The priest found in the dead Nabih’s right hand the note he had delivered that morning, and he placed it deftly into his robe without notice by the milling multitude.

Nabih was carried to his miserable mother, who, upon seeing the lifeless body of her only son, lost her sanity in shock and soon joined him in Eternity. Susan was led slowly into her home, wavering between faltering life and grasping death.

As Father Estephan reached his home, under bent shoulders, he fastened the door, adjusted his reading glasses, and in a quivering whisper commenced reading to himself the message he had taken from the hand of the departed Nabih.

“My Dearest Friend Nabih,

“I must leave this village of my fathers, for my continued presence is casting misery upon you and upon my wife and upon myself. You are noble in spirit, and scorn the betrayal of friend or neighbour, and although I know that Susan is innocent and virtuous, I know also that the true love which unites your heart and her heart is beyond your power and beyond my hopes. I cannot struggle longer against the mighty will of God, as I cannot halt the strong flow of the great Kadeesha River.

“You have been my sincere friend, Nabih, since we played as children in the fields; and before God, believe me, you remain my friend. I beg you to ponder with good thoughts upon me in the future as you did in the past. Tell Susan that I love her and that I wronged her by taking her in empty marriage. Tell her that my heart bled in burning pain each time I turned from restless sleep in the silence of the night and observed her kneeling before the shrine of Jesus, weeping and beating upon her bosom in anguish.

“There is no punishment so severe as that suffered by the woman who finds herself imprisoned between a man she loves and another man who loves her. Susan suffered through a constant and painful conflict, but performed sorrowfully and honourably and silently her duties as a wife. She tried, but could not choke her honest love for you.

“I am leaving for distant lands and will never again return, for I can no longer act as barrier to a genuine and eternal love, embraced by the enfolded arms of God; and may God, in his inscrutable wisdom, protect and bless both of you.

“FARRIS”

Father Estephan folded the letter, returned it to his pocket, and sat by the window that opened upon the distant valley. He sailed long and deep in a great ocean of contemplation, and after wise and intense meditation, he stood suddenly, as if he had found between the plaited folds of his intricate thoughts a delicate and horrible secret, disguised with diabolical slyness, and wrapped with elaborate cunning! He cried out, “How sagacious you are, Farris! How massive, yet simple, is your crime! You sent to him honey blended with fatal poison, and enclosed death in a letter! And when Nabih pointed the weapon at his heart, it was your finger that discharged the missile, and it was your will that engulfed his will.… How clever you are, Farris!”

He returned quivering to his chair, shaking his head and combing his beard with his fingers, and upon his lips appeared a smile whose meaning was more terrible than the tragedy itself. He opened his prayer book and commenced reading and pondering, and at intervals he raised his head to hear the wailing and lamentations of the women, coming from the heart of the village of Tula, close by the Holy Cedars of Lebanon.

Iram, the City of Lofty Pillars

Iram, the City of Lofty Pillars

TRANSLATOR’S PROLOGUE

“Seest thou not how thy God

Dealt with Ad of Iram, with

Lofty pillars, the like of

Which were not produced in

All of existence?”

The Holy Quran.

THE AD PEOPLE, with their Prophet Hud, are cited often in the Holy Quran, and their traditions belong to ancient Arabia. Their eponymous ancestor Ad was fourth in generation from Noah, having been a son of Aus, who was the son of Aram, who was the son of Shem, who was the first son of Noah.

They occupied a great tract of southern Arabia, extending from Umman at the mouth of the Persian Gulf to Hadramaut and Yemen at the southern end of the Red Sea, and the long, twisting areas of ahqaf (sands) in their domain were irrigated by canals.

The people were of great physical stature, and were excellent masons and builders. However, as so often happens, their vast advancements resulted in the forsaking of the true God, and the leaders anguished the people with oppression in its most severe state.

A three year famine visited them, but they took no warning, and at length a terrible and tremendous blast of searing wind destroyed them and their civilization. A remnant, known as the Second Ad, or Thamud, salvaged itself and survived, but later suffered a similar fate, presumably because of the sins of the people.

The tomb of the Prophet Hud (Qabr Nabi Hud) is still shown to visitors in Hadramaut, latitude 16 degrees north, longitude 49½ degrees east, about 90 miles north of Mukalla. Ruins and inscriptions abound in the general vicinity, and there is an annual pilgrimage to this site in the month of Rajab.*

Iram appears to have been an ancient Ad capital in southern Arabia, and it boasted lofty architecture. Controversially, some archaeologists and historians believe Iram to be the name of an individual hero of the Ad, and if this be true, the descriptive phrase “lofty pillars” applies not to the edifices, but to the people themselves, for the Ad were a tall race.

This sector, sometimes called Arabia Felix, is a source of interest, devotion and prosperity to many Arabs, for in its many ancient remains, numerous objects of historical, religious, and monetary value have been found. In the time of Muawiya a rich cache of precious stones was discovered, and more recently some gold, silver, and bronze pieces of statuary bearing Sabaean inscriptions came to light in Najram. These have been described in detail in the British Museum Quarterly, Volume 4, September 1937.

The source of the foregoing lineage and geography is the Holy Quran. Kahlil Gibran probably based his play “Iram, the City of Lofty Pillars” on this information, or upon similar Eastern mythology pursuing the general vein of the following brief Arabian fantasy:

“When Shaddad, the son of Ad, became the Great King of the World, he commanded one thousand Emirs to seek for him a vast land abundant with water and pure air, that he might build in it a Golden City afar from the mountains. The rulers roamed throughout the world in quest of such land, and each Emir took with him one thousand men.

“And when it was found, the architects and builders erected within it a square city of forty leagues. They built a huge wall extending five hundred cubits, made of onyx stones, and covered it with sheets of gold that misted the eyes when the sun shone.

“And King Shaddad despatched his people to all parts of the world, and commanded them to dig out gold from the ground, to be used as mortar for the bricks. And he built inside the city walls one hundred thousand palaces for one hundred thousand officials of his kingdom. Each palace was erected upon columns of chrysolite and ruby blended with gold, and each column reached one hundred cubits toward heaven.

“And the rivers were brought through the city, and their tributaries through the palaces. The roadways of the city were gold and precious stones and ruby, and the palaces were adorned richly with gold and silver. Trees were imbedded along the banks of the river, and their branches were of living gold, and their leaves of silver, and their fruits of onyx and pearls. And the walls of the palaces were embellished with musk and ambergris.

“And King Shaddad built for himself a garden whose trees were of emerald and ruby, and upon the branches were singing birds of pure gold.”

*    *    *    *    *

THE PLAY

IRAM, THE CITY OF LOFTY PILLARS

The locale of the play: A small forest of walnut, pomegranate and poplar trees. In this forest, between the Orantes River (Nahr el’Asi) and the village of Hermil, stands an old solitary house in a clearing.

The time of the play: Late afternoon in mid-July, 1883.

The characters of the play:

Zain Abedeen of Nahawand, forty years old, who is a Persian Dervish and a mystic.

Najeeb Rahmé, thirty years old, a Lebanese scholar.

Amena Divine, age unknown, prophetic and mysterious, known in the vicinity as the Houri of the Valley.

*    *    *    *    *

As the curtain rises, Zain Abedeen is seen leaning his head on one hand, under the trees, and with his long walking staff is inscribing circular figures upon the ground. Najeeb Rahmé enters the clearing on a horse a few moments thereafter. He dismounts, fastens the rein to the trunk of a tree, dusts his clothes and approaches Zain Abedeen.

Najeeb: Peace be with you, Sir!

Zain: And with you be peace. (He turns his face aside and whispers to himself): Peace we shall accept … but superiority? That is a different matter.

Najeeb: Is this the abiding place of Amena Divine?

Zain: This is but one of her several abodes. She lives in none, yet she exists in all.

Najeeb: I have inquired of many, yet none knew Amena Divine had numerous dwellings.

Zain: This establishes that your informants are people who cannot see except with their eyes, nor hear except through their ears. Amena Divine is everywhere (points to the east with his staff) and she roams the knolls and the valleys.

Najeeb: Will she return to this place today?

Zain: Heaven so willing, she will return here today.

Najeeb: (Seating himself upon a rock before Zain, and staring at him): Your beard reveals to me that you are a Persian.

Zain: Yes, I was born in Nahawand, reared in Sheezar, and educated in Nisabour.