that I first determined to return to my native country. For,
while I believe in the Family, I hate Familism, which is the curse of
the human race. And I hate this spiritual Fatherhood when it puts on
the garb of a priest, the three-cornered hat of a Jesuit, the hood of
a monk, the gaberdine of a rabbi, or the jubbah of a sheikh. The
sacredness of the Individual, not of the Family or the Church, do I
proclaim. For Familism, or the propensity to keep under the same roof,
as a social principle, out of fear, ignorance, cowardice, or
dependence, is, I repeat, the curse of the world. Your father is he
who is friendly and reverential to the higher being in you; your
brothers are those who can appreciate the height and depth of your
spirit, who hearken to you, and believe in you, if you have any truth
to announce to them. Surely, one's value is not in his skin that you
should touch him. Are there any two individuals more closely related
than mother and son? And yet, when I Khalid embrace my mother,
mingling my tears with hers, I feel that my soul is as distant from
her own as is Baalbek from the Dog-star. And so I say, this attempt to
bind together under the principle of Familism conflicting spirits, and
be it in the name of love or religion or anything else more or less
sacred, is in itself a very curse, and should straightway end. It will
end, as far as I am concerned. And thou my Brother, whether thou be a
son of the Morning or of the Noontide or of the Dusk,--whether thou be
a Japanese or a Syrian or a British man--if thou art likewise
circumstanced, thou shouldst do the same, not only for thine own sake,
but for the sake of thy family as well."

No; Khalid did not find that wholesome plant of domestic peace in his
mother's Nursery. He found noxious weeds, rather, and brambles galore.
And they were planted there, not by his father or mother, but by those
who have a lien upon the souls of these poor people. For the priest
here is no peeled, polished affair, but shaggy, scrubby, terrible,
forbidding. And with a word he can open yet, for such as Khalid's
folk, the gate which Peter keeps or the other on the opposite side of
the Universe. Khalid must beware, therefore, how he conducts himself
at home and abroad, and how, in his native town, he delivers his mind
on sacred things, and profane. In New York, for instance, or in Turabu
for that matter, he could say in plain forthright speech what he
thought of Family, Church or State