NOVELS.
SAID THE FISHERMAN..
WE are unfamiliar with the previous work of Mr. Pick- thall, the author of Said the Fisherman, but there are no signs of the amateur or the tiro in the very remarkable and eminently opportune romance he has now given to the world. Opportune, we say advisedly, because it gives, with remarkable amplitude of detail, the fruit of close study and intimate observation, a full-length portrait of a provincial subject of the Sultan as brought into contact and conflict with his Christian fellow-subjects; and it is generally admitted that the Ottoman Empire is represented at its best by its peasantry. How often have we heard it stated that the raw Turk is a very fine fellow,—brave, temperate, enduring ; or that the Turk is an excellent person until he gets £100 a year ? It is true that the scene of Mr. Pickthall's story is laid chiefly at, or in the neighbourhood of, Damascus, and that his principal characters are of Arab race. But the broad fact remains that in religion and character the dramatis personae engaged are not =favourable specimens of the least corrupted products of Moslem rule, and that it is not unfair to gauge by this standard the title of the Turk to maintain his hold on Europe. It may well be that Mr. Pickthall will resent the attempt to read any political significance into his romance. What his own views may be as to the rule of the Turk it is hard to say, so entirely has he obliterated his personality. His interest in the subject may be purely aesthetic. There is certainly no avowal of any moral purpose or intention to edify. He is content to tell us without comment an extremely and painfully engrossing story, bearing at every turn the evidence of dispassionate and minute observation. But at
• Said ths Fishsrelan. By Marmaduke Pickthall. London : Methuen and Co. (68.1
the present juncture it is impossible for any reader who takes the smallest account of the relations of Christians and Moslems in the Turkish Empire to abstain from drawing moral and political deductions from this elaborate and illu- minating picture of the conflict of Asiatic and European ideals under conditions which are largely reproduced in the Balkan provinces of the Sultan.
Said, the hero, or, more correctly speaking, the central figure of the story, is a young fisherman on the Syrian coast. Robbed of his hoarded savings by his partner, who persuades him that he is the victim of supernatural illwill, he abandons his home, and starts out with his wife and his donkey to seek his fortune elsewhere. Robbed of his donkey and belongings, and maltreated by some soldiers of the Sultan, Said, profiting by the lessons of an old mendicant and thief named Mustapha, takes to the road, and supports himself by alms, by theft, and by imposture. His wife falls sick, and he deserts her. He robs the house of a missionary, passes himself off as an official of the Sultan, requisitions a horse from a Sheykh, and makes his way to Damascus. There he attaches to himself a poor but faithful follower named Selim, and sells his horse for a round sum, which be soon squanders in riotous living, but contrives, with the aid of Selim, to maintain himself as a fruit-seller. He falls in again with Mustapha, and becomes his accomplice in a plot to murder a wealthy Nazarene with whom Mustapha has a blood- feud, to plunder his wealth, and abduct his daughter. The massacre of the Christians in 1860, precipitated by the internecine strife of the Druses and Maronites, gives them their opportunity. Mustapha slays the old man, Said carries off the daughter, and on the sudden death of his partner appropriates the stolen treasure, with which he buys a fine house and sets up as a merchant. The curtain is dropped for ten years, and the second act shows the working out of the Nemesis of Said's wrongdoing. He is now to all intents a wealthy and prosperous merchant, his discarded childless wife has been reinstated as mistress of his harem, and the murdered Nazarene's daughter, now ap- parently tamed and submissive, has borne him a son. But there is acute jealousy between the two women, and Ferideh, the favourite, is only biding her time to wreak her vengeance. When the time comes she drugs her husband, rifles his treasure store, and elopes with a Frankish lover. Said, de- mented and reduced to poverty by his loss, sets out again on his wanderings, which take him as far as England, and land him eventually a half-witted wreck at Alexandria, where he is discovered, housed. and kindly tended by the faithful Selim. Finally, in an access of fanatical fury, he joins in the street rioting at the time of Arabi's revolt, and is shot down by the British troops.
From this tare outline it will be readily gathered that the story is not exactly enjoyable reading. Yet no unprejudiced reader will accuse the author of gratuitous insistence on gruesome details. The incidents are knit together in an inevitable chain. We have seldom read a book in which the personality of the author is so completely effaced, or from which comment and moralising are so rigorously excluded. Again, though from time to time the reader sups full of horrors, there is no lack of relief in the story. Even the worst characters have some redeeming feature about them. There are moments when we are genuinely sorry for Said; others when we laugh at his amazing gift of bombastic self-glorification. The hospitality and courtesy, as well as the ferocity, of the Arab find repeated illustration in these pages. The devotion of Selim, though misplaced and grotesque, is touching in its disinterestedness. Nor must we omit to mention the vivid and suggestive passages in which the glare and glamour of the Syrian landscape, and the sights and sounds of street life in Damascus, are brought home to the untravelled reader.
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