As there were still provisions in our saddle-bags, Rashîd, by my command, divided them among the company, the soldiers and the murderers alike, who were delighted. It was a merry party which we left behind, with the exception of the fratricide, who ate the food, when it was set before him, ravenously, but said not a word.
'May Allah heal him!' sighed the other murderers. 'Our Lord remove this shadow from his mind!'
Rashîd and I pursued our way on an interminable path meandering in zig-zags down through brushwood, which smelt sweet of myrtle and wild incense. I tried to make him understand that he had quite misled me by the term he had applied to men who had been guilty of no more than manslaughter. The distinction had to be explained with much periphrasis, because the Arabic word 'Câtil' means a slayer, and is given indiscriminately to all who kill.
He caught my meaning sooner than I had expected.
'Ah!' he said. 'Your Honour thought from what I said that they were "cutters of the road,"[7] or hired assassins, who kill men for gain. Those are the greater criminals, whose punishment is death. Few such exist among us. Here a robber will seldom kill a man unless that man kills him.' [I translate literally] 'when it is just retaliation; and as for hired assassins, I have known several of them in my time, and they are not bad people, but unfortunate, having fallen early in the power of cruel and ambitious men. Most of the killing in this country is done without a thought, in anger or mad jealousy.'
'Is it for man to judge them?' he exclaimed, with a high shrug, when I remarked upon their friendly treatment by the Turkish guards. 'They are punished by authority down here, so we are better; but afterwards, when comes the Judgment of the Lord, we may be worse. It is hard upon those men we met just now. They go to prison, most of them, because they were not rich enough to pay the sum demanded as the price of blood. For men of wealth, or who have rich relations, it is easy to compound the matter for a sum of money, in return for which the dead man's relatives regard his death as due to natural causes, and forswear revenge. It is hard, I say, upon those men we met just now; and especially upon the man who slew his brother—may Our Lord console him!'
A few days later I was strolling in the town and happened to pass by the public gaol. In the middle of the gate, behind some iron bars, a wretched man stood shaking a tin can, in which some small coins rattled, and calling on the passers-by for alms for the poor prisoners. A little group of English tourists—a gentleman and two fair ladies—came that way, led on by a resplendent dragoman. They stared at the wild figure at the prison gate.
'You like to give a trifle to the brisoners?' inquired the guide.
'What are they in for?' asked the gentleman.
'Murders, I guess, mostly,' shrugged the dragoman.