We went on through the smiling sunny landscape and the green corn, where the peasants stood by the irrigation trenches, their work suspended, their faces turned towards that ominous sound, and presently we met an old man. He too listened.
“Why are they firing cannon in Môṣul?” I asked.
“God knows!” he answered, and wrung his hands together. “Perhaps it is news from Stambûl. One man says one thing and one another, and God knows what is true.”
A little further a ragged pair came down the road toward us.
“When did you set out from Môṣul?” said Fattûḥ.
“At the first dawn,” they answered, and fear was in their eyes.
“What was happening there?” asked Fattûḥ.
“Nothing,” they replied. “When we set out, wallah! there was nothing.”
We left them standing in the road with anxious faces turned towards the town. And still the cannon boomed over the hill.