'I shall see about others then,' Saleh said.
'They are ordered already.'
'Your groom, Iselem, will not go with you,' said Saleh.
So I told him, 'He won't get the chance; we would not have him if we were paid, and though we have paid him beforehand, we willingly lose our money.'
'I must, then, speak to the sultan about him, for you.'
I said, 'The sultan has decided what he will do with him, and I don't think he will like it.'
'Haidar Aboul will not go with you.'
This made us very angry, as we had seen that Saleh had been tampering with him, lending him his donkey and his sandals when he walked, and whispering with him. He tried to separate everyone from us. Haidar had promised to go with us all the way, and later Imam Sharif brought him to me when I was at home alone, and made him repeat his promise, and assurance that he had never told Saleh he would not go.
Saleh also wanted money, but was refused; he got 100 rupees a month, and 200 were prepaid at Aden. He gambled, and my husband wished to keep the contents of our money-bags for our own use. We calculated that at the cheapest, for soldiers and siyara and camels, Bir Borhut would cost 130l. Saleh had put all the servants in a most terrible fright, and a soldier had told them that if we went beyond Shibahm we should all be killed, and that we should find no water by the way. So we had to explain to them the plan of going by Wadi bin Ali, and to comfort them as well as we could. These people never seem to think that we value our own lives as much as they do theirs.
Meshed was also closed against us. The sultan of Siwoun and the seyyids had sworn on the Koran not to let us proceed on our journey; the Kattiri had also sworn and sent messages to the Tamimi of Bir Borhut, the Jabberi of Wadi bin Ali, and the Nahadi, and they were all against us.
