is that I should have seen these things, and yet live to speak of them on earth!
'I was in that wondrous Garden of Paradise from which our first parents were expelled, when Adam, was hurled downward on the Isle of Serendib,[*] where his footmark yet remains upon a mountain-top; and when Eve fell near Mecca, where the marks of her two knees, as she knelt, are yet to be seen, sixty musket-shot apart, for their stature was gigantic. After that prodigious fall, they were separated two hundred years, for the vast earth was all a silent desert then. But to resume:
[*] Ceylon.
'Had it not been promised that he who looks on Paradise becomes endued with the strength of a hundred of the strongest men, I must have sunk under the scenes of more than mortal splendour, pleasure, and delight that passed before my bewildered senses; for, as the Koran sayeth, they were such things as eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, nor the heart of man conceived.
'I was in an ecstasy! A blessed ardour—a glorious joy swelled all my heart with love, religion, and purity. A brilliant halo was around me—a light without cloud—as in Khorassan, the land of the Sun, and nothing that is there has a shadow, for light is everywhere.
'After passing a lake of brilliant water, that was whiter than milk, a month's journey in compass, and surrounded by as many goblets as there are stars in the firmament—each goblet formed of a single emerald, and containing a liquid so precious that he who drinks thereof shall never thirst more, I was ushered by two shining angels through seven lofty gates, in seven walls that were built of sparkling diamonds and gleaming rubies, into the Jannat al Ferdaws, or abode of the blessed. At the seventh I was clothed in the richest robes of silk and brocade, chiefly of a green colour; and these robes, like the bracelets of gold and silver, and the crown of mighty pearls with which they encompassed my brows, were taken from the full-bursting flowers of Paradise that grew on each side of the way by which we journeyed. Before me went a long train of shadowy slaves, bearing silken carpets, litters, soft couches, downy pillows, and other furniture—each article being embroidered with more precious stones than all Asia could furnish in a thousand years.
'After a feast such as Mohammed alone could conceive, for the lobe of a single fish on that wondrous table would dine seventy thousand hungry Ingleez, I was conducted along garden-walks of musk and amber; the earth of the parterre seemed like the finest wheaten flour, and therein grew all the flowers of Paradise—each parterre being lovelier than all Suristan, the Land of Roses; for the leaves were of emeralds, the buds and petals of rubies, the stalks of burnished gold, and the slender twigs of polished silver, all gleaming and glittering under a stupendous blaze of sunlight.
'Passing kiosks of golden wire entwined with roses, wherein were youths and damsels in amorous dalliance; passing the mighty Toaba—the tree of happiness, which bears all the fruits, and meats, and food the world ever knew, with a myriad others all of tastes unknown to mortals, and every leaf of which is a melodious tongue, and the stem of which would take the swiftest Barbary steed a thousand years to compass; passing fountains of water, milk, honey, and wine, all flowing on pebbles of ruby and pearl, through beds of camphire, saffron, and amber—-I was led on—on—through shrubberies of precious stones and golden-bodied trees, on every branch of which hung a thousand little bells, and there sat a thousand singing-birds, which united with the leaves of the Toaba in filling the air with divine praises and bewildering harmony—on—on—until we reached a pavilion hollowed and fashioned of a single pearl, no less than four parasangs broad, and nearly sixty Turkish miles in length—every part of it, without and within, gleaming with sentences from the Koran, written in rubies and jacinths.
'Here stood eighty thousand slaves, all clad in shining garments, and three hundred beautiful damsels, each bearing three hundred golden and porcelain dishes, each dish containing three hundred kinds of food, awaited me on bended knees, with their charming faces bowed to the silken carpets; three hundred others bore precious vessels filled with fragrant wine; and in what language, O Frank, shall I refer to the two-and-seventy wives, the Houris, who awaited me there, each reclining in her couch, hollowed of a single pearl—the Hûr al Oyn, the black-eyed, high-bosomed girls of Paradise, who are created not of clay, like mortal women, but of the purest musk, and are without blemish—maidens on whose faces of celestial beauty none may look and live without a miracle; for I seemed to see all at a glance, though the Prophet says, these things would take the most faithful of men a thousand years' journey to behold.[*]
[*] See Sale's 'Koran.'
'Each coach whereon a maiden lay was a throne glorious as that of Solomon, the Star of the Genii; and each Houri had no other veil to her naked loveliness than the flowing tresses of her perfumed and shining hair.
'As my dazzled eyes swept round this vast apartment, they lighted on a familiar form; it was that of Noura, the nymph of the fountain; and as I recognised her, she stretched her snowy arms towards me, with her soft alluring smile, as the fire of love and conscious beauty lit up her large black eyes. Her light etherial blood coursed through her veins; I hung in rapture over her, and half faint with joy and agitation, clasped her to my breast.
'Then the curtains of the pavilion fell around us, drawn by unseen hands, and the voices of the singing-trees, the golden birds, and fairy bells without, became hushed or died away, as I sank entranced upon the tender bosom that panted under mine; and when impressing upon her warm lip the first kiss that man had ever printed there, lo! a sleep fell upon me—a deep and dreamless sleep—O Mahmoud resoul Allah! that I should ever have awakened from it!'
The moolah paused in great excitement; the perspiration stood upon his wrinkled forehead, and rolled over the glistening hairs of his snowy beard; his dark eyes glared with a hollow gleam, and his breath came thick and fast.
'Proceed, moolah,' said Hussein, quietly, amid a puff of smoke; 'and you awakened, where?'
'On the verge of the snow-covered battle-field of Koniah, and close beside the fountain where I had fallen into a swoon; the chill dews of night were upon me, the bright clear moon rode through its loftiest mansions; the pale fountain was murmuring and plashing on its pebbled bed beside me; the lotus was drooping on its stalk; I was still accoutred as a soldier—a poor corporal of Scherif Bey, and my hand rested on the cold, hard barrel of my musket.
'Paradise and all its glories had vanished with the sleep that sealed my eyes!
'Again I was a poor soldier, lying bruised on that lost and moonlit battle-field, with the dew and the cold hoar frost whitening upon me.
'Bismillah!
'Slowly I staggered up, and felt for the wound in my breast—and O, wonder of wonders! Though my blue uniform was still perforated by the passage of the ball, the blood had disappeared, and the wound had closed; it was well and whole—and of all that bloody gash, a little scar alone remained!
'I threw myself upon the earth towards the Keblah—the Holy City of Mecca; and I vowed seven times—by the seven gates of Paradise—by the souls of the seven lawgivers—and by all the lights of the faithful—to become a good, a pious, and a new man; and from that hour I ceased to be a soldier, a reveller, a dicer, and a gamester; I became a moolah, and went through all Greece and Asia Minor, preaching the faith of the Koran and of the only Prophet—Mahmoud resoul Allah—for there is no God but God, and the Camel Driver is his Prophet!'
Such was the vision of the old corporal Moustapha!