Short stories, English; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
"And with him turned all his vizirs and mullahs and khans from the
false belief and called on Allah and Mohammed. I--even I, Abd-ul-Islam,
who stand before you--am one of them. The Sultan Willem issued a decree
to all his people that they should believe in the true faith--and lo!
Allah wrought a miracle and they all believed, destroying their false
mosques and building new ones to the glory of the Prophet. Great is
Allah and Mohammed His Prophet that these things should have come to
pass, O children of the Faith! They are hard of belief, for the Franks
ye well know are a stiff-necked race. Yet such it is, and my Lord the
Sultan hath sent me on an embassy to you that I may tell you these
marvellous things. And that ye may more readily believe, Allah in His
great mercy has given me power to show you these wonders with your own
eyes." His tone took on a deeper, more sonorous solemnity. "O Allah!
Allah! In the name of the Prophet, vouchsafe that these thy children
may see the great Sultan Willem as he is at this moment!"
He clapped his hands sharply together.
Instantly a beam of intensely white light shot across the dark
apartment from the "cage" and fell upon the white wall at the other
end. The "Saint" stepped quickly out of the radiance. On the white
surface there suddenly appeared a lifesize portrait of His Imperial
Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II--_gowned in long robes and coiffed with a
turban_. A gasp of astonishment broke from the peering spectators in
the dark room. Once more the "Saint" clapped his hands. The Imperial
figure walked in stately fashion straight towards the audience--seeming
that in another moment it would be walking out in the air over its
heads--stopped, stretched out its right hand, smiled. The muscles of
its face moved, the mouth opened--in a speech that none heard. "_Aie!
Aie!_" broke from the spellbound tribesmen.
"Alas! that he is so far away that ye cannot hear his words!" lamented
the "Saint." "But I can hear them. He tells you to believe in me, who
am his messenger, by the grace of Allah and the Prophet. O Allah,
vouchsafe that these Thy followers may witness with their own eyes the
conversion of the vizirs to the true faith!" Again a clap of the hands,
and the picture on the wall changed.
The tribesmen gazed at what to a Western eye would have been an
obviously cardboard imitation of an Oriental room with a dais on one
side of it. On that dais stood the figure in Moslem robes. Filling
the remainder of the room was a throng of men in German uniforms,
_pickelhaube_ on their heads. They advanced one by one to the figure
on the dais, knelt, offered up their spiked helmets, and received in
exchange a turban from their graciously smiling lord.
"See, O people, and believe!" cried the "Saint."
"_Aie! Aie!_" came the response. "We see and we believe! God is great!
There is none great but God, and unto Him be all the praise!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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