When I attempted to repeat after them one of their Indian songs, they both burst out into uproarious merriment. Peter rolling about in his chair like a serenader playing “the bones,” and the young Othello laughing as if he was being tickled.
In speaking of the duties which they owed to their parents, the rules of conduct which they laid down as those to be followed by a good son were wonderful for the completeness of the obedience which they held should be paid to a father’s commands. They did not seem to consider that the injunctions of a mother should be looked upon as sacredly as those of the male parent. They told me that the soul of the child was damned if even he disputed to obey the father’s command, although he knew it to be wrong, and contrary to God’s laws. “Allah,” they said, would visit any wickedness that was committed through such obedience upon the father, but he would bless the child for his submission. Their story was as follows:—
“Most of the tom-tom players are Indians, but we are both of us Arabs. The Arabs are just equally as good as the Indians at playing the tom-tom, but they haven’t got exactly to the learning of the manufacture of them yet. I come from Mocha, and so does Peter, my companion; only his father belongs to what we call the Abshee tribe, and that’s what makes him so much darker than what I am. The Abshee tribe are now outside of Arabia, up by the Gulf of Persia. They are much the same as the Mucdad people,—it’s all the same tribe like.
“My name is Usef Asman, and my father has been over here twelve years now. He came here in the English army, I’ve heard him say, for he was in the 77th Bengal Native Infantry; but he wasn’t an Indian, but enlisted in the service and fought through the Sikh war, and was wounded. He hasn’t got a pension, for he sent his luggage through Paris to England, and he lost his writings. The East India Company only told him that he must wait until they heard from India, and that’s been going on for now six years.
“Mother came home with father and me, and two brothers and a sister. I’m the second eldest. My brother is thirty-six, and he was in the Crimea, as steward on board the Royal Hydaspes, a steam screw she is. He was 17 and I was 6 years old when I came over. My brother is a fine strapping fellow, over six feet high, and the muscles in his arms are as big round as my thigh.
“I don’t remember my native country, but Peter does, for he’s only been here for two years and five months. He likes his own country better than England. His father left Arabia to go to Bombay, and there he keeps large coffee-shops. He’s worth a little money. His shops are in the low quarter of the town, just the same as Drury Lane may be, though it’s the centre of the town. They call the place the Nacopoora taleemoulla.
“Before father went into the army he was an interpreter in Arabia. His father was a horse-dealer. My father can speak eight or nine different languages fluently, besides a little of others. He was the interpreter who got Dr. Woolfe out of Bokhara prison, when he was put in because they thought he was a spy. Father was sent for by the chief to explain what this man’s business was. It is the Mogul language they speak there. My father was told to get him out of the country in twenty-four hours, and my father killed his own horse and camel walking so hard to get him away.
“We was obliged to put ourselves up to going about the streets. Duty and necessity first compelled me to do it. Father couldn’t get his pension, and, of course, we couldn’t sit at home and starve; so father was obliged to go out and play the drum. He got his tom-toms from an Arab vessel which came over, and they made them a present to him.
“We used before now, father and myself, to go to artists or modelers, to have our likenesses taken. We went to Mr. Armitage, when he was painting a battle in India. If you recollect, I’m leaning down by the rocks, whilst the others are escaping. I’ve also been to Mr. Dobson, who used to live in Newman-street. I’ve sat to him in my costume for several pictures. In one of them I was like a chief’s son, or something of that, smoking a hubble-bubble. Father used to have a deal of work at Mr. Gale’s, in Fitzroy-square. I don’t know the subjects he painted, for I wasn’t there whilst father used to sit. It used to tire me when I had to sit for two or three hours in one position. Sometimes I had to strip to the waist. I had to do that at Mr. Dobson’s in the winter time, and, though there was a good fire in the room, it was very wide, and it didn’t throw much heat out, and I used to be very cold. He used to paint religious subjects. I had a shilling an hour, and if a person could get after-work at it, I could make a better living at it than in the streets; in fact, I’d rather do it any time, though it’s harder work, for there is a name for that, but there is no name for going about playing the tom-tom; yet it’s better to do that than sit down and see other people starving.
“Father is still sitting to artists. He doesn’t go about the streets—he couldn’t face it out.