Zarah spoke slowly, clearly, whilst the Sheikh looked from the one to the other in grief and anxiety.
“Because she is in foal!”
It was a lie, the girl knew it was a lie, the Sheikh knew it was a lie, as he leaned forward and tried to catch her hand.
He was too late.
“Liar!” she screamed. “Accursed liar!” she screamed again, as she seized a heavy, cut-glass bowl and hurled it in Yussuf’s face, against which it smashed to pieces, cutting it to ribbons, a thousand needle-pointed splinters of glass putting out for ever the light of the wondrous eyes.
“The box went in search of the lid until it met with it.”—Arabic Proverb.
The mistaken love of friends saved him, though would it have been far kinder to have let him close his blinded eyes in the last long sleep, from which he would perchance have wakened with a clearer vision and a better understanding.
“The will of Allah? Does our brother live or die? Speak quickly lest I pinch thy windpipe ’twixt thumb and finger.”
Some many days later the renowned herbalist procured from Hutah, in the Hareek Oasis, by the simple process of kidnapping, and brought, blindfolded, by swiftest camel to the curing of the sick man, looked up at Al-Asad, the gigantic Nubian.