Читать книгу The House of Islâm онлайн

44 страница из 64

“O Sheykh, this is from the hand of Allah. All my science is as air against it. The stalk is cut, the ear will fall. It is decreed. Grieve not overmuch, I entreat thee. Rather thank Allah that it is not thy son, but only a girl from whom no honor comes.”

Shems-ud-dìn duly thanked Allah, but cast about in his mind for some remedy yet to try. He was come to his shop at this idle hour of noon on purpose to think undisturbed. But the halls of his understanding were darkened and unfamiliar; even the lamp of faith burned dimly, a great way off. Though he prayed, “In mercy heal her! O Allah, spare the sunshine of my age!” he knew the worthlessness of such prayer. His will was not lost in the Divine Will, but beat against it to its own hurt, a moth at the flame.

The voice of the torrent in the wady, swollen from days of rain, droned in his ears. The noontide murmur of the town—men’s talk, the cooing of doves, a clink from the forge—was subdued by it. It filled all the pauses of thought with a dull refrain which seemed that of his own woe, the ever-recurring numbness of sheer grief that prevented his thinking to any purpose. It deadened a noise of bells approaching, until it was quite near, in the bazaar itself.