SALAAM
From Syria to America
Pardon, dear reader.
The stranger at thy gate, hailing from the Orient, holds out to thee a gaunt and tatooed hand. This hand has often made mud-pies from earth that might have once mapped out the stars; or, in a drunken vision, heard the grumblings of a god and made of them a captivating creed: the brain of an ancient Assyrian astronomer; the spine of a Semitic sage; the cheeks of a Jezebel or a St. Takla; the heart of a slave that added beauty and horror to the chariot of a Babylonian king or a Roman conqueror:—any or all of these might have besmeared this hand.
Wilt thou take it? The hand of a personified illusion, of an exiled dream, of an Oriental who makes himself thy guest.
He comes not to preach Buddhism to thee; nor Mohammedanism; nor Babyism; nor any other ism made picturesque and alluring by red caftans, white turbans, blue sashes and ambergris-scented lies.
The only message he brings from his vine-crowned and pine-girdled Mother to bewitching and enriching America is that of love and longing and lacrimal. He came from the Mountains of Lebanon, from under the shadow of the Acropolis of Baalbak, to learn from the Yankees the way to do things—the way to rise and flourish and expand; or, as they put it, the way to get there and be it—from a mundane point of view, of course. It has been observed, however, that the spots of a leopard are irremovable; and so is the lethargy of an Oriental.
