Saïd the Fisherman by Marmaduke Pickthall — Read

In the morning Saïd rose early, and having breakfasted and taken leave of his host, set forth with Hasneh in the cool twilight and started to climb the steep path which twisted among olive-trees up from the village. At the top he paused for a last look at the plain he was leaving. Away to the southwest a little promontory jutted into the sea. White buildings, a dome and two slender minarets were just discernible upon it in the pale light which comes before the sun. That was the city of his birth, and there, somewhere on the yellow rim of the bay, was his own little house with the fig-tree beside it from which he had seen the sun rise morning after morning, year after year. From where he now stood he could trace his whole course of the previous day. There, midway in the plain, on the crest of a wave of green, was the village where his donkey had been taken from him, where he had been stunned by that blow of the soldier's carbine of which the very memory brought pain. He knew it from the other villages dotting the landscape by the three tall palm-trees tapering above its hovels, like rich plumes in a ragamuffin's cap. There was the olive grove where he had spoken with the old beggar. And here, two hundred feet below, at the foot of a terraced slope so steep that it seemed easy to throw a stone down on to the roof of the sheykh's house, was the village he had just left. His eyes ranged over the prospect, to return always to that white town upon the headland which was his birthplace. The sun rose upon the sea and the skirts of the plain, though the shadow of the mountains still darkened the near villages. Standing at the doorway of his home he would have been in the sunlight now. The thought gripped him by the throat. A sob from Hasneh told that her mind was straying in the same direction. Saïd's voice was hoarse as he set forward once more, bidding her follow him.

The path dipped rapidly to the brink of a rocky gorge, and naked hills closed in upon them as they descended. To Saïd it seemed as if a door had slammed behind him, shutting off the past. His heart sickened for a while.