“No drugs!” he said, “buy some Epsom salts and phenacetin, that is as good a stock-in-trade as you can desire; and anything else you may require, why, we will make up some kind of concoction. Names are plentiful, and one looks no worse than another upon a bottle of the same stuff.”
The creature pressed so hard that I did not know how to be rid of him, when a diversion came from Sayyid Nuri. He had been wandering about the room, and had discovered a small cube of yellowish-grey earth, the use of which he demanded. I explained to him that this was a piece of earth from the sacred tomb of the saint Ali, an apparatus of prayer not to be dispensed with by any good Shi’a Musulman.
“What! do you pray to this?” he cried.
“No,” I replied, “but we place it before us on the ground. As you know, among the Sunni you place your foreheads upon the ground in praying, you prostrate yourselves upon any earth or any dust upon which you find yourselves. We do the same, but we see no harm in having a piece of consecrated earth between our foreheads and the ground, so that when we touch earth in our prostrations we may rest the head upon a spot more sacred than the place we are in, and at the same time have before us a reminder of the great man and saint and martyr whom even Sunni revere.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “and that is how a Shi’a says his prayers! Why, I tell you, man, that such is idolatry and heathenism. Your prayers are worthless said over such a thing, and you stand in danger of terrible and eternal retribution for such a sin.”
“And you Shi’a,” he recommenced with some heat, “are the folk that curse the name of Uthman, Umar, and Abu Bekr, and revile us, rising in the morning with abuse of us on your lips, and not slumbering till you have cursed us!”
The boy was losing his temper, and began to fumble with his dagger, but the “doctor” did his best to get him away out of the room, telling him that though some Shi’a might do as he said, I was not of the rampant kind, and at any rate should not be responsible for others’ actions.
“Then let him renounce the schism,” he grumbled; but the old man had his answer ready to this:
“Shall not he follow his fathers? and be damned or saved with them? Were he to desert now, he would fling off his new tenets directly he got away. Let him be, I say, he has not attempted to spread his doctrine; let him pray in his fashion, the sin is upon him for continuing, and the merit yours, for you have pointed it out.”
With that he rose and took his leave, and the boy seeing no further amusement in staying, followed him, bidding me adieu sullenly and with a bad grace. That was the last time he entered my house, for, a day or two after, Shaikh Ahmad was appointed Qaim Maqam of Chemchemal, and took his son with him.