"Good? please God! Who is with you?"
The young man raised his hand and replied:
"God!"
He was alone.
Without seeming to notice the rest of the company, his eye embraced the three sheikhs of the Sherarāt eating mutton and curds in the entrance, and the strange woman by the fire, as with murmured salutations he passed into the back of the tent, refusing Nahār's offer of food. He was G̣ablān, of the ruling house of the Da'ja, cousin to the reigning sheikh, and, as I subsequently found, he had heard that Namrūd needed a guide for a foreigner—news travels apace in the desert—and had come to take me to his uncle's tents. We had not sat for more than five minutes after his arrival when Nahār whispered something to Namrūd, who turned to me and suggested that since we had dined we might go and take G̣ablān with us. I was surprised that the evening's gossip should be cut so short, but I knew better than to make any objection, and as we cantered home across Namrūd's ploughland and up the hill of Ṭneib, I heard the reason. There was blood between the Da'ja and the Sherarāt. At the first glance G̣ablān had recognised the lineage of his fellow guests, and had therefore retired silently into the depths of the tent. He would not dip his hand in the same mutton dish with them. Nahār knew, as who did not? the difficulty of the situation, but he could not tell how the men of the Sherarāt would take it, and, for fear of accidents, he had hurried us away. But by next morning the atmosphere had cleared (metaphorically, not literally), and a day of streaming rain kept the blood enemies sitting amicably round Namrūd's coffee-pots in the cave.
The third day's rain was as much as human patience could endure. I had forgotten by this time what it was like not to feel damp, to have warm feet and dry bed clothes. G̣ablān spent an hour with me in the morning, finding out what I wished of him. I explained that if he could take me through the desert where I should see no military post and leave me at the foot of the hills, I should desire no more. G̣ablān considered a moment.
"Oh lady," said he, "do you think you will be brought into conflict with the soldiery? for if so, I will take my rifle."
I replied that I did not contemplate declaring open war with all the Sultan's chivalry, and that with a little care I fancied that such a contingency might be avoided; but G̣ablān was of opinion that strategy went further when winged with a bullet, and decided that he would take his rifle with him all the same.
In the afternoon, having nothing better to do, I watched the Sherarāt buying corn from Namrūd. But for my incongruous presence and the lapse of a few thousand years, they might have been the sons of Jacob come down into Egypt to bicker over the weight of the sacks with their brother Joseph. The corn was kept in a deep dry hole cut in the rock, and was drawn out like so much water in golden bucketsful. It had been stored with chaff for its better protection, and the first business was to sift it at the well-head, a labour that could not be executed without much and angry discussion. Not even the camels were silent, but joined in the argument with groans and bubblings, as the Arabs loaded them with the full sacks. The Sheikhs of the Ṣukhūr and the Sherarāt sat round on stones in the drizzling mist, and sometimes they muttered, "God! God!" and sometimes they exclaimed, "He is, merciful and compassionate!" Not infrequently the sifted corn was poured back among the unsifted, and a dialogue of this sort ensued: