“Why,” cried the cook, when our discussion had been carried into his room in the mission, “in the days of my father, for a stranger to pay a place to live would have been insult to all. A stranger in town! Why, Let my house be his—and mine!—and mine! would have shouted every honorable citizen!”
“But Nazareth is getting bad,” sighed Shukry. “The faranchees who are coming are very proud. They will not eat our food and sleep in our small houses. And so many are coming! So some inns have been built and even the Italian monastery like to have pay. Very disgraceful!”
“Did you give any policemen a nice whipping?” asked Elias, suddenly.
“Eh?” I cried.
“If a faranchee comes to our country,” he explained, “or if we go to live in America and come back, the policeman cannot arrest.”
“Yes, I know,” I answered.
“If a policeman touches you, then, you must give him a nice whipping,” continued the cook. “If my father had been to America I would give nice whippings every day. Many friends I have—” and he launched forth into a series of anecdotes the heroes of which had returned with naturalization papers for the sole purpose, evidently, of making life unendurable for the officers of the Sultan.
“If they only refuse to obey the soldiers,” said Nehmé, “that is nothing. Everybody does that. But here is the wonderful! They do not have even to give backsheesh!”
“Do you have backsheesh in America?” demanded Shukry.
“Ah—er—well—the name is not in common use,” I stammered.