The camel-driver is doubly brave,—who would not be proud to be his nephew?—for he actually begins to speak to the strange being, while the crowd behind him grows and grows.
“Barhaba!” says the camel-driver in greeting. “Lailtak saeedee! Where does the efendee hail from? Italiano, perhaps?”
“No; American.”
“Amerikhano!” The word runs from mouth to mouth, and the faces of all hearers light up with interest. “America?” Why, that is where Abdul el Kassab, the butcher, went long years ago. It is said to be far away, further than El Gkudis (Jerusalem) or Shaam (Damascus). But the camel-driver has found out something else about this faranchee. Listen: “Bahree! The faranchee is a bahree, a sailor, a man who works on the great water, the ‘bahr’ that any one can see from the top of yonder hill and on the shores of which this same camel-driver claims to have been. It is even said that to reach this America one must travel on the great water! Indeed, ’tis far away, and were the faranchee not a bahree, how could he have journeyed from far-off America to this very Nazra?”
But the few words of the Arabic that I knew were soon spent. I sat there, unable to tell them more. To the simple Nazarenes I was as much to be pitied as a deaf-mute, and they burst forth in pitying cries of “Meskeen” (“poor devil”). The camel-driver was still trying to find out more about me, when a well dressed native pushed through the crowd and spoke to me in English. I held up the letter.
“Ah,” he cried, “the dentist Kawar?” And he took the note out of my hand and tore it open.
“But here,” I cried. “Are you the dentist?”
“Oh, no, indeed,” said the native, without looking up from the reading.
“Then what right have you to open that letter?” I demanded, grasping it.
The native gazed at me a moment, astonished and hurt.