“Ma sh’ Allah!” he exclaimed at the end. “It is not good to frequent unbelievers. The sheykh—dear, righteous man!—he thought no evil—that is known. And yet it was not good. I myself could have informed him harm would come of it.”
He readily undertook to lodge Fatmeh with his own women.
While they yet stood talking in the doorway, an ass, saddled and bridled, was led out from the adjoining stable. It was followed by an aged fellâh, who gave a coin to the hostler. The fellâh then bestrode the beast, groaning like a camel with the exertion. Zeyd, recognizing his wife’s sister’s husband’s uncle, hailed him joyfully.
“I cannot stay. I have waited long enough,” muttered the donkey rider, in agitation. “Allah knows they may be already at my house, clasping my doorposts, needing my protection. I am old and have no stomach for the fray. Yet they went off bravely, that handful against a whole city. I was proud of their friendship though I slipped away. No doubt but that they have slain the Frank and all belonging to him, and have destroyed his house with fire. They come from wilds wherein vengeance is a sacred right—as it should be, O my son—as it should be. They know not the law of this city which takes no count of religious motives. They will flee from the punishment to my house, and I must be there to shield them if I can.”
“Was the riot then so serious, O my uncle? They spoke of it as a jest.”
“Hadst thou seen their faces, heard their heartsome shouts as I did, thou wouldst never ask—‘was it serious?’”
“Alas, for their wickedness. Very surely they are the worst of men. May Allah destroy the house of every one of them.”
The fellâh contradicted Zeyd hotly: “Nay, may Allah prosper them. Art thou, then, also their enemy? Blessed guests have they been to our village. The fame of them has made us respected in all the neighborhood. They are good—the best possible—to their friends. What matter though they be bad to their enemies? Can all men use the same eyes? May Allah preserve them. In thy grace, O my dear!”
Pressed by the old man’s heels, the donkey started, its shod hoofs waking echoes in that deep-walled place.
Zeyd followed, in search of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn, for whose safety he grew anxious. Talking of danger and punishment had brought into the foreground of his remembrance details which had failed to impress him at the time—in particular, the company of soldiers which had passed him by the city gate, and the confusion in the Frank’s mad speech of Shems-ud-dìn with the Circassians. Apprehensions, spurred by indigestion of the various insults he had been forced to stomach, made his soul groan within him. At unawares he ran instead of walked—a strange sight in the city at high noon.