“Taala hena [Come here], Maghmood,” bawled the noisy Republican. “This American man! He no have to go for soldier, fight long time for greasy old Sultan. Not work all day to get bishleek, him! Get ten, fifteen, twenty bishleek day! Bah! You no good, you! Why for you not run away to America?”
The woman kept a sort of lodging-house in a near-by stone hut, and insisted that I spend the night there. Chattering about one thing and another she prepared a supper of lentils, bread-sheets, olives, and crushed sugar-cane, and set out a bottle of beet (native wine). The meal over, she lighted a cigarette, leaned back in a home-made chair, and blew smoke at the ceiling with a far-away look in her eyes.
“Oh, my!” she cried suddenly. “You sing American song! I like this no-good soldier hear good song. Then he sing Arab song for you.”
I undertook to play the wandering minstrel with uncertainty. At the first lines of “The Swanee River” the soldier burst forth in a roar of laughter that doubled him up as if he were having a fit.
“You great fool, you,” shouted the woman, shaking her fist at the property of the Sultan, who was lying at full length on the floor. “You no know what song is! Shut up! I split your head!”
This gentle hint made the youth sit up and listen most attentively, with set teeth, until the concert of the Western world was ended.
When his turn came, he struck up a mournful chant that sounded like the wailing of a lost soul, and sang for nearly an hour on about three notes, shaking his head from side to side and rocking his body back and forth as his voice rose to an ear-splitting yell.
The mournful tune was interrupted by a shout from the darkness outside. The woman called back in answer, and two ragged, bespattered Bedouins pushed into the hut. The howling and shouting that followed made me wonder whether murder or merely highway robbery had been committed. The men shook their fists, and the woman almost cried. The quarrel lasted for a full half hour, and then there was quiet again. The woman took from the wall a huge key, and stepped out, followed by the Bedouins.
“You know for what we fight?” she demanded, when she returned. “They Arabs. Want to sleep in my hotel. They want to pay only four coppers. I say must pay five coppers—one metleek. Bah! This country no good.”
Four fifths of a cent was perhaps as great a price as she should have asked from any lodger in the “hotel” to which she led me a half hour later.