Arabia

""What happened to us?" The question haunts us in the Arab and Muslim world. We repeat it like a mantra. You will hear it from Iran to Syria, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, and in my own country of Lebanon. For us, the past is a different country, one that is not mired in the horrors of sectarian killings; a more vibrant place, without the crushing intolerance of religious zealots and seemingly endless, amorphous wars. Though the past had coups and wars too, they were contained in time and space, and the future still held much promise. “What happened to us?” The question may not occur to those too young to remember a different world, or whose parents did not tell them of a youth spent reciting poetry in Peshawar, debating Marxism late into the night in the bars of Beirut, or riding bicycles to picnic on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad. The question may also surprise those in the West who assume that the extremism and the bloodletting of today were always the norm."

"Thence, southward bending to the Orient, laves The Erythrean, with its ocean waves, Of all earth’s shores the fairest richest strand, And noblest tribes possess that happy land. First of all wonders, still forever soar Sweet clouds of fragrance from that breathing shore. The myrrh, the odorous cane, the cassia there, And ever-ripening incense balms the air. For in that land the all-ruling King on high Set free young Bacchus from his close-bound thigh; Broke odors from each tree at that fair birth, And one unbounded fragrance filled the earth. ’Neath golden fleeces stooped the o’er-laden flocks, And streams came bounding from the living rocks. Birds from strange isles, and many an untrod shore, With leaves of cinnamon, were flying o’er. Loose from his shoulders hung the fawn-skin down, In his fair hair was wreathed the ivy-crown: Ruddy his lips with wine. He shook his wand, Smiling, and wealth o’erflowed the gifted land. Whence still the fields with liquid incense teem, The hills with gold, with odors every stream; And in their pride her sumptuous sons enfold Their limbs in soft attire and robes of gold."

"Who are these from the strange, ineffable places, From the Topaze Mountain and Desert of Doubt, With the glow of the Yemen full on their faces, And a breath from the spices of Hadramaut?Travel-apprentices, travel-indenturers, Young men, old men, black hair, white, Names to conjure with, wild adventurers, From the noonday furnace and purple night.Burckhardt, Halévy, Niebuhr, Slater, Seventeenth, eighteenth-century bays, Seetzen, Sadleir, Struys, and later Down to the long Victorian days.A thousand miles at the back of Aden, There they had time to think of things; In the outer silence and burnt air laden With the shadow of death and a vulture’s wings.There they remembered the last house in Samna, Last of the plane-trees, last shepherd and flock, Prayed for the heavens to rain down manna, Prayed for a Moses to strike the rock.Famine and fever flagged their forces Till they died in a dream of ice and fruit, In the long-forgotten watercourses By the edge of Queen Zobëide’s route.They have left the hope of the green oases, The fear of the bleaching bones and the pest, They have found the more ineffable places— Allah has given them rest."

"Her stature like the tall straight cedar-trees, Whose stately bulks do fame th’ Arabian groves,"

"Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinable gum."

"The phœnix fair which rich Arabia breeds,"

"Th’ Arabian dew besmears My uncontrollèd brow"

"[S]o sweet, so rich an air, As breathes from the Arabian grove."

"For him the Rich Arabia sweats her Gum;"

"This Casket India’s glowing Gems unlocks, And all Arabia breathes from yonder Box."

"For Adoration, incense comes From bezoar, and Arabian gums,"

"And, where the charmer treads her magic toe, On English ground Arabian odours grow;"

"In hideous conference sits the listening band, And start at each low wind, or wakeful sound; What though thy stay the pilgrim curseth oft, As all-benighted in Arabian wastes He hears the wilderness around him howl With roaming monsters,"

"O’er his wounds she sprinkled dew From flowers that in Arabia grew:"

"No Nightingale did ever chaunt More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands:"

"With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians’ prance,"

"The wizard lights and demon play Of nights Walpurgis and Arabian!"