Chapter XII

Saadi was registered for pediatrics, and Trench found him quick to learn. During lecture he was always a bright-eyed listener, smiling every now and then. This was odd, because Trench never made a joke, and had a way of imbuing—almost of impassioning—his men with cool attention to detail. Trench in lecture was impersonal as a formula, but when he was fixing a point, his eye would travel from man to man like the fire of the machine gun to which Saadi had likened him.

During quiz Saadi was demure and accurate. It soon became clear that he had anticipated a good deal of the junior work. Furthermore, Trench permitted him to assist at an operation, and Saadi demonstrated that he had seen service in surgical wards.

The leisure thus commanded he was sometimes at a loss to spend. He smoked great numbers of cigarettes in Jaffer’s study, brooding over the view down Halsted. In general he kept out of the other fellows’ rooms, because none of them smoked, and in Saadi’s curious makeup there were various little considerate habits. But when the boys took him out for excursions he showed no consideration. He tried every man’s patience to the breaking point.

Ameen was the first to act as guide. He proposed that they go up the lake front to where Halsted, disguised as Clarendon, begins. They did this on the afternoon of Saturday, October 4. Arrived at the head of the street, they dodged through the belt of motors which steadily moves along the Lake Shore Drive, and looked out over the hazy lake. Then they walked down to the car, and stood up in the front of it beside the motorman, and Ameen pointed out things as they clanged along. District succeeded district. It was as if every nation had sent its peaceful contribution to this experiment station. After two hours they were left at Eighty-fifth Street, and walked till they reached open prairie.

Ameen selected a seat on the anticipatory wooden sidewalk, and a startled rabbit sprang out. “Bismillah!” he exclaimed softly, not at the rabbit, but as an invitation to his friend to be seated. But Saadi threw himself on the ground and plucked some of the tall sweet clover with which the prairie was redolent.

“Ameen Jan, what you will be when you go back?”

“An oculist, Saadi. And what shall you be?”

“Military surgeon. I will not stay here long.”

“We shall miss you.”

“What for you tell lies, Ameen Jan? I am looking up in sky, where you will never go if you tell lies.”

“We shall miss you, Saadi. I shall say, Oh, Halsted, Halsted, thou garden without a rose. Or I shall see you lying as you now are, smelling those crushed leaves, and I shall remember that Saadi of Shiraz called that sweetness the breath of Issa of Galilee.”

“Boro, little Ameen! Go way back and sit down. Saadi of Shiraz said, ‘To pardon oppressors is to injure oppressed.’ But every damn Persian licks boot of oppressor.”

Ameen glanced at the sun. “It is rather late to begin a discussion. But I wish that my father were here.”

“Your father is old man?”

“Yes, and few men have suffered more than he.”

“Then I will not what you say lambast papa. You may tell about papa.”

As he spoke, Saadi let his left hand fall, and it lay resignedly in the sweet clover, clasping a tuft of it.

“Well, Saadi, I have learned two great things from my father. And the first is that peace begins at home. When there is no oppression in the family, there will be none in the world. Every man must do what he can to prevent war.”

Saadi’s hand gave a convulsive jerk that uprooted the tuft of clover. But he said nothing, and still stared into the limitless blue.

“The second thing,” continued the Persian, “is that sectarian religion foments war, and that therefore every city ought to have a school of comparative religion, where a man may choose what fits his nature. Every man is incurably religious, but—”

Ameen stopped, for he saw that Saadi was not listening. Saadi’s hand was crushing the tuft of sweet clover till it exhaled the breath of Issa, and his eyes were straining into the blue as if seeking an omen. But at the cessation of Ameen’s voice, the fingers slowly relaxed, and Saadi presently turned his head.

“I am not in it with Sufi dreamer to speak pretty words. But oh, you Ameen Beg, son of gun and joy of my liver, listen here. We live in twentieth century, but it is only dawn of world, and it will be damn bloody dawn.”

Ameen arose and dusted off his clothes. “Saadi, you enhance the gaiety of nations. But we must be going back, for Saturday’s sun is declining.”

“All right. I will get up and swear by declining sun, same as prophet in Koran. ‘Oh, you declining sun!’ I swear that Mirza Ameen will answer Yes to Saadi’s next question.”

“Put the question.”

“If damn Jew outraged your sister, would you outrage some Jewess?”

“No!”

Saadi spat on the ground. “You lie, Ameen Beg. You would do same as I will do—first chance I get.”

Ameen looked at the blazing grey eyes, and answered steadily. “Saadi, I have been put to the test of non-resistance, and I have seen it met by others. When I was a child, in Meshed, I saw Babis burned at the stake. It made me faint, and I fell from my horse. Not one of them but his family had suffered outrage. Not one of them but could have escaped by renouncing his faith. And yet they were singing in the flames, and all had given gifts to the executioners, if only a flower.”

Saadi was staring, speechless, at the sublimity of Ameen’s self-deception, but Ameen was thinking of Saadi’s terrible threat.

“Saadi, it is written in Sura eighty-one that a Day shall come when the stars shall fall, and souls rejoin their bodies, and innocent girls shall ask why they were slain. I suppose it is not a scientific statement, but I suppose it to be in some profound sense true. You will see your little sister again, Saadi Jan, and see her divinely revenged by love.”