CHAPTER XII
ENTITLED AL-MAHALLAT AL-JADIDA,
OR THE NEW QUARTER OF THE CITY
“As I proceeded the next morning across the waste” (continued Mahmoud to his nephews on their next visit) “I turned over in my mind how best to employ the considerable sum which my honest mule bore so patiently upon his back. Here was a year’s sustenance for fifty labourers or more, and with so much money a man earns more. For, as it is written in the Holy Book, ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire, but whatever is over is not for him.’ And again, ‘Blessed are the poor.’
“There are not wanting occasions for the employment of poorer men and the gathering of the fruits of their labour into one’s own pouch. But there is one difficulty in all such matters, which is the point of judgment.
“You will recollect (my dear nephews) how often in the past a most careful investment of mine had gone wrong, and how often a mere hazard, not even of my own choosing, had brought me sudden fortune. How in the matter of the sheep I was beaten almost to death by the market-police, while in the matter of the horse I had sold, three times over, an animal that had cost me nothing and had fallen to me by the pure goodness of God. How in the matter of the dates I had been left penniless by a man of greater Business Sense, Foresight, Organizing Ability, Eye for the Market, Knowledge of Men, and the rest of the virtues; while in the Matter of the Holy Man I had—as my weary mule proved—done extremely well out of a quite unexpected accident. Even as this last example passed through my mind I remembered, for the first time, that the mule himself was a new accession of fortune, over and above the silver he carried. For I had not had the inconvenience of paying for him. He was a fine beast, and in spite of his fatigue still looked well bred. I estimated him at quite ten pieces of gold, and mentally added that sum on my tablets to the total value of my possessions.
“It was so musing that I found myself approaching a high tangle of reeds, through which a narrow path wound and was lost to view. On this path I engaged. The reeds on either side were so tall as to hide the farther landscape, and so closely set that one could see but a few yards into their mass.
“After perhaps an hour of such journeying my mule and I came out suddenly upon the firm bank of a broad and shallow river whose noise and coolness, swift current and clear stream were a delight after so many hours of arid travel. There did I sit me down. There did I unload and hobble my patient companion. There did we drink of the good water, and there did the mule eat plentifully of cool grass. But I made no meal, for the oat-cakes and cheese which I had taken from the Common Table of the Poor in the Pilgrims’ camp were now exhausted.
“It was this circumstance which made me a little anxious for the day. I looked about me, stood up on the highest part of the bank, and then saw that the shore opposite had been artificially heightened to form a regular levee or embankment, beyond which the flat country was hidden. I determined to seek this point of advantage for a view. I reloaded my mule, carefully forded the stream in its various branches and climbed to the farther shore.
“At the summit of the embankment, which was evidently of recent construction, my effort was well rewarded, for I saw a sight that set at rest all anxiety for food and shelter.
“The embankment on which I stood swept round in a horseshoe shape—not everywhere finished, but everywhere traced out. It thus enclosed a peninsula, bounded by the river: a space of marshy ground full of stagnant pools and water-grasses. Three or four furlongs away, cutting across the whole neck of the horseshoe of swamp and stretching from the river to the river again, ran the well-built stone wall of a strong town, the flat roofs and low domes of which (it had no tower or minaret) made a ridge of snow-white against the intense blue of the sky. Far away beyond were distant mountains, purple in the heat.