"I am not a Hubshi, but a Somali, which is quite different—even as a lion is different from a jackal or a man from an ape".
To which the Brahmin replied but:—
"Hubshi," and pointed out that there was danger of Moussa Isa's shadow touching him, if Moussa were not careful.
"I must kill you if you call me Hubshi, understanding that I am of the
Somals," said Moussa Isa.
"Hubshi," would the Brahmin reply and loudly bewail his evil Luck which had put him in the power of the accursed Feringhi Government—a Government that compelled a Brahmin to breathe the same air as a filthy negro dog, a Woolly One of Africa, barely human and most untouchable, a living Contamination … and Moussa cast about for a weapon.
His first opportunity arose when he found the Brahmin, who was in the book-binding and compositor department, working one day in the same gardening-gang with himself.
He had but a watering-can by way of offensive weapon, but good play can be made with a big iron watering-can wielded in the right spirit and the right hand.
Master Brahmin was feebly tapping the earth with a kind of single-headed pick, and watching him, Moussa Isa saw that, in a quarter of an hour or so, he might plausibly and legitimately pass within a yard or two of this his enemy, as he went to and fro between the water-tap and the strip of flower-border that he was sprinkling…. Would they hang him if he killed the Brahmin, or would they feebly flog him again and give him a longer sentence (that he be supported, fed, lodged, clothed and cared for) than the present seven years?
There was no foretelling what the mad English would do. Sometimes they acquitted a criminal and gave him money and education, and sometimes they sent him to far distant islands in the South and there housed and fed him free, for life; and sometimes they killed him at the end of a rope.
Doubtless Allah smote the English mad to prevent them from stealing the whole world…. If they were not mad they would do so and enslave all other races—except their conquerors, the Dervishes, of course…. It was like the lying hypocrites to call the Great Mullah "the Mad Mullah" knowing themselves to be mad, and being afraid of their victorious enemy who had driven them out of Somaliland to the coast forts….