THE BOOK OF KHALID

Author(s): Steven P. Blackburn

Source: Al-'Arabiyya, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (Spring & Autumn, 1976), pp. 19-25
Published by: Georgetown University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43191602
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 Al-'Arabiyya 9(1976) 19

THE BOOK OF KHALID

Steven P. Blackburn
Center for Applied Linguistics
Georgetown University

"The twelfth day of January 1910, this Book of Khalid was finished/' So
closes al-Khatimah to a book, which, on the surface, is little more than
several succeeding slices of life. The story of our hero, a young Syrian
visionary, covers his adolescence through his emigration, this time to the
Libyan Desert of Egypt.
It would seem that it is not the tale of the young man's life, for the Book
simply ends with the feeling that there is much yet to come despite his
disappearance. But this would be to view biography within the ill-chosen
limitations of chronological events of a lifetime which have, as their widest
bounds, the cradle and the grave.
The story aspect of this work is indeed present, but the raison d'etre
behind it is not so much a narration as it is the recounting of the
development of an idea, or rather, of a system of thought, on the part of
this young man. The events surrounding this intellectual development have
supported, nurtured, aided, and abetted this process. This young man's
travels, and their accompanying episodes, give direction to his thoughts,
helping to uniquely mold the resultant patterns which finally emerge.
The word * 'uniquely" cannot be emphasized enough. For this is the story
of one particular man and his search for his own truths. These are arrived at
in his own way, in his own time, at his own expense; in short, through his
personal life and experience. This is his Book; he is his own Prophet. He
offers this Book not as a guide to others to be followed, but rather as a
model through which he demonstrates that each one of us can do the same,
can strike out on our own, and not be servant or slave to someone else's
ideas or conceptions of what might be best for us.
So it is the vehicle, not the basic idea of this work, which is biographical.
But this biography is not an imaginary one filled with mythological
happenings and apocryphal tales. Rather, it presents the reader with
excerpts from the life of this young Syrian. The events are very real; and to
those with more than a passing knowledge of the life of Ameen Rihani, the
events, en gros , are somewhat familiar.
What, then, does this Book of Khalid hold in store for the reader? As
suggested earlier, it is not merely a string of events that overtake our hero,
Khalid. This is especially evident in that the tri-partite division of the Book

♦Pagination references are from the 1973 edition of the Book of Khalid,
published in Beirut by the Rihani House.

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20 Steven P. Blackburn

does not neatly parallel Khaliďs global wanderings. Part One finds him
Syria and America. One must complete half of Part Two before Kha
returns to his homeland. He has dropped from view for the last thir
Part Two, not to come back into human company until well into Par
Three, whereupon he finds himself in Baalbek, Damascus, and Egypt.
there must be some other clue to explain the Book's division along s
lines.
Possible explanations have included an alleged attempt by Rihani t
pattern his work on a model such as Sartor Resartus. It is clearly evid
that Rihani was familiar with the works of Thomas Carlyle and other
Romantics. But the life of Khalid does not fit the tri-partite division
naturally, especially when it is realized that it is an autobiographical
expression on the part of Rihani. Otherwise, the divisions would have been
made to conform to the episodes depicted. Any structural similarity, then,
would have to be seen as at least partially coincidental in this case, with the
basic reason behind these divisions to be found elsewhere.
Each of these three divisions is prefaced by a prayer, or, if you prefer, a
hymn: the first "To Man", the second "To Nature", and the last "To
God". These prefaces are the clues to the reasons behind Rihani's division
of the Book. For, and it cannot be overemphasized, this is a book of ideas,
not of events.

Synthesis is the key to the formulation of Khalid's ideas. He rejects

adoption of any one line of thought as a path to truth and a higher order,
instead combining two or more elements which, he concedes, lose their
own individual identity in this new union. And for man to attain his highest
potential, he must blend within himself Man, Nature, and God, the objects
of the hymns of the three prefaces.
In each section, then, we can see Khalid take a step in his search for
awareness. In Part One, entitled "In the Exchange", Khalid discovers
himself and others as physical beings with material and sensual needs and
desires. In Part Two, "In the Temple", Khalid becomes aware of the
natural world around him as well as of personal psychic necessities. In Part
Three, the experiences and elements of Parts One and Two have been
synthesized, leading to the emergency of Khalid's complete thought as
found in his Book.
Permit me to trace Khalid's story, while keeping in mind that Rihani's
intent was to reveal his personal philosophy by recounting some early stages
of his life.
The story opens with a panoramic view of Baalbek, Khalid's home.
Rihani's love affair with the beauties of nature, which pervades the Book of
Khalid , is evident from the beginning: even in describing the glories of the
city's past as attested to by its ancient ruins and monuments, Rihani is
obliged to state that "Surely, these swallows and ferns and lupine flowers
are more ancient than the Acropolis. And the marvels of extinct nations

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 The Book of Khalid 21

cannot hold a candle to the marvels of Nature" (p. 35).

And it is here that Rihani possibly first writes of synthesis: Phonecian
past, Arab present; the tyrannies of old, the modern Ottoman absolutism.
But are these really synthesized in Baalbek, or are they merely juxtaposed?
Khalid and his friend Shakib, also of Baalbek, resolve to adventure to
America while Khalid is yet bui a youth. He leaves behind his beloved
cousin Najma, and the perils of the immigrants' voyage follow. They set up
shop in New York City's Syrian quarter of Brooklyn (which is still very
much in evidence today) after having escaped the clutches of the
deportation officials. They thus begin their five year stay in America, well
on their way to fat bank accounts and happy times.
Khalid begins his process of self-education, a process he insists must
conform to his own peculiar circumstances and whims, not those of an
educational system of someone else's origination. As this process continues,
he begins to reject others who would point out what they consider, or seem
to consider, to be truths. Even his good friend Shakib, from whom he grows
apart, is rejected as a guide to living. Instead, Khalid befriends a
second-hand book dealer who is careful not to recommend to Khalid any
particular path, but rather makes available some of the raw materials for
thought from which Khalid will reach his own conclusions. It is this man,
dubbed 4 'Second-hand Jerry" by Khalid, who first poses to the young man
such ideas as 4 'Harmonious perfection", which is not enjoyed by the
general populace in its eschewal of the unfamiliar.

"We moderns," said he once to Khalid, "are absolutely one-sided.

Here, for instance, is my book-shop, there is the Church, and yonder is
the Stock Exchange. Now, the men who frequent them, and though
their elbows touch, are as foreign to each other as is a jerboa to a polar
bear. Those who go to Church do not go to the Stock Exchange; those
who spend their days on the Stock Exchange seldom go to Church; and
those who frequent my cellar go neither to the one nor the other. That
is why our civilization produces so many hypocrits, so many Phili-
stines, so many pretenders and conceited. The Stock Exchange is as
necessary to Society as the Church, and the Church is as vital, as essen-
tial to its spiritual well-being as my book-shop. And not until man de-
velops his mental, spiritual, and physical faculties to what Matthew
Arnold calls 'a harmonious perfection' will he be able to reach the
heights from which Idealism is waving to him." (pp. 81-82)

To assure his not being among the "hypocrits, philistines, pretenders,

and conceited" ones, Khalid rejects his livelihood of peddling fake relics
from the Holy Land, leaves the company of Shakib, renounces Success,
and disappears into the realms of the paradoxically sensuous and sensual
Metaphysical Societies of Bohemia. There, even among women, he finds
that not one, but the blended effect of many, is best.

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22 Steven P . Blackburn

A basis having been established in Part One, the period of gestation in

Part Two can begin. Khalid wishes to return home, but circumstances
dictate that he remain in America for yet another year. In this time he will
learn that American is not all it has been proclaimed to be. Yet the
American spirit and way of life, which have infected him, are necessary to
his finding himself and to the creation of a new man.
Khalid dabbles in Tammany politics, and, as a crusading foe of
hypocrisy, soon levels his lance at the New York Wigwam. The results are
unpleasant: a few days in jail, from which he is rescued by his old friend
Shakib, and a very confused state of mind. He is physically ill, and resolves
to set himself back on the straight-and-narrow by going into business for
himself again, this time peddling oranges. Yet in this he is not content, still
ever-fearful of being overtaken by Success. And he still yearns for his home
and cousin Najma, who was his childhood sweetheart.
In these times Khalid continues his reflections on America, in whose loins
he acknowledges he was spiritually conceived. To him America is both
enemy and benefactor, the mother of material prosperity and spiritual
misery. Surely if her strengths were combined with those complementary
fortes of the East, the result would be superior to both.
He also reflects on what it means to be a descendant of the ancient
Phonecians. This is not the first time, nor the last, that Khalid gives
consideration to his Phonecian past. As a Christian Syrian, he is acutely
aware that his Arab heritage is of a relatively recent variety, and that h
owes to those early adventurers of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos the reasons
behind the present formation of his character and racial consciousness. Bu
while being aware of his Phonecian past, he does not hesitate to reject those
aspects of it which do not conform to his own path of self-development. He
finds many coincidental character traits between the Phonecians and the
modern Americans. He rejects many of them out of hand, emphasizing that
he does so not in an attempt to reform a whole culture, but for his own
peace of mind and spiritual evolution.
So Khalid sets off to rediscover the East, and leaves America. And wha
has he learned so far? To reject 4 'Church, State, Science, Sociology,
Philosophy, and Religion" (p. 163). Each individual is for himself, and it is
the Human Will, independent, which shall be each person's guide.
This has immediate, practical repercussions back in Baalbek, where the
power and influence of Church and Familism conspire against Khalid' s own
brand of rugged individualism. He soon finds himself without a roof over
his head, a situation which his biological and Jesuit fathers jointly
arranged.
Such does not interfere, for a time anyway, with his newly rediscovered
love for Najma. Preparations for the coming wedding begin, and we find
Khalid, once again, philosophizing. He considers what are necessities,
questioning them as such, and finally comes to the conclusion, in the

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 TheBookofKhalid 23

extreme, that all is superfluous, perhaps, except God Himself. In the

process, he questions the nature of man: He is neither wholly the slave of
God nor a glorified ape. Man cannot be regarded solely from an Eastern or
Western point of view, for both vantage points find their line of vision to be
partially obscurred.
Jolted from his reveries, Khalid must fight, and lose, yet another battle
with the Church. He exposes a hypocrisy of canon law, only to find his
marriage banned, and himself excommunicated, for his troubles. As the
result of a civil altercation that follows, Khalid finds himself, once again,
imprisoned. There he broods despite the willingness of others, similarly in
jail, to rally around him. Shakib once again comes to the rescue, but
Khalid, frustrated in marriage, quietly disappears into the hills of the
Lebanon.
The three ensuing, and final, chapters of Part Two are largely a panegyric
to nature. Khalid as a character in a book of events has dropped from view
But Khalid's mind and thoughts are ever-present, slowly developing,
evolving. In passages reminiscent of some writings of the American
Transcendentalists, Khalid's new home in the wilds is described, being the
place where the young Syrian reassembles his thoughts, where he reads his
own Qur'an, where he compiles his own Book. At a hermitage, where
Khalid finds repose, he discovers that life itself is, at its best, a synthesis:
Temple, Vineyard, Hermitage: devotion, honest labor, solitude.
Khalid is now ready to confront the world with his new-found truth. In
the final preface of his Book, Khalid reveals the highly eclectic nature of his
personal doctrine, contending that God can be found only by combining the
many paths that man has unsuccessfully used, thus far, in trying to reach
Him.
The hermit tries to bring Khalid around to his way of thinking in an
attempt to keep him from leaving the vicinity of the hermitage. The
two men have found their own paths for themselves, the one in the great
tradition of Christendom's monks and hermits of the hills of the Lebanon,
the other in the manner described above. Both have forsaken the world; but
Khalid is about to reenter it, now assured and confident in his truth. Khalid
is able to decline the hermit's well-meaning invitation, and they part, both
knowing that they have found a path suitable to themselves. And they
respect each other's right to their own respective paths.
Khalid's conclusions, and aims, are now presentable to us concretely
instead of piece-meal. Part Three is riddled with various manifestations of
Khalid's penchant for the dialectic: Europe and the Orient; materialism and
spirituality; an alter to the Soul in the Temple of Materialism; the whirling
dervish and the sweating American. We also find various elements of new
Trinities that Khalid has formulated and discovered: Devotion, Art, Work;
Europe, Asia, America; Religion, Romance, Trade; Nature, Spirit, God;
Light, Love, and Will.

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24 Steven P. Blackburn

Khalid is now whole, both physically and spiritually: he is cured of his

pumonic affliction contracted in America, and he is cured of his earlier
doubts and confusion.
Amidst the glories of nature and the dawn, Khalid leaves his pine nest for
the city. In a rather symbolic voyage, he is slowly reintegrated into society,
meeting the rich and poor, the simple and the corrupt, the manifestations of
his Phonecian and Arab heritages; and he is ever-reminded of his mother,
who, ignorant of his whereabouts or condition, is still most assuredly pray-
ing for his well-being and safety.
Khalid wends his way to Beirut, where he immediately plunges into the
political controversies of the day. For years he has dreamt of being his
country's Voice, and he now undertakes the task of lecturing the public. Yet
he has time to write to Shakib, telling him of his reappearance (he had been
given up for dead), and letting him, his mother, and his cousin, know what
he is about.
During a lecture tour in Syria Khalid encounters a Mrs. Gotfry, a
priestess of Bahaism. She is reminiscent of an old lover in New York, and
for once, Khalid's thoughts are distracted from his lectures. It becomes
increasingly difficult to concentrate on the matter at hand: a lecture in the
Great Mosque of Damascus to the Ulema. Mrs. Gotfry arouses withim him
dreams of Empire and apostleship; meanwhile, danger signals are becoming
increasingly obvious: hostile reactions to Khaldid's speeches in the press,
warnings from a respected Shaykh, and apprehension among his own
supporters. Even Mrs. Gotfry, fearing for his safety, implores Khalid to
reconsider what may be an unnecessary provocation of the Islamic
establishment. Khalid, though, has resolved to speak.
In his address in the Great Mosque, Khalid claims that he would not
model the new Islamic society on the West as it is, for the West has much
that must be rejected. However, it is the West's ideals that are worthy of
adoption. Similarly, there is much in the East which is corrupt and should
not be approximated unless is reformed and purified. However, the
solution he proposes to the Ulema is, to them, heretical and thus
unacceptable: Wahhabism is the only possibility for the necessary reform of
Islam.
Khalid narrowly escapes with his life amidst cries of 4 4 Infidel!
Reactionist! Innovator!" With Shakib and Mrs. Gotfry, he flees to
Baalbek. But even there he is not safe, and for political reasons he must
once again flee, this time to Egypt. In the process, his entourage grows by
two. Najma accompanies him, even though she is infected with the same
disease that once plagued Khalid. With her she brings her child Najib. For
while Khalid was brooding in a Damascene prison, Najma's father forced
her into a marriage with a third-rate nabob who has since fled the country.
And now her father is dead; having no one to turn to, she wishes to rejoin
her beloved cousin.

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 TheBookofKhalid 25

In the desert outside Cairo Khalid finally finds peace. He is serenely

happy with Najam and Najib, being a loving husband and father. However,
this situation does not long endure. Mrs. Gotfry implores Khalid to become
the apostle of Bahaism, while Khalid still dreams of Empire. He rejects her
beseechings, insisting that his own truth is higher than Bahaism, Islam, or
Christianity. His Empire will be a synthesis of Orient and Occident 4 'where
the Male and Female of the Spirit shall give birth to a unifying faith, a
unifying art, and unifying truth..." (p. 364). Mrs. Gotfry leaves, promising
to return by the time Khalid comes around to her way of thinking.
Then personal disaster strikes. The child Najib falls ill, and despite
medical care from supposed experts, he soon dies. Najma, from grief and
her own disease, similarly succumbs shortly thereafter. His family, the
well-spring of his recent happiness, is taken from him. And once again,
Khalid mysteriously disappears.
It is on this note that the Book of Khalid closes. Presumably our hero will
emerge again after a period of thought and reflection, as he did after his
sojourn in the mountains of the Lebanon. Where he is or how long the
process will take is not disclosed. For this is not a record of Khalid's life,
but rather the tracing of the development of his thought. It is his own
personal testament, as well as a message to East and West, both of whom
Khalid has eloquently addressed in the cause of union and cooperation in a
joint effort to attain a higher ideal. Both East and West have yet to heed his
message.
And it would be safe to assume that East and West, by large, have yet
hear Khalid's message. But is not Khalid guilty of prescribing remedies f
others in giving his message in the first place? Is this not what he foug
against throughout his whole Book? In considering these questions, it
becomes obvious that his Book has a dual aspect, much like his many
syntheses which are presented in the Book itself. Just as the autobiography
is a duality, being a book of events and thoughts, the message of the Book i
both pesonal and universal, addressing Everyman and All of Us
simultaneously. So the work itself can be considered a synthesis in and of
itself, as well as being a vehicle for the presentation of Khalid's personally
derived syntheses.
Thus it can be seen that the dialectic as a pattern of thought permeates
this work of Rihani, and that in and of itself it is symbolically and
structurally a product of this synthesizing process. As such the Book of
Khalid stands witness to the genius of Ameen Rihani.

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