Oriental Encounters: Palestine and Syria, 1894-6. Marmaduke William Pickthall

by his fault but through that master's oversight. But my possessions were Rashîd's delight, his claim to honour. He boasted of them to all comers. In particular did he revere my gun, my Service revolver, and this whip—a tough thong of rhinoceros hide, rather nicely mounted with silver, which had been presented to me by an aged Arab in return for some imagined favour. I had found it useful against pariah dogs when these rushed out in packs to bite one's horse's legs, but had never viewed it as a badge of honour till Rashîd came to me. To him it was the best of our possessions, marking us as of rank above the common. He thrust it on me even when I went out walking; and he it was who, when we started from our mountain home at noon that day, had laid it reverently down upon the seat beside me before he climbed upon the box beside the driver. And now the whip was lost through my neglectfulness. Rashîd's dejection made me feel a worm.

      'Allah! Allah!' he made moan, 'What can I do? The driver was a chance encounter. I do not know his dwelling, which may God destroy!'

      The host remarked in comfortable tones that flesh is grass, all treasure perishable, and that it behoves a man to fix desire on higher things. Whereat Rashîd sprang up, as one past patience, and departed, darting through the cattle in the yard with almost supernatural agility. 'Let him eat his rage alone!' the host advised me, with a shrug.

      Having ordered supper for the third hour of the night, I, too, went out to stretch my limbs, which were stiff and bruised from four hours' jolting in a springless carriage, always on the point of overturning. We should have done better to have come on horseback in the usual way; but Rashîd, having chanced upon the carriage, a great rarity, had decided on that way of going as more fashionable, forgetful of the fact that there was not a road.

      The stars were out. In the few shops which still kept open lanterns hung, throwing streaks of yellow light on the uneven causeway, a gleam into the eyes of wayfarers and prowling dogs. Many of the people in the streets, too, carried lanterns whose swing made objects in their circle seem to leap and fall. I came at length into an open place where there was concourse—a kind of square which might be called the centre of the city.

      The crowd there, as I noticed with surprise, was stationary, with all its faces turned in one direction. I heard a man's voice weeping and declaiming wildly.

      'What is it?' I inquired, among the outskirts.

      'A great misfortune!' someone answered. 'A poor servant has lost a whip worth fifty Turkish pounds, his master's property. It was stolen from him by a miscreant—a wicked cabman. His lord will kill him if he fails to find it.'

      Seized with interest, I shouldered my way forward. There was Rashîd against the wall of a large mosque, beating himself against that wall with a most fearful outcry. A group of high-fezzed soldiers, the policemen of the city, hung round him in compassion, questioning. Happily, I wore a fez, and so was inconspicuous.

      'Fifty Turkish pounds!' he yelled. 'A hundred would not buy its brother! My master, the tremendous Count of all the English—their chief prince, by Allah!—loves it as his soul. He will pluck out and devour my heart and liver. O High Protector! O Almighty Lord!'

      'What like was this said cabman?' asked a sergeant of the watch.

      Rashîd, with sobs and many pious interjections, described the cabman rather neatly as 'a one-eyed man, full-bearded, of a form as if inflated in the lower half. His name, he told me, was Habîb; but Allah knows!'

      'The man is known!' exclaimed the sergeant, eagerly. 'His dwelling is close by. Come, O thou poor, ill-used one. We will take the whip from him.'

      At that Rashîd's grief ceased as if by magic. He took the sergeant's hand and fondled it, as they went off together. I followed with the crowd as far as to the cabman's door, a filthy entry in a narrow lane, where, wishing to avoid discovery, I broke away and walked back quickly to the khan.

      I had been there in my private alcove some few minutes, when Rashîd arrived with a triumphant air, holding on high the famous whip. The sergeant came across the court with him. A score of soldiers waited in the gateway as I could see by the light of the great lantern hanging from the arch.

      'Praise be to Allah, I have found it!' cried Rashîd.

      'Praise be to Allah, we have been enabled to do a little service for your Highness,' cried the sergeant. Therewith he pounced upon my hand and kissed it. I made them both sit down and called for coffee. Between the two of them, I heard the story. The sergeant praised Rashîd's intelligence in going out and crying in a public place until the city and its whole police force had a share in his distress. Rashîd, on his side, said that all that would have been in vain but for the sergeant's knowledge of the cabman's house. The sergeant, with a chuckle, owned that that same knowledge would have been of no effect had not Rashîd once more displayed his keen intelligence. They had poured into the house—a single room, illumined only by a saucer lamp upon the ground—and searched it thoroughly, the cabman all the while protesting his great innocence, and swearing he had never in this world beheld a whip like that described. The soldiers, finding no whip, were beginning to believe his word when Rashîd, who had remained aloof, observing that the cabman's wife stood very still beneath her veils, assailed her with a mighty push, which sent her staggering across the room. The whip was then discovered. It had been hidden underneath her petticoats. They had given the delinquent a good beating then and there. Would that be punishment enough in my opinion? asked the sergeant.

      We decided that the beating was enough. I gave the sergeant a small present when he left. Rashîd went with him, after carefully concealing the now famous whip. I suppose they went off to some tavern to discuss the wonderful adventure more at length; for I supped alone, and had been some time stretched upon my mattress on the floor before Rashîd came in and spread his bed beside me.

      'Art thou awake, O my dear lord?' he whispered. 'By Allah, thou didst wrong to give that sergeant any money. I had made thy name so great that but to look on thee was fee sufficient for a poor, lean dog like him.'

      He then was silent for so long a while that I imagined he had gone to sleep. But, suddenly, he whispered once again:

      'O my dear lord, forgive me the disturbance, but hast thou our revolver safe?'

      'By Allah, yes! Here, ready to my hand.'

      'Good. But it would be better for the future that I should bear our whip and our revolver. I have made thy name so great that thou shouldst carry nothing.'

CHAPTER IVToC

       Table of Contents

      THE COURTEOUS JUDGE

      We were giving a dinner-party on that day to half a dozen Turkish officers, and, when he brought me in my cup of tea at seven-thirty a.m., Rashîd informed me that our cook had been arrested. The said cook was a decent Muslim, but hot-tempered, and something of a blood in private life. At six a.m., as he stood basking in the sunlight in our doorway, his eyes had fallen on some Christian youths upon their way to college, in European clothes, with new kid gloves and silver-headed canes. Maddened with a sense of outrage by that horrid sight, he had attacked the said youths furiously with a wooden ladle, putting them to flight, and chasing them all down the long acacia avenue, through two suburbs into the heart of the city, where their miserable cries for help brought the police upon him. Rashîd, pursuing in vain attempts to calm the holy warrior, had seen him taken into custody still flourishing the ladle; but could tell me nothing of his after fate, having at that point deemed it prudent to retire, lest he, too, might be put in prison by mistake.

      It was sad. As soon as I was up and dressed, I wrote to Hamdi Bey, the chief of our intended visitors, informing him of the mishap which would prevent our giving him and his comrades a dinner at all worthy of their merit. By the time that I had finished dressing, Rashîd had found a messenger to whom the note was given with an order to make haste. He must have run the whole way there and back, for, after little more than half an hour, he stood before me, breathless and