Fear And Other Stories
Achmed Abdullah
THE CHARMED LIFE
From a letter dated September the eleventh, nineteen hundred and seventeen, by Captain Achmed Abdullah to the Editor of the All-Story Weekly:
…and as to that, you are, of course, perfectly right. Magazine readers want to be entertained-that's what they plunk down their little dimes for-and take them all around, they prefer a story which is full of action, of things daring, with some love and a fair dose of adventure thrown in, and yet, as you put it, they do not want their credulity strained to the breaking point. They like to say to themselves-well, not exactly "This did happen" but rather, "This might have happened": and as an afterthought, chiefly if they're young (by which I mean the sunny side of seventy-three) they often add the two tiny words "To me."
An adventurous and slightly fantastic love story-yet substantially a true story-that's the dope: and the only thing which remains is to catch your hare, to quote Mrs. Glass's famous Cookery Book. I heard such a story not so very long ago, when on my way home to Afghanistan. I stopped for a few weeks at Calcutta.
The name of the man who told me the story-his own story-was-(name deleted by the editor). You may known some of his people in Boston. And when you come to the end of the tale, remember one thing, the hero-though I hate the appellation-is happy; and that, perhaps, is the final aim and object of man's life-to achieve happiness without making others unhappy.
I hope your readers will like the tale. At least it is a true tale; as true as all India; as true as the fact that before there was a Europe, India worshiped the Trimurti, the triple deity composed of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu, the Sustainer, Shiva the Destroyer, and-to believe certain Hindus-will continue to worship this triple image long after Europe has ceased to exist; as true, finally as the facts that never there lived, nor will live, American or European who can get below the skin of India without doing what the Boston man did in his little house in Calcutta, not far from the Chitpore Road.
Best Regards, Achmed Abdullah.
(Note by the editors-Captain Abdullah's manuscript contained the real names of the people and localities whom this story concerns. We changed them-for obvious reasons.)
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On the day when death will knock at thy door, what wilt thou offer him?
Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life-I will never let him go with empty hands.
--Rarindranath Tagore
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